Alan Watts on modern warfare

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Not completely true, since in the hands of fanatics who are willing enough to sacrifice their own lives as suicide bombers a nuclear weapon would be ideal for usage. The threat of a weapon is only effective against an enemy which is afraid of harm from that weapon.

There is no "Threat" from any weapon TO a suicide bomber. The individual setting off a device would hardly care HOW that device ended his life. But the people providing that device are far more cunning than that. Individual suicide bombers are not masters of their own fate, merely puppets and idiots led by those clever enough to hide themselves or make themselves untouchable or unfindable. Consider that THESE terrorists know that their best defence is hiding behind a civilian population. American forces aren't very particular about avoiding civilian casualties in a conventional war, but they try to steer away from wholesale slaughter, if only because it causes a lot of bad press. Suffice to say there are always civilians left behind which to hide. "The terrorists" know that a nuclear counter-strike would indiscriminately massacre whole populations, even if it were only tactical. No civilians to use as a meat-shield if they are all reduced to blast-shadows. Thus they avoid pushing the US to that point. Or at least they resist that urge whilst they feel the US has a distinct military superiority. Push the balance the other way, and they might start to feel differently.

Really now, I suppose the British are little different for all the wars with the French and the Scottish though, or do you beg to differ? The soldiers that I've personally known are opposed to causing civilian casualties - unless said civilian© is wielding a machine gun or rocket launcher, in which case they change themselves from a civilian into a combatant. My stepdad's father fought in the Korean war and had to kill a civilian who was walking towards him holding a grenade, although he did attempt to convince them to stop vocally as much as he could beforehand. Sometimes civilian casualties are inevitable, and sometimes aerial destruction of targets is required too. During Regan's era the DOD tried to increase the accuracy of all its targeting and guidance systems on missiles as much as they possibly could, so as to reduce hitting the wrong target and increase accuracy for hitting the designated targets - of which civilians are not a sought after target.

Congratulations on sliding right in to the ridiculous there. If memory serves (and it does) the ENGLISH haven't been to war with either the French or the Scots for an extremely long time. The Jacobite risings perhaps, or since Waterloo for the French. Unless you want to count WW2 against Vichy France. It would of course be impossible for THE BRITISH to war against the Scots, as Scotland is a constituent part of Great Britain. Nevertheless, the history of the United Kingdom (which you are apparently not completely up to speed with) aside, none of those conflicts are even vaguely relevant to the current American campaigns. Precision bombing is a modern phenomena, hardly common in 18th century Scotland, one can safely assume, or even in the 19th century. Even if they were, you would be making the mistake of judging those centuries by modern standards when comparing them to modern American military methods. Generally in those conflicts, "collateral damage" was as minimal as is ever likely in the periods relevant.

Of course if you wish to include Vichy France, a degree of precision bombing is possible, but only in a very basic sense compared to modern techniques. Certainly not to the degree possible with such wonderful toys as the USAAF gets to play with. Thus again comparison is difficult to draw. The nature of the conflict differs a great deal as well...a modern superpower and all its allies battering a small, internationally insignificant nation into the stone age in the name of democracy, or a global war against a singularly unpleasant Fascist power busy conquering the world.

Here's a reason why Reagan-era military was so desperate to perfect precision: TV cameras. Its hard to convince people of the justice of a war when they get to see children on fire, and post-Korea American wars have been very heavily televised indeed. Voters don't like children to be on fire. It makes them vote for the other guy. Voters like their bad guys very clearly defined, Black Hats and jackboots and funny accents.

So, having established that Americans are quite haphazard about where they aim their not insubstantial firepower (actually that was already established) I think you might have missed the thrust of the REST of the post. You know, the most relevant parts? About meat-shields and the uselessness of starting a nuclear war with a nation that already USED the most powerful weapon known to man against another nation?

Well, one of the most important points you made was that it wasn't the suicide bombers who need worry about the use of nuclear weapons, but instead the chain of people who provide the materials to make a Do-it-yourself nuclear device or even a finished product. However, all a nation like Pakistan, Iran, etc would need to do this is have a fair amount of plausible deniability. The ability to claim ignorance of the loss of materials would also serve as a pretext for increasing their national security and standing armies.

I think you might find that the CIA et al would get VERY investigative were someone to remove..say Washington..from the map. It also seems likely that they would not be so very concerned about such irrelevancies as "plausible deniability." After all, Military Intelligence in the west doesn't appear to be concerned with such matters as "the truth" when engaging in its work. Merely standing nearby to someone who might have been involved would be enough. To follow through the process.. were Washington to be struck by a nuclear device, America would quite happily use the fact that Pakistan currently appears to be harbouring Osama Bin Laden in some comfort with the collusion of Pakistani officials as a pretext to strike back against "the enemy."

Actually its quite likely that America will start a shooting war with Pakistan long before any theoretical nukes get set off if it turns out to be the case that Osama IS in Hotel Islamabad. Assuming that the fact its called "ISLAMabad" isn't already enough.

More on subject, possibly the greatest defence against total thermonuclear obliteration of the entire human race would be the continued research into a) anti-radiation techniques b) anti-missile systems and c) EMP shielding techniques. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a few better thought out post-strike plans than "duck and cover." as well.

As for this aspect, I think that the Airborne Laser program shows some promise:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-dEXaSJWME[/youtube]

As technically amusing a high flying laser ray gun may be there are several factors involved in a nuclear missile attack that make it not particularly useful.
If the bomb is concealed in a vehicle or a shipping container an anti-missile system is of no use. If there is a concerted missile attack with several hundred missile plus a mass of decoys all traveling at speeds out of orbital velocities it is likely a laser can take out a few but a very small number of successful targeting is only necessary to create immense devastation.

A bomb in a crate isn't a "missile attack" by definition, and like all systems I doubt this is supposed to exist in a vacuum.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11591213

Of course when Americans do things like THIS ^ then it all becomes a bit academic what sort of systems they have in place...

We wouldnt be in World War Three "right now".

But, yes its qite likely that the existence of nukes did prevent a third world war from breaking out sometime between 1947 and 1989- that is- nukes kiept the fourty plus year Cold War from turning hot.

Maybe.

The Soviets and Americans would sponsor client states to fight the other power's client states ( ie Arabs and Isrealis), and sometimes each superpower would actually fight the other guys client states with it own forces ( Vietnam,Afganistan), but both powers shied from actually directly fighting the other superpower, in part because both feared that the fight would go nuclear.

The conditions that prevailed when the nuclear weapons were controlled by nations are totally different from those that work with small terrorist groups. For one thing a bomb set off from a shipping crate not indicating the source leaves no target for counterattack. When an IBM comes in the source can be traced. Not so with a terrorist weapon. And even a nation could disguise the source by indicating it was a terrorist group or some other innocent nation known to possess nuclear weapons. MAD doesn't work anymore.

Take a theoretical case where, Israel, which has approximately 200 nuclear bombs, wanted to start a nuclear bombing of Iran. The Israelis are very technically competent and might be able to lob an atomic bomb into some US city with the indication by some kind of fabricated evidence that the bomb originated in Iran. Doubtlessly the US would respond in kind with a much greater nuclear force. The USS Liberty incident is a clear indication that Israel has no qualms about killing Americans if it serves their purposes. The whole WMD scenario with Bush indicated that the USA can be gulled into military action by false evidence. And Israel would be quite happy to severely incapacitate Iran.
Whether any other nuclear power - say Pakistan, would consider this a war against Muslims is hard to say and what the response might be is an open question.

So, during the war with all the other nations around them and accidentally misidentifying an American ship as an enemy target and attacking it, how did the USA respond?

I dunno. There are a lot of usages for nukes in their "deterrent" capabilities. Bury a properly-contained but live nuke in your backyard and watch your property values soar, maybe even that of your neighbors. It could also increase the voting power you have with your local city counsel and tax assessor such that taxes won't rise with property value. Haven't gotten along with a neighbor in the past? You will now!

Problems with kids rolling your yard and vandalizing your house? Strategically placed nuclear "by-products" will ensure that never happens again.

And that's just keeping one around for "security" purposes. Actually USING them has significant benefits. For example, nukes are proven effective for eliminating facial blemishes FOREVER.

Since you are so hot on research you can easily discover that the Israeli forces not only recognized the Liberty as an American ship with clearly identified marking but the senior Israeli pilot at the attack recognized the ship as a US vessel and refused to attack. He was arrested when he returned to base.

See http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICL ... berty.html

So, the senior pilot was arrested for refusing to follow orders or for refusing to destroy an American ship?

Also, the link you gave did indicate that the ship was thought to be Egyptian and not American. At the altitude of a spy plane the Liberty would look near identical to the Egyptian vessel it was thought to be, although the photograph on the link you provided shows them from a couple hundred yards distance where, even then, they are similar in appearance. The military intelligence was wrong but insisted that they must be right, do you know how often that has happened throughout this era of modern warfare?