Potential international reactions to a US-Russia nuclear conflict?

Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by JadeX, Mar 26, 2016.

  1. Matt E

    Matt E Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 Contributor

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    @Raven484 : NATO is an alliance that was formed against the old USSR. It isn't particularly relevant today, although it does serve as a good mechanism to, specifically, keep Russia and China in check.

    The problem with North Korea and Iran is that those two countries are in the pockets of China and Russia respectively. NATO can't take action against these countries without offending China or Russia, because neither country is a member of NATO. Therefore, any action against those countries must be done through the UN. But the UN can't do much except through the security council, and both China and Russia have an absolute veto over any decision that that council makes. The end result is that the US and its allies don't have very many options in censuring those two countries. The same applies to Ukraine really. Since Ukraine borders Russia, they have a strong incentive to block any US action in the region. No one wants to risk World War 3 by pushing too firmly in this regard.

    @Lew : Valid point. Not all carriers are created equal. A nuclear carrier will probably be far more valuable than a non-nuclear one. The US is the only operator of nuclear carriers in the region though (if you're right). Having a carrier of some sort is essentially to projecting naval power given current technology though. Submarines are most valuable for countering aircraft carriers, although they can also be used for ballistic missiles (both strategic and tactical).
     
  2. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    I understand and agree a little with you Matt. But you pretty much said it, they are not willing to risk anything unless backed 100% by the US. If they showed any type of strength, Russia would not be doing what they are doing today, and China would put a leash on that Korean asshole. They don't want to risk ww3, but Russia doesn't seem to mind.
    If they stood up at all, Russia would back down.
     
  3. Samurai Jack

    Samurai Jack Active Member

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    There can be all the coalitions against the United States the world wants to come up with. At the end of the day neither Korea nor China have the ships necessary to transport troops across the Pacific more than once, and that's assuming we just let it happen. Pretending they do, and they all show up in California while Mexico walks across the border, there are still 1.5 million National Guardsmen in the United States, all trained and armed, all dispersed well enough that 120 nuclear strikes will have next to zero affect on their ability to defend an attack.

    And you're giving a time frame of 5 years? That's hundreds of tanks. Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of trucks. Hundreds of thousands of rifles. All the bullets. Infantry training is 14 weeks. The United States could be self sufficient in materials and production.

    The United States will fall, someday, as all nations do, but it will be from internal conflicts, not external ones. Nuclear war would drop all pretense. We would come together (mostly, enough), not fall apart.
     
  4. Samurai Jack

    Samurai Jack Active Member

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    Best hardware? US, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, India, Thailand, North Korea.

    Didn't you know North Korean submarines still use oars?

    I'm going to pretend like I'm not talking out of my ass, but I believe the United States 3rd and 7th fleets have the Pacific Ocean, and that's either 6 or 7 carriers. Technically, 1 carrier should be in operations, 1 in stand-down, and 1 in training, all in a constant rotation. One of those should be around China all the time, the other hanging around Hawaii, all the with ability to put 6 out to sea.

    Fun fact, China's aircraft carrier is a not-aircraft-carrier relic left from the Cold War, built by Ukraine. It was never finished, then sort of put together like Lego's with whatever hardware China could manage. Thailand's carrier is Spanish, who no longer operate carriers, and doesn't go out to sea much. India built their own *highfive*
     
  5. Matt E

    Matt E Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 Contributor

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    It's interesting that so few countries have fleets on the scale of the United States. I don't know how many troops transports these navies have, but I expect they probably couldn't launch a major amphibious assault against anyone. They just don't have enough ships, especially considering the fact that so many countries maintain submarines (whose primary function is to counter other nations' navies).

    To fight a war on the scale of World War II, you have to do a major military buildup for years, which takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. The US is probably the only country that can topple nearly any government around the world with only short notice, and that's only because of all those gosh darned aircraft carriers. China and Russia can probably do the same on a regional level, but I doubt China could attack Libya for example with short notice, because they probably only have assets in their region of the world. The same applies to Russia; they probably don't have much hardware in the Pacific.

    Did they build them themselves, or buy them from the Chinese? I wouldn't be too surprised if their hardware was incredibly shoddy, although that still is a lot of submarines. They might be able to accomplish something, if not just by ramming the hulls of their ships into enemy vessels. :p
     
  6. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    Don't underestimate diesel electric boats. They don't have the range, speed or indefinite submergence capability of a nuke boat, but they are MUCH quieter, even by our standards. And Kilos have anechoic rubber coatings that significantly reduce the range they can be detected by active pinging. Diesel electrics are very much like a snake, able to lie quietly in the way you have to come, and get you. Pete Deutermann wrote an interesting book on this subject, "Scorpion in the Sea", about a Libyan Kilo-class attacking a US carrier returning to Mayport FL. This was a subject the two of us often discussed on the Connie when he was COMDESRON 25 and our ASW commander. Recommended reading for all of you, from someone who knows the subject in depth
     
  7. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    That is anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
     
  8. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    Also see last month's Proceedings of US Naval Institute, International Navies edition, for a run down on current and projected capabilities.
     
  9. JadeX

    JadeX Senior Member

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    Here are some maps I found which may be pertinent to discussion, possibly offer ideas, etc.

    Global footprint of the US military:
    [​IMG]

    Chinese military bases in mainland China:
    [​IMG]

    Maximum range of Chinese CONVENTIONAL short-range ballistic missiles:
    [​IMG]

    Map of proposed near-future Chinese naval bases:
    [​IMG]

    Chinese territorial disputes in the South China Sea (keep in mind that China has been building island bases in the Spratly Islands, and Vietnam is China's main challenger in the region - in fact, Vietnam has publicly pledged that it would side with the US against China should hostilities occur):
    [​IMG]

    Chinese territorial disputes with India & Pakistan:
    [​IMG]

    Map of so-called "Neo-Soviet" military expansion/influence, as of 2008:
    [​IMG]

    Primary Russian naval bases/fleet HQs, unit strength (it's in French, but you get the gist):
    [​IMG]

    Russian forces built up along Ukraine (somewhat outdated, as it does not show Crimea as part of Russia and the buildup that has taken place there - keep in mind, Russia has nukes in Crimea now):
    [​IMG]

    Russian & US military and nuclear presence in Europe:
    [​IMG]
    An interesting point regarding the map above: the red-coloured "separatist" region of Moldova is Transnistria - basically, a diehard neo-Soviet pseudostate that refuses to believe the USSR is no more (they still use the hammer & sickle in their flags and emblems). In 1992, Russia backed Transnistria in a separatist conflict (like they are in Ukraine currently) - the conflict ended with a ceasefire, and Moldova has exercised no control over Transnistria since then.

    That brings us to this theoretical scenario: What if Russia secures/annexes Transnistria and uses it to assist in an invasion of Ukraine - inserting from Crimea in the south, Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, Belarus in the north, and Transnistria from the west?
    (if coordinated properly, such an invasion could swiftly take Ukraine and push into Moldova, thus eliminating the "buffer zone" between NATO and Russia and creating a "New Iron Curtain")
     
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  10. Matt E

    Matt E Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 Contributor

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    There has also been some discussion of Ukraine joining NATO. If that happened, it's plausible for the Russians to go ballistic (figuratively and literally). Ukraine would definitely be a good & plausible flashpoint for any conflict between the US and Russia, since that's one of the main sources of tension at the moment, and many have actually postulated that intervention in the Ukraine could result in war in very extreme scenarios. War could also occur if the Ukraine situation resulted in elevated tensions, and then an accident occurred (such as the one I think you mentioned in the OP; the Russians probably wouldn't push the button if we did an unannounced ICBM test today, but they might if tensions were very, very high for other reasons. Someone in the pentagon might even propose such a test as a way to un-nerve the Russians).
     
  11. JadeX

    JadeX Senior Member

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    Interesting point there - while several eastern-European former-Soviet satellite states have joined NATO, no former member of the Soviet Union proper has yet joined NATO. The first to attempt it was Georgia, and almost immediately, Russian tanks started spilling across their border.

    They weren't too happy about their former satellites joining NATO, but just the idea of actual [former] Soviet states doing so is a real sore spot for them.

    In 1991, after the Soviet Union collapsed, we promised the Russians that NATO would not march right up to their border. The intent was for the former satellite states to remain neutral and serve as a buffer zone - yet, most of those satellite states did decide to join NATO, and thus NATO has broken its promise and has advanced right up to the Russian border.

    To the Russians, they see NATO's current strategy and expansion as a classic "divide-and-conquer" maneuver. From the Russian POV, they think NATO is trying to turn former allies against Russia in attempt to isolate Russia and suppress its influence. As far as Europe is concerned, Ukraine and Belarus are all that Russia has left, and now they're losing their grip on Ukraine as well, so they're really grasping at straws to maintain their foothold in Europe.

    Since NATO has eliminated nearly all of the post-Soviet "buffer zone", Ukraine is now the only country that separates NATO from Russia, so now the Russians are basically saying "It's our turn now - now we'll take some territory, and march right up to your border, how do you like that!"

    Basically, whichever side Ukraine decides to side with, it will be bad. Ideally, Ukraine should stay neutral, just so that we'd have some kind of buffer zone, but it seems there is no such "middle ground" in Ukraine - everyone either wants EU/NATO or they want Russia, hardly anyone wants neutrality - and that's where things can get tricky. Either way, the end result is Iron Curtain 2.0 - the only variable is how happy Russia will be with it.
     
  12. X Equestris

    X Equestris Contributor Contributor

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    The Baltic states were formally part of the Soviet Union proper.
     
  13. JadeX

    JadeX Senior Member

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    You're right, my bad. I was going by this map, but now I see that it's from 1936 lol.
     

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