How much of a world with proliferating nuclear weapons will rely on every leader sleeping soundly in their beds knowing that nobody can launch a decisive nuclear attack without enough warning to reply--thus reinforcing deterrence?
Over the past 70 years the United States has spent thirty billion dollars on several generations of ballistic missile early warning systems, which is often shortened to BMEWS. This effort began in the 1950s, before the Russians, as the Soviet Union, strived to create such a threat.
America shares this data with Israel, according to Strategy Page. I assume the British and French get heads up, too.
What about the other smaller and poorer countries with or developing nukes? Will Pakistan, North Korea , or Iran have social media warning systems? Heck, how's India doing? Or China? And egad, how much has Russia's system deteriorated?
Will those states without effective BMEWS in practice have a destabilizing launch-on-warning "system" for their nukes to "use them or lose them"? And with more states having nukes, will these nuclear-armed launch-on-warning states under attack or, without actual data to inform them, worried they are about to be attacked have to guess who is attacking them?
What if Taiwan had nukes and the people in charge of the nukes saw this alert?
The bilingual alert sent to residents’ mobile phones cautioned in English that there was a missile flyover. The Defense Ministry later issued a statement apologizing to the public for the faulty English translation and clarifying that China had launched a rocket carrying a satellite -- not a missile.
What if those people assumed regular communications channels had failed? And believed a decapitation strike was inbound (either to destroy leadership, the Taiwanese nukes, or the communications system)?
This is a problem when each and every leader of a nuclear-armed country is fully mentally healthy. And knows that the people in charge of the nukes aren't having a bad year--or even just a moment--too.
Have a super sparkly day.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
