Reddit reviews On Thermonuclear War

Herman Kahn's "On Thermonuclear War" is a Wonderful (if dry) read. He was a badass, because when everyone else was talking OMG NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE, he was proposing timelines for nations restoring their prewar GNP. Can you imagine that shit? Sitting down and running the numbers for GNP? Anyway, the book's a fascinating read, and it's great to think of nuclear war as a "Now what?" kinda scenario, as oppposed to "everyone died".

Currently: The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

After this I will probably read

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

On War

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

On Grand Strategy

A fellow on the combined defense discord layed out his recommendations for books on nukes, so I'll list them here.

On Thermonuclear War By Herman Kahn

On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century by Jeffrey Larsen and Kerry Kartchner

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition by Lawrence Freedman

Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces by Pavel Podvig

Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age by Francis J. Gavin

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Khan

Prevention, Pre-emption and the Nuclear Option: From Bush to Obama by Aiden Warren

Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy by Thérèse Delpech

Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy by Charles L. Glaser

Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict by Vipin Narang

Building the H Bomb: A Personal History By Kenneth W Ford

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy by Matthew Kroenig

Paper Tigers: china's Nuclear Posture by Jeffery Lewis

Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling

Hermann Kahn's On Thermonuclear War & Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s are still go-to texts for nuclear strategy.

The Parallel History Project is a good resource for Early to Mid Cold War era Warsaw Pact warplanning.

The CIA's Historical Collections contain declassified documents regarding US assessments of the WP and Soviet stances, The CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU Papers in particular.

For some interesting context, the GWU's National Security archive has some documents showing US intelligence failures.

Unfortunately, you will run into the secrecy wall really quick in this area, since nuclear strategy is more a political strategy, than a strictly military one, and grand strategy like this hangs around a good, long while (for example, I am not aware of any declassified Single Integrated Operational Plans).

YS(also)K about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Von_Clausewitz - his book "On War" laid the foundations for the academic study of warfare. Many (many) years later, Herman Kahn wrote "On Thermonuclear War", an amazing book, as a follow-on.

For those interested in this most morbid of subjects, I can recommend:

• The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
  
• The Utility of Force
  
• We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
  
• and of course On Thermonuclear War.
  
  For an antidote, Joanna Bourke's superb Fear: A Cultural History may also be enjoyed.

Only the greatest story ever told.

How could there not be a mention of the true classic?

http://www.amazon.com/Thermonuclear-War-Herman-Kahn/dp/141280664X

North Korea is absolutely safe in this case, because like you said America values lives. And this has being the rationale behind China's minimal deterrence policy during the cold war. Because, during the game between the Soviet Union and the US, have nuclear weapon means it will be used as a easy game board for whatever political gains as the risks always outweigh the benefits. This is the game North Korea is playing now, basically North Korea is China during the cold war.

However, if the said country does pose a real threat, there is little qualms about taking the nuclear option, if there is little risk of return fire. See US plans to wipe the Soviet Union off the map in 1945, while the US has the nuclear advantage and the knowlege that the Soviets will soon have them too. US plans for first strike during the cuban missile crisis, while the US still the advantage of European and Turkish sites, while the Soviet haven't fully brought up the Cubans ones yet. And last the Herman Kahn's excellent book On Thermal War, where millions of lives lost is just statistic and can be calculated and sacrifice to pressed for an advantage.

Now the question is, what is China's position now. Does America see China on the same level as Soviet Union. Even worse, during the cold war, it quiet clears in the west (and in some circles inside the soviet union), long run the west will win. As long as the west contain soviet aggression and check soviet advances, then victory will be assured. This idea is vocalize most succinctly in the long telegram. In fact, the most dangerous time for nuclear exchange was in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union is clearly losing and the fear was the Soviets would go for it and hope a surprise a counterforce attack will prevail.

China, it seems that China is on the trajectory to to eclipse the US in the next two decade in terms of economical, comprehensive national power and even military power. And China is seeming to chart its own institution, national policy and governmental ideology that's different from the West and would not to controlled or guided by the west (this make it very different from Japan fear in the 1980s). So essentially, China no longer a north korea, but more like the United States, and the United State is a bit like the Soviet Union, with its leadership position erroting, the doubts emerge both about her exceptionalism as well as superiority of its ideology.

The United State currently have counterforce capabilities against China, while China only have limited countervalue capabilities. Additionally, the US is confident about it capability of tracking Chinese submarines. This means while a surprise first strike by the US will not only completely destroy China, it will also have a resonable chance of destroying most of China's nuclear arsenal as well. The US missile defense system could have catch the few missile missed by that first strike, leave the US mostly unscached (and in the views of a confident commander, completely unscached) in such an exchange and permanently stop a force that could not be stopped in the future. With other rational and moral leaders in power, this is very unlikely, even though RAND just recently published war plans with China. But with Trump in power, he might just wonna make it a reality.

With China archiving MAD, this places the possibility of a winnable nuclear war with China completely out of the windows, and would ensure the relative peace we all had since the end of WWII. And it is a policy that will not ending up saving Chinese lives, but American ones as well.