MIT Professor Emeritus Theodore Postol, one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear weapons, warned yesterday that no one can win a nuclear war, and that the first use of a nuclear device, even a very low-yield tactical nuclear weapon, will result in an escalation that no one can control. Retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, opened the interview with Postol, which was live-streamed on Sept. 3, with a reference to the Aug. 20 New York Times article reporting that the Biden Administration had approved last March a new nuclear employment guidance shifting the emphasis of U.S. nuclear “deterrence” towards China, but proposing a nuclear war-winning strategy with Russia and also North Korea.
Postol noted that the new doctrine incorporates the old idea of “damage limitation,” that is, that if we can destroy enough of their nuclear forces in a preemptive strike, we can survive their retaliation and “win” the war. He explained that “damage limitation” is a valid idea in conventional warfare, but “when you get to nuclear weapons, you can never do enough damage to your adversary that your adversary does not have the option of ... causing the death of your society with even a minor successful response. So you cannot win in any of the conventional ideas that people associate with traditional warfare.”
Postol also dispensed with the idea that a low-yield tactical nuclear device could be used in combat without escalation to all out nuclear war, because “using a nuclear weapon is not simply a physical decision.” He said that the yield of the weapon, even an extremely low yield of one kiloton, is indistinguishable from the fact that it’s nuclear “and that it’s one of many nuclear warheads that could be used and it’s the beginning of a chain of escalation, and that’s what people are mostly afraid of....” He said that “if you’re using it when you’re in a military conflict with everybody who has got their nuclear weapons in their holsters ready to use them the moment they feel threatened with your nuclear weapons, that’s a chain of escalation that’s unstoppable.”
