Plot
The United States turns its military into a much smaller force by switching its priorities to domestic matters, starting with using the U.S. military budget to fill the gap in Social Security's trust fund left there by past Congresses and presidents who spent the money on other things, and continuing onward in the same theme.
As the U.S. is downsizing its military, China becomes a world superpower, building new supercarriers and becoming a dominant naval power, in addition to a growing economic power. Eventually, China goes down the route of conquest.
China begins to conquer Eurasia to such an extent that it reaches the borders of the European Union in the west. With most of Asia under its domination, including Japan, everyone assumes that China is coming for Europe next, but China uses a strategy of misdirection to make the Europeans think it will invade Western Europe, and it actually pins the European naval force in the Mediterranean and blockades it, which neutralizes it as a threat without the cost of invasion.
China instead throws its resources into attacking the Caribbean. The Monroe Doctrine makes the new President Bill Baker, who came to office on a pro-war platform, have to make a critical decision: to try to halt them with conventional forces or to use nuclear weapons.
The U.S. must make a decision as the Chinese invasion forces in Central America gather steam: to build traditional naval super-carriers to meet the new Chinese ones or to build highly-experimental arsenal ships that can fire thousands of missiles at once, shower its target with overwhelming force, and have a crew of only around 100 because of the extent of automation. They might be more effective but are also untested, and the U.S. does not have the resources for both. Baker decides to back the arsenal ships.
As the likelihood of invasion via the Gulf of Mexico comes, many Americans leave the exposed states. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are not sure if that is another diversion attempt and the Chinese might come from the East or the West Coasts. The U.S. President orders the military to plan for those eventualities as well. A full war economy along with total mobilization is called up, including the U.S. President's daughter.
Baker refuses to order a nuclear strike and orders the military to meet the threat with only conventional arms. He is convinced that any nuclear strike will lead to a series of escalating exchanges and will leave both countries so destroyed that neither side can achieve any victory.
Baker frequently meets in the situation room, or the Map Room of the White House, which is returned to its original purpose, to oversee plans. There is tension between the Chinese military and the civilian leaderships, and Baker tries to make a behind-the-scenes deal with the civilian leaders. Baker tells the National Security Council, "We will die as a united nation of 50 states or we will win; there will be no territorial concessions."
In the meantime, the U.S. braces for invasion.
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological result. A major nuclear exchange would likely have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to secondary effects, such as "nuclear winter", nuclear famine, and societal collapse. A global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to various scenarios including the extinction of the human species.
In nuclear strategy, a first strike or preemptive strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing side is left unable to continue war. The preferred methodology is to attack the opponent's strategic nuclear weapon facilities, command and control sites, and storage depots first. The strategy is called counterforce.
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
In nuclear ethics and deterrence theory, No first use (NFU) refers to a type of pledge or policy wherein a nuclear power formally refrains from the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in warfare, except for as a second strike in retaliation to an attack by an enemy power using WMD. Such a pledge would allow for a unique state of affairs in which a given nuclear power can be engaged in a conflict of conventional weaponry while it formally forswears any of the strategic advantages of nuclear weapons, provided the enemy power does not possess or utilize any such weapons of their own. The concept is primarily invoked in reference to nuclear mutually assured destruction but has also been applied to chemical and biological warfare, as is the case of the official WMD policy of India.
World War III or the Third World War, often abbreviated as WWIII or WW3, are names given to a hypothetical worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since at least as early as 1941. Some apply it loosely to limited or more minor conflicts such as the Cold War or the war on terror. In contrast, others assume that such a conflict would surpass prior world wars in both scope and destructive impact.
Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and is related to but distinct from the concept of mutual assured destruction, according to which a full-scale nuclear attack on a power with second-strike capability would devastate both parties. The central problem of deterrence revolves around how to credibly threaten military action or nuclear punishment on the adversary despite its costs to the deterrer.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
Power projection, in international relations, is the capacity of a state to deploy and sustain forces outside its territory. The ability of a state to project its power into an area may serve as an effective diplomatic lever, influencing the decision-making process and acting as a potential deterrent on other states' behavior.
Deterrence is a 1999 political thriller drama film written and directed by Rod Lurie, depicting fictional events about nuclear brinkmanship. It marks the feature directorial debut of Lurie, who was previously a film critic for the New York Daily News, Premiere Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Movieline, among others. Kevin Pollak, Timothy Hutton, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Sean Astin star. The film is an international co-production between France and the United States. It premiered at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in the United States on March 10, 2000, by Paramount Classics.
Francis Patrick Matthews was an American who served as the 8th Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus from 1939 to 1945, the 50th United States Secretary of the Navy from 1949 to 1951, and United States Ambassador to Ireland from 1951 to 1952.
Flexible response was a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to address the Kennedy administration's skepticism of Dwight Eisenhower's New Look and its policy of massive retaliation. Flexible response calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical, and conventional levels, giving the United States the capability to respond to aggression across the spectrum of war, not limited only to nuclear arms.
The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems.
The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, formerly the Second Artillery Corps, is the strategic and tactical missile force of the People's Republic of China. The PLARF is the 4th branch of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and controls China's arsenal of land-based ballistic missiles—both nuclear and conventional. The armed service branch was established on 1 July 1966 and made its first public appearance on 1 October 1984. The headquarters for operations is located at Qinghe, Beijing. The PLARF is under the direct command of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission (CMC).
The New Look was the name given to the national security policy of the United States during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It reflected Eisenhower's concern for balancing the Cold War military commitments of the United States with the nation's financial resources. The policy emphasised reliance on strategic nuclear weapons as well as a reorganisation of conventional forces in an effort to deter potential threats, both conventional and nuclear, from the Eastern Bloc of nations headed by the Soviet Union.
The Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations is a U.S. Department of Defense document publicly discovered in 2005 on the circumstances under which commanders of U.S. forces could request the use of nuclear weapons. The document was a draft being revised to be consistent with the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. The label "Joint" refers to the fact that it was endorsed by the five service branches of the American military as well as the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Arc Light is the debut novel by Eric L. Harry and is a techno-thriller about a limited nuclear war published in September 1994 and written in 1991 and 1992.
The Third World War: The Untold Story (1982) is a war novel by Sir John Hackett portraying a fictional Third World War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact forces, which breaks out in 1985. It is written in the style of a non-fiction post-event historical account. It was published in 1982 by Macmillan in New York and Sidgwick & Jackson in London. The book is an update to Hackett's 1978 novel, The Third World War: August 1985.
In military doctrine, countervalue is the targeting of an opponent's assets that are of value but not actually a military threat, such as cities and civilian populations. Counterforce is the targeting of an opponent's military forces and facilities. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., records the first use of the word in 1660 and the first use in the modern sense in 1965 in which it is described as a "euphemism for attacking cities".
The "nuclear umbrella" is a guarantee by a nuclear weapons state to defend a non-nuclear allied state. The context is usually the security alliances of the United States with Japan, South Korea, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Those alliances were formed because of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. For some countries, it was an alternative to acquiring nuclear weapons themselves; other alternatives include regional nuclear-weapon-free zones or nuclear sharing.
