Originally Posted by
blackjack21
China just went through a bunch of power outages affecting businesses and the citizenry. While it hasn't had any obvious revolutionary effects, the government of China acts increasingly hostile toward Taiwan--probably the external enemy is held out to maintain internal cohesion. This suggests a serious lack of internal cohesion.
Lots of anti-imperial revolutions have also taken place. India won its independence from the United Kingdom. While India's independence was at least rhetorically embracing non-violence, Ireland won its independence and used violent means and terrorism, particularly when the United Kingdom had bigger fish to fry during WWI and WWII.
Algeria won independence from France when France had nuclear weapons. Watch the movie "The Battle of Algiers." It's old school, but it gives you a good idea of what that type of conflict looks like.
I think Metal God's subordination of this to a "nuclear age", as though that precluded resistance, is kind of a big flaw in establishment thinking. I've even heard American politicians saying this, like Joe Biden and Eric Swalwell. The idea that nuclear weapons have any utility in a revolutionary context is bizarre to me.
Biden mentioned F-15s and nuclear weapons in reference to 1/6. What would you do in the case of 1/6? Drop nuclear weapons on the Capitol to nuke the protesters? You'd kill every Congressman, Senator, and the sitting Vice President, probably the sitting president, and the entire Supreme Court if it were in session. Does that sound like a militarily sound response?
I get that Metal God is a bit of a parrot of Democrat party rhetoric, but I find it baffling that people actually think nuclear weapons have a great deal of utility outside of their context in WWII--that is, the enemy shoots down 25% of your bombers on every bombing run, and you're lucky if you hit 20% of your targets, but you are desperate to destroy their war-making capability. So you drop one massive bomb on an area you want to destroy, and that solves your problem--however, it creates many more: 1) a nuclear arms race; 2) an ethical dilemma that you kill far more non-combatants than morally necessary; 3) you leave nuclear fallout that long outlasts your military objective; 4) you introduce the possibility of nuclear annihilation--to name a few.
What pray tell would make a nuclear weapon useful during civil unrest? Even Saddam Hussein was reported to have used VX nerve agent, which killed people and livestock, but left infrastructure in place.
Police forces could use live ammunition against protesters, but rarely do. Why? It increases the outrage. So they use non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets, bean bags, tear gas, water cannons, etc., which also tends to piss people off, but not enough to generate the outrage that leads to overthrow of the government.
I think you are correct that working from within would be the approach, but that's also scary. Think of Pakistan. It's government, including the ISI, is full of Taliban sympathizers. What if the Taliban types take over the government and gain control of nuclear weapons? That's where I think you could see a situation where nuclear weapons might get used on civilian "infidel" populations in big cities. Otherwise, I just don't see them has having any real utility. They're just a nihilists wet dream at this point.