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The Pros And Cons Of Strategic Bombing

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Strategic bombing in warfare started during the First World War (Muller). It came from modest beginnings, but primitive air units gave way to modern bombing fleets with the German Zeppelin airships. In 1914, the ability of a military to simply fly over their enemy armies and attack their bases became a reality, and the morality of using military force against civilians became insignificant against the potent results of airship bombing. But with the inaccuracy of the early planes, the main target for this kind of warfare became cities and civilians, specifically their “moral” or their "will to resist" (which, overall, was not entirely successful, and sometimes achieved the exact opposite (Parrington)) by striking behind the military lines, …show more content…

The United States 's utilizes a policy of assured destruction as a means of deterrence. The American defense maintains a true and credible ability to requite any nuclear attack in greater and more devastating force. This policy is meant to assure the aggressive entity that a nuclear attack on the United States, whether it be its military, industry, or its society, would equivalent to “suicide”. The United States wants to maintain an upper hand against other nations with nuclear potential by maintaining that no such nation would have a superior “first-strike capability”. First-strike capability is not just defined as a nation’s ability to make a deadly strike first, but it also refers to that nation’s ability to eliminate their enemy’s second-strike forces. Allowing any such aggressive nation the ability to destroy the States’ second-strike forces would negate and nullify its deterrence ability completely. A nation’s assured destruction is found in its first- and second-strike capabilities, and a nation which keeps an upper-hand on all the other nations in the nuclear field is then protected from their assured destruction, due to the retaliation from this nation after an initial attack being akin to its “suicide”. This is assured destruction and mutual deterrence. "MAD, of course, is an evolutionary defense strategy based on the concept that neither the United States nor its enemies will ever start a nuclear war because the other side will retaliate massively and unacceptably (Parrington)." The keeping of nuclear arms by the super-power nations of the world is becoming more and more popular, and the widening use of them as countries become more and more capable also creates the idea that more warheads are needed or necessary in other countries trying to maintain the advantage in national defense.

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