Jeffrey Lewis often has smart things to say, but sometimes his articles make no sense, at least from a technical, on their face, perspective. If nukes really do fly, whether they fly over Russia or not is totally irrelevant. At a minimum, given only a heading, Russia would see that only the far east could be conceivably attacked, which is not a threat to the Russian nation, or its nuclear deterrent, and would not be the action of a power trying to attack Russia. In reality, satellites and radars would also be able to measure velocity, and this, even only with satellite and without radar, would make it clear that the target was NK. Russia might lodge a protest about its airspace being violated, but this would be comically minor compared to the rest of the diplomatic issues to be resolved after an actual nuclear attack.
Incidentally, there’s actually a map projection where all “great circle” routes (shortest paths on a sphere, ie missile paths) are straight lines. It’s called the gnomonic projection, and it could have been used to illustrate the Russian-overflight issue more clearly.<p>Although it’s limited to only showing half of a sphere at a time, so it doesn’t solve the problem of illustrating a southern around-the-world route. An azimuthal equidistant projection centered at the launch site or target would work for that.
The big unmentioned thing here is that what would Russia do to respond to an ICBM flying over them <i>from the South</i>? If they have an engage-on-detection doctrine, is that only pointed north towards the US or would it still apply from something originating from NK?<p>In essence, does Russia become a similar defensive blanket for the US?
Can someone explain in simple language why we still think nuclear deterrence is a good idea? Is any nation on Earth myopic enough to think that responding to a nuclear attack with a nuclear escalation is a viable strategy?<p>Making North Korea easier to hit by US nukes won't make them step down. North Korea is scared senseless and backed into a corner (they've been at war with the US for the better part of a century and preparing for an invasion by an enemy that is several times their size), trying to scare them further won't prevent them from doing anything stupid.<p>Maybe I'm missing something but this sounds like it's only concerned with maintaining American military dominance rather than guaranteeing peaceful coexistence or at least the continued existence of the human race. Nuclear weapons are neither necessary nor sufficient to win a war against North Korea. If the conflict were to ever go nuclear, nuking North Korea won't make the country back down -- it will only alienate China, South Korea (or what's left of it) and Japan. Not to mention the entire International Community.
Since we have Trump on board, the post might be even more interesting with a slide 10: let South Korea/Japan go nuclear, in face of the political issues.