Clearly destroying a large portion of a country’s government, research scientists, and manufacturing base would halt or destroy all progress on nukes.
It might have completely halted all progress for a year or 2, but what does the US do then?
People think that if a nation is hit by nukes, it becomes impotent. I think it becomes very determined and unified and is likely to become very determined to acquire nukes so it I use them on the country that attacked them. Again, someone who has spent his career thinking about such things (John Mearsheimer) agrees with me: he spoke specifically of what he thinks would have happened if the US had attacked the USSR at the start of the Cold War when the US arsenal consisted of many bombs, but the USSR had no bombs yet (and then he went on to say that no country or coalition of countries can prevent Iran from acquiring nukes if it is determined to get them).
A nuclear attack would have definitely slowed down the Soviet nuclear program, and one can argue that since the US’s program has not been slowed down, then next attack by the US on the USSR would be even more devastating than the first attack, which in turn increases the advantage enjoyed by the US relative to the USSR so that the third attack is even more devastating, and so on, but that leaves out what I consider the controlling consideration: namely, Moscow would have learned from the first attack with the result that the Soviet nuclear program (which again I admit has been set back at least a few years and possibly 15 or 20 years) can no longer be significantly slowed down by nuclear attacks (because it is now more distributed, with many facilities under ground, with more effort spent to keep the locations secret, and a careful analysis done of what industrial resources the program is likely to need so that similar hardening measures can be applied to the supply chain for those resources) which is why I believe the US would have needed to follow up the first attack with an invasion or occupation (at least of Moscow and the ports) which famously has never been successfully done after the Russian empire acquired territory all the way to the Bering Strait, but then Hitler, Napoleon and Charles XII of Sweden didn’t have nukes to help them with their attempted invasions and occupations of Russia.
And yeah, I think once the Soviet program has been hardened in the way I describe above (i.e., after Moscow has learned from the first American attack) then unless the US can obtain location information from spying, then the American nuclear arsenal cannot be used effectively to stop or even significantly slow down the Soviet program (more than it is already slowed down by the need to keep the program distributed and secret from prying eyes) unless nuclear attacks can destroy most large buildings in the country, which my “mathematics” shows would have been quite impossible.
Apparently Tel Aviv was able this year to get a lot of location information about the Iranian nuclear program (and Iranian missile launchers and air defense facilities) through spying, so it is possible that Washington would have been able to do the same in the USSR. I doubt it, but I hereby mark this part of my arguments as less certain than the other parts.
It might have completely halted all progress for a year or 2, but what does the US do then?
People think that if a nation is hit by nukes, it becomes impotent. I think it becomes very determined and unified and is likely to become very determined to acquire nukes so it I use them on the country that attacked them. Again, someone who has spent his career thinking about such things (John Mearsheimer) agrees with me: he spoke specifically of what he thinks would have happened if the US had attacked the USSR at the start of the Cold War when the US arsenal consisted of many bombs, but the USSR had no bombs yet (and then he went on to say that no country or coalition of countries can prevent Iran from acquiring nukes if it is determined to get them).
A nuclear attack would have definitely slowed down the Soviet nuclear program, and one can argue that since the US’s program has not been slowed down, then next attack by the US on the USSR would be even more devastating than the first attack, which in turn increases the advantage enjoyed by the US relative to the USSR so that the third attack is even more devastating, and so on, but that leaves out what I consider the controlling consideration: namely, Moscow would have learned from the first attack with the result that the Soviet nuclear program (which again I admit has been set back at least a few years and possibly 15 or 20 years) can no longer be significantly slowed down by nuclear attacks (because it is now more distributed, with many facilities under ground, with more effort spent to keep the locations secret, and a careful analysis done of what industrial resources the program is likely to need so that similar hardening measures can be applied to the supply chain for those resources) which is why I believe the US would have needed to follow up the first attack with an invasion or occupation (at least of Moscow and the ports) which famously has never been successfully done after the Russian empire acquired territory all the way to the Bering Strait, but then Hitler, Napoleon and Charles XII of Sweden didn’t have nukes to help them with their attempted invasions and occupations of Russia.
And yeah, I think once the Soviet program has been hardened in the way I describe above (i.e., after Moscow has learned from the first American attack) then unless the US can obtain location information from spying, then the American nuclear arsenal cannot be used effectively to stop or even significantly slow down the Soviet program (more than it is already slowed down by the need to keep the program distributed and secret from prying eyes) unless nuclear attacks can destroy most large buildings in the country, which my “mathematics” shows would have been quite impossible.
Apparently Tel Aviv was able this year to get a lot of location information about the Iranian nuclear program (and Iranian missile launchers and air defense facilities) through spying, so it is possible that Washington would have been able to do the same in the USSR. I doubt it, but I hereby mark this part of my arguments as less certain than the other parts.