Re: neutral countries not getting targeted; I’ve heard it claimed that some nuclear targeting plans involved hitting even neutral countries, on the assumption that anyone who survived a nuclear war unscathed would become the next major power so better to ensure that everyone goes down. I have no idea of whether this had a credible source, though; do we know anything about whether this might be true?
Huh, I haven’t heard this. Or, rather this was definitely the case early in the cold war re China, a good account of which is in Daniel Ellsberg’s the Doomsday Machine. The US war plans considered China hostile even though it wasn’t closely aligned with the Soviet Union, and planned to nuke its major cities in the event of a US-Soviet war. I would expect nuclear war plans to sometimes include military allies of target countries, but usually neutral countries. Though I’d be very interested to see a source to the contrary!
Re: neutral countries not getting targeted; I’ve heard it claimed that some nuclear targeting plans involved hitting even neutral countries, on the assumption that anyone who survived a nuclear war unscathed would become the next major power so better to ensure that everyone goes down. I have no idea of whether this had a credible source, though; do we know anything about whether this might be true?
Huh, I haven’t heard this. Or, rather this was definitely the case early in the cold war re China, a good account of which is in Daniel Ellsberg’s the Doomsday Machine. The US war plans considered China hostile even though it wasn’t closely aligned with the Soviet Union, and planned to nuke its major cities in the event of a US-Soviet war. I would expect nuclear war plans to sometimes include military allies of target countries, but usually neutral countries. Though I’d be very interested to see a source to the contrary!