Document this claim, if you can. Show me evidence of admirals and/or generals who would have launched nuclear weapons on their own without "deterrence" from the USSR.
Your claim is absurd.
I believe you've mistaken FR for a hippie commune.
More significantly, however, I am trying to get you to think sensibly and logically about nuclear weapons. One of the ways to think about what it would take to deter someone else is to imagine what it would take to deter us, which means asking such questions and what price would be too high for us to consider some expedition against some other country in the world. The answer is that it does not take very many.
That's all well and good, but beside the point. The ones who need the deterrence are those who are likely aggressors and likely to start a war.
Can you point out ANY war at ANY time which was started by unprovoked action from the USA? EVER?
You need to figure out whose side you're on, bub.
America's still the Good Guys.
Well said Chris! AMEN!
Of course the way to think about how to deter someone else starts with imagining what it might take to deter yourself, but you are such an intellectually ignorant slob that it is not worth trying to explain this to you.
You are not this ignorant of our history, surely.