So, I do read things other than Asimov, and one of novels I chewed through recently was Nelson Demille's Wild Fire. The crux of the novel is this: in the vein of MAD, there exists a protocol called Wild Fire, and it goes like this:

If there is a terrorist attack involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons on two or more American cities, America will automatically respond with a nuclear strike on virtually every major city and vital target in the Muslim world. In the novel, it describes two lists of targets, A and B. List A is nuked if it is only a chemical or biological attack. Lists A and B are glassed if it is a nuclear attack, or if the attack is severe enough to warrant it. As I said, this happens quite automatically, so that if the President is killed, or is a pussy, he can't cancel it.

There are 120 or so possible targets across both the lists, ranging from the west coast of Africa to Indonesia. Fatalities suggested in the novel are on the order of 100-200 million instantly, with 200 million more within six months. By far the worst loss of life would be in Egypt, where the destruction of the Aswan Dam will cause approximately 60 million deaths. The novel suggests that Wild Fire is the end of the Muslim world.

Wild Fire is known to the Muslim governments, and it is hoped that this will keep them in line. OK, enough background.

The question here, is this: should a policy like Wild Fire exist in the real world? Would the threat of such wholesale destruction be an effective deterrent against further terrorist attacks? Where would it be most effective: if just the Muslim governments knew the score, or if the whole population knew what would happen?

I lean in favor of Wild Fire, or something like it. As horrendous as it is, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people in a day is something we can do and they can't. I mean, that must be tremendous pressure. And sure, it ain't fair to hold a billion people responsible for a the actions of few camel fuckers, but it's not fair to expect us to let a million or two American deaths go by without a response.

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cut thread here, it's over folks

Wouldn't those few "camel fuckers" just chalk em all up as martyrs and go on with the suicide bombings?

Government would not be able to keep this secret, what stops a korean agent from doing the nuke, his body and any record of who did it destroyed in the suicide blast, and then we nuke the wrong people?

This might work if there was one enemy with WMD's, or only one enemy period; but we can't guarentee accurate id, a logical self-preservation instinct, or the ability for the masses to affect real change over the people who would be controlling the weapons.

A policy like that ignores the most fundamental rule of nuclear deterrence: uncertainty. If the bad guys know what your criteria are, they will simply be sure to act just below the threshold. Further, by promising an indescriminant response, such a policy is both illegal and immoral according to every single standard of warfare. . .and thus impossible to create as policy. And OBTW, targeting populations went out in the early days of the Cold War. Finally, the fact that it is automatic is incredibly stupid from both technical and legal perspectives.

The fact is, we already have a policy of holding countries responsible for attacks that originate within their borders, and for the actions of groups they support. Up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if warranted. Read histories of DESERT STORM, and you'll find the not-so-subtle diplomatic warning to Saddam about the consequences of using chemical weapons.

While this Wild Fire thingamajig might seem satisfying on a visceral, emotional level, it's pretty damned stupid otherwise.

Are you honestly suggesting the U.S. threaten mass genocide on an unprecedented scale as the response to a terrorist attack? Of those 300 million people that you want to exterminate, how many do you think are innocent? Hell, how many of them haven't even reached a double-digit age? How many of them are "guilty" in your mind? Is it worth killing... 200 million innocents to get 100 million who were complicit? How about 295 million innocents to kill 5 million active supporters? Who would even believe the U.S., or any country for that matter, is capable of such a callous and destructive policy?

Do you think that it's only Muslims that don't like the U.S.; what incentive might there be for another group to attack the U.S. to trigger the response? Do we kill Muslims in the U.S.? Don't you think trying to exterminate their culture might create far more extremists than we could ever kill even in a nuclear strike?

No it isn't fair to let 1 million American deaths go unpunished... so you find the people responsible and take care of them. You don't arbitrarily kill 300 times the amount in vengeance, because you decide that entire society is full of terrorists.

There are so many reasons that this is a bad idea, mostly moral, that I'm just going to go ahead and echo Noxhil in saying that it wouldn't even work. Doing something like this would probably convince even our allies that the U.S. has gone over the edge and needs to be taken down. They'd probably be right too.

Not to mention diasporic Muslims. Would we nuke our own citizens? Muslims in China? Would we nuke Jerusalem? In this scenario, wherever we aren't going to nuke, that's where the terrorists are going to go.

Plus, if you think about it, it'd really have to be public knowledge to deter non-state-sponsored terrorism. And public knowledge that such a thing exists would probably cause every country in the world to turn on us, and for that matter, probably cause riots too.

Sounds to me like a rather bad book.

Uwe Boll would probably like the movie rights. Except everyone killed would turn into zombies. Muslim zombies. Or something.