One day our headmaster at school said: “there will be a surprise fire alarm some day this week at 10am”. Most other people accepted that statement.
However, I then explained the problem: If the alarm did not happen on Mon-Thu and we got to Friday, it would not be a surprise when it happened on the only remaining timeslot: Friday. So it cannot happen on Friday.
So, then by similar logic, if we get to Wednesday and it has not happened, then it will not be a surprise on Thursday as that is the last day available. So, likewise, Thu, Wed, Tue and Mon can be eliminated.
However another approach says that on Friday there is only one possibility: Friday. But on Thursday there are two possibilities Thur/Fri. So Friday would be no surprise at all, but Thursday paradoxically will be a surprise to some. Thus it follows that the sooner the fire alarm occurred, the greater the surprise.
However, there is another effect: having been told on the preceding Friday that the alarm will be next week. More people will remember it on Monday than Tuesday, etc.
The consequences for Russian first strike
In order to achieve the maximum surprise for a first strike**, Russia needs to attack at the earliest possible opportunity. But, it also needs to attack when there is least going on to suggest it will happen.
The criteria for “as early as possible” means that a strike will occur as soon as the Russians are convinced that all the reasonable pathways forward are blocked except ones that end in nuclear war. That could happen, weeks, months or even years before most people imagine that war would occur.
The second criteria is that first strike will tend to occur when there is least apparent reason to do so. In other words, it will never occur as a “tit-for-tat” response or escalation. Because that is when a first strike appears most likely.
That is why we are closer to nuclear war than anyone in the west imagines. Russia will not wait until it is expected. They will not wait till their is no other option. Instead Russia will look at the most likely options and when the most likely options end in nuclear war, it is then they will go for a first strike. That is why Trump’s “bluffing” is so dangerous. The Russians won’t bluff. They will bide their time and then suddenly go for the jugular.
** Maximum surprise is beneficial as it allows the maximum number of weapons to be launched before any response. The hope would be to destroy the US capability to respond before they have time to fire off their own weapons, or to destroy the sites launching the first wave of response thus stopping a second wave, in the hope the Russian defences are capable of stopping most of the first wave.
By the same logic, there will be no call to clear cities until the first missiles are in the air. The Russians will have detailed plans to evacuate the maximum number of people in the flight time of any response. The first anyone will know about an attack, is that the long range hypersonic weapons are in the air and that Russian cities are being emptied.
Likewise, Russia will not wait for a US response. Instead it will keep firing as fast as it can till every target of value has been destroyed.
That is the logic of a first strike.
As for the “UK” weapons … they are controlled by the US. As sulike.ch the UK will be treated as part of the US. France might fare better, but only if it does not fire any nuclear weapon. Which for the French is the best strategy.
The Chinese also have the option to join the Russians. Arguably, their best strategy is to hold fire and let the Russians and US slog it out … unless the US looks like winning, in which case China will then join the Russian assault with its own first strike on the US, because a world without Russia to counter act the US, is not one the Chinese will tolerate. They too will see the US as eventually taking down their country.
The Russian Tortoise can never behave like the US hare.
Part of the Russian strategy of a first strike, is to make the US “intelligence” and “strategy” thinkers, believe that the Russians are incapable of the kind of action necessary for a first strike. So, a run up to such a war would involve bureaucratic decisions everyone having to meet the exact criteria of some lengthy decision process and laborious decision tree making fast response impossible.
Having been convinced that the Russian Tortoise can only win when the battle is so extremely long that the US Hare gets bored and goes to do other things whilst waiting for the Russian Tortoise to make its next well-signalled, laboriously executed and groaningly slow move, the US “intelligence” could never conceive a Russian first strike that wasn’t similarly well-signalled, laboriously executed and groaningly slow.
And, that is how the Russians prepare the US for their entirely secret, sudden and out-of-the-blue first strike.
