Analysis of Valkyria Chronicles III. This is a work in progress.
Hammer of the Valkyrur: Exposing The Flawed Concept of Nuclear Coercion
Leila: I don't think relying on something like that would cause the world to surrender.
Alfons: That's right, we stopped a poor little lamb from walking further astray.
Alfons: That's right, we stopped a poor little lamb from walking further astray.
Chapter 20, "Nameless Again"
Remarkably for a game series that puts a fantastical and Schizo Tech spin on World War II technology, and which at least in the first game was content to use Valkyria as Person of Mass Destruction stand-ins or metaphors for nuclear weapons, the endgame of Valkyria Chronicles III introduces a refurbished Lost Superweapon called the Hammer of the Valkyrur which directly copies the form and function of a nuclear ICBM launch facility. With Prince Maximilian dead and Cardinal Borgia about to be exposed for his plot, Dahau resorts to killing Borgia and taking the Hammer for himself. Dahau believes he can use this weapon to create an independent Darcsen homeland through force: after he destroys Randgriz as a demonstration of its power, he intends to offer the technology to the Emperor in exchange for him granting statehood to the Darcsen people, and if necessary to force the Emperor to do it by threatening the imperial capital of Schwartzgrad with the same fate. Only the brave intervention of the Nameless led by Kurt Irving saves Randgriz and the Gallian-Imperial peace process from this weapon of mass destruction.
It's an appropriately high-stakes climax for perhaps the darkest Valkyria Chronicles game. But if we run a "what if?" scenario based on what would have happened if Dahau had successfully fended off the Nameless, we can determine that Dahau's plan had very little chance of working from either a military or political perspective, and in the process learn something about why nuclear weapons aren't very useful as instruments of coercion in real life.
Why Nuclear Deterrence Works
Before discussing the fictional situation in Valkyria Chronicles 3, it will be useful to take some lessons from the history and theory of nuclear weapons in real life.
Any discussion of nuclear warfare needs to first address a curious fact. Since 1945, numerous countries have spent hundreds of billions of dollars accumulating stockpiles of nuclear bombs and missiles. Yet despite their earth-shattering power, these devices are most beneficial and useful to their owners when they're sitting in their launch tubes seemingly not doing anything. Well, in reality they are doing something: deterring potential enemies like nothing else can.
When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were struck with atom bombs, the world saw the dreadful power of nuclear weapons. In the subsequent Cold War environment of mutually assured destruction—during which politicians and citizens alike witnessed repeated nuclear test detonations and learned about the curse of radioactive fallout—there developed a strong disapproval of and motivation to discourage offensive nuclear first use. People think about nuclear weapons in a fundamentally different way compared to conventional weapons such as machine guns and howitzers: they are considered so destructive and destabilizing that their use is not morally justified or rational except when the survival of the country itself is actively being threatened.
In general, the Godzilla Threshold for defensive use of nukes is only crossed if your enemy is:
Stating one's readiness to respond to the above threats with nuclear weapons is an attempt at nuclear deterrence. Deterrence means dissuading the other side from doing something by making them afraid of what you would do to them in retaliation. In order for a nuclear deterrent to be effective, the first requirement is technical capability. You need weapons that can be deployed with little or no delay; with enough range and accuracy to hit the enemy's vital cities or other targets; by a delivery system that allows enough weapons to reach the target without being intercepted; and in sufficient numbers and yield to cause what the enemy would consider unacceptable damage and loss. But even if you have that, your enemy also needs to believe that you aren't bluffing about your willingness to use it. They need to think that if they cross the red line you have described in your previous warnings, you will actually press the button instead of backing down.
Fortunately, in the event that another country is threatening the self-rule or physical survival of your state, it should be obvious to that potential aggressor that if they attack you'll be motivated and even forced to make a nuclear counterattack. If in any scenario you pick up the red telephone to order a nuclear launch, it's because you asked yourself "can using my nukes make this situation any worse?" and decided the answer was basically "no." It should go without saying that if enemy ICBMs are about to hit your capital and every major city in your country, then there's little reason not to pull Taking You with Me on the enemy. Surrender isn’t even an option at this point of no return. An unstoppable purely conventional invasion or a non-nuclear surgical strike against your chain of nuclear command are different, in the sense that you technically get a chance to persuade them to skip the whole "killing people" part by offering to just give up and let them take over your country unopposed. But if you aren't willing to give up your country's nuclear arsenal and right to govern itself without a fight, then your only chance to protect those things (or at least punish the enemy for trying to take them away) is to start unleashing the nukes. At that point your precious nuclear weapons are going to fall into enemy hands and become useless to you if you don't take your last chance to use them. Your enemy will be acutely aware of you being under this "use-it-or-lose-it" pressure, and that's why if they're smart they won't even attack you in the first place.
Now okay, we might imagine a scenario in which you or your predecessor built up a nuclear arsenal for deterrence despite secretly intending to never use it no matter what, and just hoped that enemies would never see through the bluff, but that's pretty unlikely to be the case and your enemy shouldn't count on it. A nuclear weapons program is such a long and expensive undertaking that it requires sustained work and sacrifice with powerful motivation behind it, that motivation often being an ideology which praises independent statehood under a certain form of government as something worth fighting and dying to preserve. note At the extreme, it applies "live free or die" to the entire country, positing that it would be better for all its people to be wiped off the face of the Earth than to submit to foreign tyranny. That end may not be what the leaders of government want to happen, but if there were any persuasive reason to use nuclear weapons ever, it would be to protect the country's right to exist. You probably got yourself those nukes because there's something you're willing to sacrifice for, and if your enemy would be willing to defend his country with nukes, he'd best believe that you would too.
Furthermore there are bound to be a lot of third parties who won't really blame you for counterattacking with nukes in that circumstance: whatever allies you have will more or less support your decision (since an attack on you by a strong enemy is also a threat to them), and even friendly countries who weren't part of a mutual defense pact with you beforehand might become eager to aid you indirectly if your country is still alive after the opening salvo. Even if there are neutral countries out there who will openly wish that you had just given up your freedom in order to save the rest of the world from nuclear risk, the worst they might do is refuse to help you; if they weren't direct miliitary allies of your attacker before the conflict started, then they aren't going to stick their neck out for the sake of an aggressor country who got nuked as a result of attacking first. In any case, you can't afford to think about anything except your national survival. Any foreigners criticizing you can be safely ignored as long as they don't directly join the enemy.
The great thing is that you don't necessarily even need a nuclear arsenal capable of defeating or destroying your enemy to deter him, although that would certainly help; you just need to make the probable cost of victory so high for him that he can't afford to start a war against you. It isn't rational for your enemy to initiate an aggressive war unless they think they can get a favorable cost/benefit tradeoff. On one hand, he may be eager to invade you if he's confident of a Curb-Stomp Battle. In his dream scenario you'll either have no weapons of mass destruction, or they'll be sufficiently vulnerable and few in number for him to take out with a pre-emptive strike. After that he may expect to fight the war entirely on your turf so that none of his population or infrastructure gets destroyed; knock out your air defenses and achieve air superiority on day one; wage a blitzkreig campaign in which he advances rapidly while losing just one man for every sixty of yours; and have your side's capitulation within a couple of weeks so his troops can be Home by Christmas.
In contrast, he'll probably think twice about invading if he knows that you have enough nukes and delivery capability to blow up several of his major cities; vaporize whole divisions of his ground forces; use nuclear demolition charges to blow up tunnels, bridges, highways, and ports in your country to deny them to the invader; and altogether put up so much of a fight that he's forced to use up many or even most of his weapons of mass destruction to destroy your ability to resist. Even if he enlarges his country's territory by 100% and eliminates you as an economic and political rival, that won't make it worthwhile after he's lost millions of civilian lives; sent his economy back to the stone age; made his country an international pariah; and gotten his military so mauled it will take at least ten years to rebuild it into an effective defense, let alone a force capable of offensive warfare. If you were capable of inflicting that kind of damage in retaliation, then your enemy would have to be completely insane to attack you instead of just leaving you alone.
Any discussion of nuclear warfare needs to first address a curious fact. Since 1945, numerous countries have spent hundreds of billions of dollars accumulating stockpiles of nuclear bombs and missiles. Yet despite their earth-shattering power, these devices are most beneficial and useful to their owners when they're sitting in their launch tubes seemingly not doing anything. Well, in reality they are doing something: deterring potential enemies like nothing else can.
When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were struck with atom bombs, the world saw the dreadful power of nuclear weapons. In the subsequent Cold War environment of mutually assured destruction—during which politicians and citizens alike witnessed repeated nuclear test detonations and learned about the curse of radioactive fallout—there developed a strong disapproval of and motivation to discourage offensive nuclear first use. People think about nuclear weapons in a fundamentally different way compared to conventional weapons such as machine guns and howitzers: they are considered so destructive and destabilizing that their use is not morally justified or rational except when the survival of the country itself is actively being threatened.
In general, the Godzilla Threshold for defensive use of nukes is only crossed if your enemy is:
- Attacking you with nuclear weapons;
- On the verge of conquering or destroying your state with overwhelmingly superior conventional forces;
- Trying to decapitate your government or disable your ability to give commands to your nuclear forces, especially if it seems intended to facilitate an invasion or nuclear attack.
Stating one's readiness to respond to the above threats with nuclear weapons is an attempt at nuclear deterrence. Deterrence means dissuading the other side from doing something by making them afraid of what you would do to them in retaliation. In order for a nuclear deterrent to be effective, the first requirement is technical capability. You need weapons that can be deployed with little or no delay; with enough range and accuracy to hit the enemy's vital cities or other targets; by a delivery system that allows enough weapons to reach the target without being intercepted; and in sufficient numbers and yield to cause what the enemy would consider unacceptable damage and loss. But even if you have that, your enemy also needs to believe that you aren't bluffing about your willingness to use it. They need to think that if they cross the red line you have described in your previous warnings, you will actually press the button instead of backing down.
Fortunately, in the event that another country is threatening the self-rule or physical survival of your state, it should be obvious to that potential aggressor that if they attack you'll be motivated and even forced to make a nuclear counterattack. If in any scenario you pick up the red telephone to order a nuclear launch, it's because you asked yourself "can using my nukes make this situation any worse?" and decided the answer was basically "no." It should go without saying that if enemy ICBMs are about to hit your capital and every major city in your country, then there's little reason not to pull Taking You with Me on the enemy. Surrender isn’t even an option at this point of no return. An unstoppable purely conventional invasion or a non-nuclear surgical strike against your chain of nuclear command are different, in the sense that you technically get a chance to persuade them to skip the whole "killing people" part by offering to just give up and let them take over your country unopposed. But if you aren't willing to give up your country's nuclear arsenal and right to govern itself without a fight, then your only chance to protect those things (or at least punish the enemy for trying to take them away) is to start unleashing the nukes. At that point your precious nuclear weapons are going to fall into enemy hands and become useless to you if you don't take your last chance to use them. Your enemy will be acutely aware of you being under this "use-it-or-lose-it" pressure, and that's why if they're smart they won't even attack you in the first place.
Now okay, we might imagine a scenario in which you or your predecessor built up a nuclear arsenal for deterrence despite secretly intending to never use it no matter what, and just hoped that enemies would never see through the bluff, but that's pretty unlikely to be the case and your enemy shouldn't count on it. A nuclear weapons program is such a long and expensive undertaking that it requires sustained work and sacrifice with powerful motivation behind it, that motivation often being an ideology which praises independent statehood under a certain form of government as something worth fighting and dying to preserve. note At the extreme, it applies "live free or die" to the entire country, positing that it would be better for all its people to be wiped off the face of the Earth than to submit to foreign tyranny. That end may not be what the leaders of government want to happen, but if there were any persuasive reason to use nuclear weapons ever, it would be to protect the country's right to exist. You probably got yourself those nukes because there's something you're willing to sacrifice for, and if your enemy would be willing to defend his country with nukes, he'd best believe that you would too.
Furthermore there are bound to be a lot of third parties who won't really blame you for counterattacking with nukes in that circumstance: whatever allies you have will more or less support your decision (since an attack on you by a strong enemy is also a threat to them), and even friendly countries who weren't part of a mutual defense pact with you beforehand might become eager to aid you indirectly if your country is still alive after the opening salvo. Even if there are neutral countries out there who will openly wish that you had just given up your freedom in order to save the rest of the world from nuclear risk, the worst they might do is refuse to help you; if they weren't direct miliitary allies of your attacker before the conflict started, then they aren't going to stick their neck out for the sake of an aggressor country who got nuked as a result of attacking first. In any case, you can't afford to think about anything except your national survival. Any foreigners criticizing you can be safely ignored as long as they don't directly join the enemy.
The great thing is that you don't necessarily even need a nuclear arsenal capable of defeating or destroying your enemy to deter him, although that would certainly help; you just need to make the probable cost of victory so high for him that he can't afford to start a war against you. It isn't rational for your enemy to initiate an aggressive war unless they think they can get a favorable cost/benefit tradeoff. On one hand, he may be eager to invade you if he's confident of a Curb-Stomp Battle. In his dream scenario you'll either have no weapons of mass destruction, or they'll be sufficiently vulnerable and few in number for him to take out with a pre-emptive strike. After that he may expect to fight the war entirely on your turf so that none of his population or infrastructure gets destroyed; knock out your air defenses and achieve air superiority on day one; wage a blitzkreig campaign in which he advances rapidly while losing just one man for every sixty of yours; and have your side's capitulation within a couple of weeks so his troops can be Home by Christmas.
In contrast, he'll probably think twice about invading if he knows that you have enough nukes and delivery capability to blow up several of his major cities; vaporize whole divisions of his ground forces; use nuclear demolition charges to blow up tunnels, bridges, highways, and ports in your country to deny them to the invader; and altogether put up so much of a fight that he's forced to use up many or even most of his weapons of mass destruction to destroy your ability to resist. Even if he enlarges his country's territory by 100% and eliminates you as an economic and political rival, that won't make it worthwhile after he's lost millions of civilian lives; sent his economy back to the stone age; made his country an international pariah; and gotten his military so mauled it will take at least ten years to rebuild it into an effective defense, let alone a force capable of offensive warfare. If you were capable of inflicting that kind of damage in retaliation, then your enemy would have to be completely insane to attack you instead of just leaving you alone.
Why Nuclear Coercion Doesn't Work
In the previous section, we've established that nuclear weapons work as a deterrent. But can they also be used for extortion? Can you coerce another country into doing what you want by threatening to nuke them? Let's get into why that's a dicier proposition.
First of all, if nuclear coercion is possible, it almost certainly needs to be against a country that doesn't have its own nuclear deterrent. If they also have nukes and a delivery capability similar to yours, then any nuclear attack by you will cause you to be nuked in return. They can simply call your bluff, because they know that you will not dare to nuke them even if they refuse to comply.
Now, if they don't have a nuclear deterrent, that means there's nothing stopping you from threatening to nuke them and getting what you want, right? Actually, not so fast.
In a lot of popular fiction, having nuclear weapons when your opponent doesn't is treated as an instant checkmate that lets you force them to do anything you demand. But if we look at real life examples, this has rarely if ever proved effective. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan on the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, inaugurating a period in which the United States was the only country which had nuclear weapons. Despite this, the US either could not or would not use them to force the Soviet Union to back down during disputes over Eastern Europe and Iran, nor could it prevent the Soviet Union from achieving a successful nuclear test on the 29th of August, 1949. Since World War Two there have also been multiple wars in which a nuclear power accepted conventional defeat at the hands of a non-nuclear power instead of resorting to nuclear coercion, such as the US war in Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. So what's going on here?
Nuclear deterrence is both credible and legitimate as a policy because it's protecting the right of the country which practices it to exist, and because it does not (or at least does not in and of itself) threaten the right of other countries to exist. In contrast, whoever attempts nuclear coercion is usually pursuing desires above and beyond what’s necessary for mere self-defense, while at the same time threatening the right of other countries to exist in freedom.
The fact that you’re presenting an existential threat—not just to the country you’re currently trying to extort, but also to third parties—means they will feel compelled to deter and punish your behavior with various sanctions and counter-threats. At the same time, because you do not have an existential threat pushing you over your own Godzilla Threshold, you cannot simply ignore the negative consequences you would incur by brandishing or using your nuclear weapons aggressively. This suggests that even measures short of nuclear retaliation might be able to deter your from using your nukes aggressively, in which case those whom you’re trying to extort will be less likely to believe you would actually nuke them if they refused your demands.
As Perun describes in his YouTube video regarding the Russian Federation's nuclear threats against Ukraine and NATO in 2022, nuclear coercion tends to create a Morton's Fork and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy where the coercive threat will backfire somehow:
First of all, if nuclear coercion is possible, it almost certainly needs to be against a country that doesn't have its own nuclear deterrent. If they also have nukes and a delivery capability similar to yours, then any nuclear attack by you will cause you to be nuked in return. They can simply call your bluff, because they know that you will not dare to nuke them even if they refuse to comply.
Now, if they don't have a nuclear deterrent, that means there's nothing stopping you from threatening to nuke them and getting what you want, right? Actually, not so fast.
In a lot of popular fiction, having nuclear weapons when your opponent doesn't is treated as an instant checkmate that lets you force them to do anything you demand. But if we look at real life examples, this has rarely if ever proved effective. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan on the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, inaugurating a period in which the United States was the only country which had nuclear weapons. Despite this, the US either could not or would not use them to force the Soviet Union to back down during disputes over Eastern Europe and Iran, nor could it prevent the Soviet Union from achieving a successful nuclear test on the 29th of August, 1949. Since World War Two there have also been multiple wars in which a nuclear power accepted conventional defeat at the hands of a non-nuclear power instead of resorting to nuclear coercion, such as the US war in Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. So what's going on here?
Nuclear deterrence is both credible and legitimate as a policy because it's protecting the right of the country which practices it to exist, and because it does not (or at least does not in and of itself) threaten the right of other countries to exist. In contrast, whoever attempts nuclear coercion is usually pursuing desires above and beyond what’s necessary for mere self-defense, while at the same time threatening the right of other countries to exist in freedom.
The fact that you’re presenting an existential threat—not just to the country you’re currently trying to extort, but also to third parties—means they will feel compelled to deter and punish your behavior with various sanctions and counter-threats. At the same time, because you do not have an existential threat pushing you over your own Godzilla Threshold, you cannot simply ignore the negative consequences you would incur by brandishing or using your nuclear weapons aggressively. This suggests that even measures short of nuclear retaliation might be able to deter your from using your nukes aggressively, in which case those whom you’re trying to extort will be less likely to believe you would actually nuke them if they refused your demands.
As Perun describes in his YouTube video regarding the Russian Federation's nuclear threats against Ukraine and NATO in 2022, nuclear coercion tends to create a Morton's Fork and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy where the coercive threat will backfire somehow:
- If the country being threatened doesn’t believe the extortionist is really prepared to nuke them if demands aren’t met, they will simply call the bluff, which so far in history has always resulted in the extortionist deciding not to actually do it. Throughout 2022 and 2023, the Putin regime repeatedly threatened to use tactical nukes if Ukraine kept trying to recapture the territories that Russia illegally annexed, and if the "collective West" kept increasing its military aid to Ukraine. When these red lines were repeatedly crossed and Russia didn’t follow through with its threats, each subsequent threat was taken less seriously, and Russia's nuclear saber-rattling was dismissed as a symptom of their inability to achieve their goals on the battlefield. Both nuclear deterrence and nuclear coercion are thus devalued when you say you’re going to do something, but then don’t actually do it.
- If the country you threaten with nukes is convinced there’s a significant chance you would actually do it, then suddenly their number one priority will become getting themselves a new deterrent against you. Either they will start their own nuclear program, or they will apply to join an alliance in which they are covered by another power's nuclear umbrella. It is very difficult to threaten somebody to stop their nuclear program (Iran and North Korea) or keep them out of an alliance (The Baltic States, Ukraine, etc.), because the more you threaten them the more you convince them that they need such protection. Even if there is a very high risk associated with refusing your demands, they balance that against the concern that if they give in to your terroristic threats, they will be rewarding and incentivizing that behavior. They fear that if they let you bully them once, you’re just going to keep doing it again and again. That's a slippery slope towards complete loss of autonomy and independence. Moreover, if they think your regime is so evil that it would contemplate nuclear mass murder—not in self-defense, but out of spite towards those who refuse to be subjugated—then they they cannot trust you to respect their human rights even if they surrendered to your domination without a fight. Thus, they will resist your coercion while appealing to the other nations of the world for help.
In contrast to the defensive scenario, whoever uses the nuke offensively and without provocation gives up the moral high ground and invites the condemnation of even previously neutral and friendly nations, partly because the taboo on using nuclear weapons is broadly in everyone's interest. People are generally willing to give up their right to make a nuclear first strike if it means that other people will agree not to do it to them. It would be dangerous to all countries if using nuclear weapons was demystified or destigmatized, and the only way to re-establish the nuclear taboo after it gets broken is for everyone to gang up and punish the violator using every method short of war. If you commit an unjustified nuclear attack on some victim, the other countries of the world have a lot of options:
- Kick you out of any alliances based on military, political, or economic cooperation.
- Freeze and confiscate your country's overseas assets, ranging from foreign currency reserves to undelivered military hardware purchases.
- Revoke permission for you to keep military bases in their territory.
- Close their territorial waters and airspace to any ships and planes belonging to your country, and prevent them from receiving insurance coverage or technical support.
- Ban all trade with entities associated with your country.
- Enforce secondary sanctions against third parties who try to sell you any weapons, strategic components, or strategic resources.
- Issue international arrest warrants for you and whichever leaders approved the nuclear attack, in case any should set foot in their jurisdiction
- Provide financial, humanitarian, and perhaps even military aid to the country you attacked, including not just military hardware but also training and intelligence sharing.
These negative consequences make it difficult to use nuclear weapons frivolously.
Nuclear weapons are also Too Awesome to Use outside of the extremely narrow set of defensive circumstances where their use is legitimately "provoked", because as soon as you become the first one to start launching nukes, you automatically force your opponent across the Godzilla Threshold while simultaneously using up your final trump card. At that point there is nothing you can threaten to do to them that you aren't already doing. Therefore they have no more reason to restrain themselves or respect the red lines you draw in the sand, which means that they might feel free to kill your civilians, assasinate your leaders, break out any nerve gas or biological weapons they might have, take no prisoners, Sink the Lifeboats, Shoot the Medic First, etc. That might not matter in a narrow military sense if you succeed in squashing their ability to resist in one fell swoop, but if you use the nuclear option and it somehow doesn't result in their complete military defeat and unconditional surrender, then you end up looking not only evil, but also weak. There's also the problem of radioactive fallout, especially when ground burst detonations are used, which depending on the prevailing winds could blow back over your own troops and will definitely make any other countries in the fallout path very angry at you.
It might be tempting to think that using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against a military target could turn the tide of a battle without provoking the full international backlash associated with an all-out strategic nuclear volley against the enemy's cities or centers of government. However, this is far from reliable. Since ground troops are often spread out over a wide area, and many modern armored fighting vehicles are specifically designed for resistance to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, it would probably take multiple nuclear warheads to make a significant difference on the operational level of warfare. Therefore the attacker may have to choose between only using one weapon and getting very little military benefit compared to the diplomatic penalties incurred, or launching such a barrage of tactical nukes that the scale of outrage and risk of retaliation would be similar to what would have been incurred by resorting to strategic nukes in the first place.
Can Dahau Coerce the Emperor?
Let's suppose that Calamity Raven defeats the Nameless and the first missile from the Hammer destroys Randgriz. Fantastic! Dahau can congratulate himself and then telegraph or radio the good news to Schwartzgrad. Unfortunately, as soon as the details of the situation become clear to the Empire's leadership, they are unlikely to regard Dahau and Calamity Raven with any kind of trust or gratitude. In fact, there's really no way for Dahau to bargain with the Empire without things getting hostile.
To begin with, it's not 100% guaranteed that the leaders will be pleased to learn about Randgriz being destroyed, because this ruins the negotiations they were conducting to end the war against Gallia. They had a good reason to have gone to the peace table, having lost Maximilian, Selvaria, and most of the invasion forces' combat effectiveness; blowing up Randgriz doesn't change the fact that the Empire is hardly in a position to renew its conventional invasion, and as long as they've still got the Federation to deal with it makes sense to close the Gallian front. Dahau launched the missile without any authorization from higher authorities, and trampled on the capital's foreign policy. But what about the Hammer of the Valkyrur, with its numerous spare missiles ready to go? Doesn't this mean the Empire no longer needs a negotiated peace, and can simply coerce Gallia into unconditional surrender? Well, that might not necessarily work, and more importantly, at this stage the Empire doesn't have the Hammer of the Valkyrur; Dahau does.
Dahau is a former Darcsen resistance leader who fought against the Empire, and after giving up that struggle he only got into the Imperial military through the patronage of Borgia and Maximilian, both of whom are now dead. The idea of a former seperatist rebel getting his hands on such a destructive weapon ought to be deeply alarming in and of itself, especially since Dahau's ancestors are slandered by history as having terrorized the continent using similar ragnite-based weapons of mass destruction. But it gets worse: even if Dahau doesn't tell them about how Borgia hid the discovery and rebuilding of this strategic weapon as part of a treasonous plot to sabotage the war effort and eventually make himself theocrat of the entire continent, the fact that somebody developed this weapon as a rogue project without letting anybody in the government know about or approve it obviously implies premeditated disloyalty against the Empire. The fact that Dahau didn't blow the whistle on this beforehand means he is at best highly suspect, and at worst a traitor deserving of the death penalty. Dahau himself acknowledges this when he says "Calamity Raven is no longer an Imperial establishment. Branded as traitors, the only thing that awaits us is execution."
In short, Dahau cannot possibly just give the Hammer to the Empire as a gift and hope this will make them feel generous enough to excuse his crimes and grant him a Darcsen homeland. They would probably arrest or kill him the moment he let them into the facility. He needs to come right out and say that he won't hand it over unless they give him what he wants, and from there it devolves into full-blown nuclear coercion.
But then we will have a Catch-22 Dilemma. The problem is that if Dahau threatens to blow up Schwartzgrad unless the Emperor gives the Darcsens a new homeland, the Emperor still cannot give Dahau what he wants unless Dahau agrees to give up the Hammer of the Valkyrur afterwards. The reason is that as long as Dahau controls the Hammer, there will be nothing to stop him from making further demands upon the Empire as soon and as often as he likes. Heck, if Dahau keeps the ability to destroy the Empire's government at the press of a button, then in practice the Empire will cease to be an autonomous and self-governing state. Any deal in which they don't get the Hammer back from Dahau is unacceptable. But as we just established, Dahau can't give up the Hammer because it's his only protection against the Emperor killing him and going back on his word.
On one hand, Dahau will have a large advantage in first strike capability as soon as he finishes preparing the next missile following the Randgriz launch. Given that the distance between the Gallian border and Schwartzgrad is similar to that between London and the Soviet ICBM sites in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, then assuming similar flight characteristics it may take less than 15 minutes for the Hammer to strike Schwartzgrad. The situation is even worse when you consider that the Empire almost certainly lacks the kind of early-warning radar system needed to detect an incoming ballistic missile early enough to have any time to react, meaning they wouldn't know the missile was coming until the moment of impact. In any case the emperor and other leaders wouldn't have enough time to flee the city even if they started doing so when the missile was launched, and it's unclear whether they have any bunker capable of surviving the blast.
On the other hand, Dahau has no spies or surveillance assets that could let him observe what the Imperial government was actually doing during the crisis negotiation, meaning he can't do much to prevent Schwartzgrad or any other Imperial City from being evacuated without his knowledge while the negotiators stall for time. Since the missile of the Hammer is probably barely more advanced than the V2 rocket in terms of guidance, and only capable of being targeted at a fixed point on a coordinate grid such as a city, Dahau will be helpless to target the Emperor or any particular leader if they manage to get outside the targeted city and head to some unknown rally point before the missile hits.
To begin with, it's not 100% guaranteed that the leaders will be pleased to learn about Randgriz being destroyed, because this ruins the negotiations they were conducting to end the war against Gallia. They had a good reason to have gone to the peace table, having lost Maximilian, Selvaria, and most of the invasion forces' combat effectiveness; blowing up Randgriz doesn't change the fact that the Empire is hardly in a position to renew its conventional invasion, and as long as they've still got the Federation to deal with it makes sense to close the Gallian front. Dahau launched the missile without any authorization from higher authorities, and trampled on the capital's foreign policy. But what about the Hammer of the Valkyrur, with its numerous spare missiles ready to go? Doesn't this mean the Empire no longer needs a negotiated peace, and can simply coerce Gallia into unconditional surrender? Well, that might not necessarily work, and more importantly, at this stage the Empire doesn't have the Hammer of the Valkyrur; Dahau does.
Dahau is a former Darcsen resistance leader who fought against the Empire, and after giving up that struggle he only got into the Imperial military through the patronage of Borgia and Maximilian, both of whom are now dead. The idea of a former seperatist rebel getting his hands on such a destructive weapon ought to be deeply alarming in and of itself, especially since Dahau's ancestors are slandered by history as having terrorized the continent using similar ragnite-based weapons of mass destruction. But it gets worse: even if Dahau doesn't tell them about how Borgia hid the discovery and rebuilding of this strategic weapon as part of a treasonous plot to sabotage the war effort and eventually make himself theocrat of the entire continent, the fact that somebody developed this weapon as a rogue project without letting anybody in the government know about or approve it obviously implies premeditated disloyalty against the Empire. The fact that Dahau didn't blow the whistle on this beforehand means he is at best highly suspect, and at worst a traitor deserving of the death penalty. Dahau himself acknowledges this when he says "Calamity Raven is no longer an Imperial establishment. Branded as traitors, the only thing that awaits us is execution."
In short, Dahau cannot possibly just give the Hammer to the Empire as a gift and hope this will make them feel generous enough to excuse his crimes and grant him a Darcsen homeland. They would probably arrest or kill him the moment he let them into the facility. He needs to come right out and say that he won't hand it over unless they give him what he wants, and from there it devolves into full-blown nuclear coercion.
But then we will have a Catch-22 Dilemma. The problem is that if Dahau threatens to blow up Schwartzgrad unless the Emperor gives the Darcsens a new homeland, the Emperor still cannot give Dahau what he wants unless Dahau agrees to give up the Hammer of the Valkyrur afterwards. The reason is that as long as Dahau controls the Hammer, there will be nothing to stop him from making further demands upon the Empire as soon and as often as he likes. Heck, if Dahau keeps the ability to destroy the Empire's government at the press of a button, then in practice the Empire will cease to be an autonomous and self-governing state. Any deal in which they don't get the Hammer back from Dahau is unacceptable. But as we just established, Dahau can't give up the Hammer because it's his only protection against the Emperor killing him and going back on his word.
On one hand, Dahau will have a large advantage in first strike capability as soon as he finishes preparing the next missile following the Randgriz launch. Given that the distance between the Gallian border and Schwartzgrad is similar to that between London and the Soviet ICBM sites in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, then assuming similar flight characteristics it may take less than 15 minutes for the Hammer to strike Schwartzgrad. The situation is even worse when you consider that the Empire almost certainly lacks the kind of early-warning radar system needed to detect an incoming ballistic missile early enough to have any time to react, meaning they wouldn't know the missile was coming until the moment of impact. In any case the emperor and other leaders wouldn't have enough time to flee the city even if they started doing so when the missile was launched, and it's unclear whether they have any bunker capable of surviving the blast.
On the other hand, Dahau has no spies or surveillance assets that could let him observe what the Imperial government was actually doing during the crisis negotiation, meaning he can't do much to prevent Schwartzgrad or any other Imperial City from being evacuated without his knowledge while the negotiators stall for time. Since the missile of the Hammer is probably barely more advanced than the V2 rocket in terms of guidance, and only capable of being targeted at a fixed point on a coordinate grid such as a city, Dahau will be helpless to target the Emperor or any particular leader if they manage to get outside the targeted city and head to some unknown rally point before the missile hits.
The Hammer's Counter-Force Vulnerability
According to Zig, Dahau didn't think that Gallia would send any forces to attack him during the armistice negotiations with the Empire. Therefore, he is surprised when the Nameless fake their deaths and secretly cross into the Empire to stop his plot, resulting in his defeat. But even if they hadn't arrived, Dahau might have faced a serious problem.
In real life, nuclear weapons can be deployed in various ways in an attempt to prevent them from being neutralized by the enemy. Land-based strategic ICBMs are traditionally set up in underground silos where the launcher shaft containing each missile is protected by armored blast doors, which open when a missile is launched. Each missile is set up in its own individual silo so that all of the missiles can be launched at the same time, while the operators are sheltered in sealed underground control bunkers. Land-based silos were more effective earlier in the Cold War when a counter-force nuclear strike would have been fairly inaccurate, meaning the silos just had to survive a nearby detonation rather than a direct hit. Once it became possible to target ICBM silos with precision, the best defense was to get early warning of enemy missiles and launch one's own ICBMs before they could be destroyed in their silos. Part of the reason the United States continues to operate land-based ICBM bases—particularly in its more remote and less populated states—is to serve as a "nuclear sponge" for the rest of the country. Any opponent who engages in a nuclear war with the United States will be forced to expend large numbers of nuclear weapons trying to neutralize these ICBM bases in order to save their own cities from retaliation, thus reducing the number that they can allocate to US centers of administration and population.
The alternative to hardening a stationary facility is to have mobile launch systems where the missiles can be kept moving around to make them harder for the enemy to find and target, namely by using wheeled transporter\erector\launcher (TEL) vehicles, missile trains, or nuclear ballistic missile submarines. These are not invulnerable either, but using them increases the chance of preserving a second-strike capability and forces the enemy to put a lot of expensive platforms in harm’s way in order to hunt them down.
The problem with the Hammer of the Valkyrur is that it's based out of only one large, conspicuous, above-ground structure. Because it's immobile, unconcealed, poorly fortified, and not part of a redundant network spread over a large area, it is highly vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack. An imperial ground force could just ride in and destroy the missile on the launchpad, especially if unlike the Nameless they were willing to risk blowing themselves up to stop the launch. Even the spire's ability to bombard an area with energy projectiles turns out to be insufficient for area denial against ground troops. Since there's only one launchpad for a whole magazine full of spires, only one missile at a time can be made ready, so the attacker can neutralize all the missiles at once just by capturing the launchpad.
An Imperial attack would risk the possibility of Dahau getting to fire at least one more missile and thus destroy the capital city, but even that would probably be preferable to accepting the downfall of the empire and the monarchy as a whole. Presumably the emperor and other leaders would try to get the hell out of Schwartzgrad as soon as the counter strike was decided on so they wouldn’t still be around if the missile hits, while hoping for a best case in which the strike team prevents even the first missile aimed at the Empire from launching.
The catch to this is that the Empire might not immediately realize how vulnerable Dahau is, being unfamiliar with the secret weapon's capabilities as well as the status of Dahau's defenses. But if they pretend to cooperate with his ultimatum as a way of buying time, they should be able to spy out the situation a little better and then come up with a plan to capture the Hammer.
In real life, nuclear weapons can be deployed in various ways in an attempt to prevent them from being neutralized by the enemy. Land-based strategic ICBMs are traditionally set up in underground silos where the launcher shaft containing each missile is protected by armored blast doors, which open when a missile is launched. Each missile is set up in its own individual silo so that all of the missiles can be launched at the same time, while the operators are sheltered in sealed underground control bunkers. Land-based silos were more effective earlier in the Cold War when a counter-force nuclear strike would have been fairly inaccurate, meaning the silos just had to survive a nearby detonation rather than a direct hit. Once it became possible to target ICBM silos with precision, the best defense was to get early warning of enemy missiles and launch one's own ICBMs before they could be destroyed in their silos. Part of the reason the United States continues to operate land-based ICBM bases—particularly in its more remote and less populated states—is to serve as a "nuclear sponge" for the rest of the country. Any opponent who engages in a nuclear war with the United States will be forced to expend large numbers of nuclear weapons trying to neutralize these ICBM bases in order to save their own cities from retaliation, thus reducing the number that they can allocate to US centers of administration and population.
The alternative to hardening a stationary facility is to have mobile launch systems where the missiles can be kept moving around to make them harder for the enemy to find and target, namely by using wheeled transporter\erector\launcher (TEL) vehicles, missile trains, or nuclear ballistic missile submarines. These are not invulnerable either, but using them increases the chance of preserving a second-strike capability and forces the enemy to put a lot of expensive platforms in harm’s way in order to hunt them down.
The problem with the Hammer of the Valkyrur is that it's based out of only one large, conspicuous, above-ground structure. Because it's immobile, unconcealed, poorly fortified, and not part of a redundant network spread over a large area, it is highly vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack. An imperial ground force could just ride in and destroy the missile on the launchpad, especially if unlike the Nameless they were willing to risk blowing themselves up to stop the launch. Even the spire's ability to bombard an area with energy projectiles turns out to be insufficient for area denial against ground troops. Since there's only one launchpad for a whole magazine full of spires, only one missile at a time can be made ready, so the attacker can neutralize all the missiles at once just by capturing the launchpad.
An Imperial attack would risk the possibility of Dahau getting to fire at least one more missile and thus destroy the capital city, but even that would probably be preferable to accepting the downfall of the empire and the monarchy as a whole. Presumably the emperor and other leaders would try to get the hell out of Schwartzgrad as soon as the counter strike was decided on so they wouldn’t still be around if the missile hits, while hoping for a best case in which the strike team prevents even the first missile aimed at the Empire from launching.
The catch to this is that the Empire might not immediately realize how vulnerable Dahau is, being unfamiliar with the secret weapon's capabilities as well as the status of Dahau's defenses. But if they pretend to cooperate with his ultimatum as a way of buying time, they should be able to spy out the situation a little better and then come up with a plan to capture the Hammer.
