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Comment by _kbh_ | Hacker News Reader

> He's one of the few people strenuously warning about the possibility of this war escalating to a nuclear exchange and reminding us that preventing this is the only thing that matters. In my book that makes him less batshit than most.

This is also very conveniently a Russian talking point to just make Ukraine bend over and take it.

If we want to stop the risk of nuclear war from increasing drastically in future we need to help defend Ukraine itself from Russia to the fullest.

If we don't, it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries and nuclear proliferation will go through the roof.

Nuclear proliferation going through the roof will drastically increase the chance of a nuclear exchange in the future.

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> it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries

That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.

> That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.

Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.

If you try and change that that rhetoric by saying you can also only defend yourself when you have nuclear weapons then the entire dynamic changes and a lot more countries will start active nuclear weapons programs.

Why roll the dice when having nuclear weapons protects you from being invaded in the first place?

> Why roll the dice when having nuclear weapons protects you from being invaded in the first place?

This how I feel a lot more countries will start feeling if Ukraine doesn't win or Russia successfully uses their nuclear blackmail to win or get concessions in the war.

They already felt that when they saw Iraq and Afghanistan being invaded, but not Pakistan or North Korea.

Wow a nuclear armed superpower invading a country, that's sure a sea-change for the world /s

Look at what is happening in the world. Country after country standing up and saying they will continue to have their own relations with Russia, they see right through the hypocrisy of the west.

> Wow a nuclear armed superpower invading a country, that's sure a sea-change for the world /s

A nuclear armed superpower threatening to nuke the country it invaded cause it's starting to lose a war, is certainly new when did that happen last?.

> Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.

That's not at all clear in this case.

EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing. I think that explains why the West is not really going crazy about defending Ukraine... the West could do a hell of a lot more if it really wanted to, but maybe doing that would trigger desperate reactions from Russia as they've made it clear already many times that for them, losing this war is an "existential" threat (same words Ukrainians are using).

> That's not at all clear in this case.

the USSR has lot multiple wars against non nuclear armed states.

so has the US.

> EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing.

Welcome to the end of the Russian federation.

Any use of a nuke would mean they lose both the war and their country collapses.

> Any use of a nuke would mean they lose both the war and their country collapses.

How did you come up with that conclusion :D. That seems so hyperbolic as to be kind of funny.

Only one country has used nuclear weapons to this day, and if we do like you did and extrapolate from past events, that went quite well for them.

Literally no one else had them at that time though.

How much differently do you think things would have gone if Japan was also a nuclear state at the time?

I'd seriously reconsider the logic pf your position.

As a point of note; you're arguing from (incomplete) hindsight.

At the time it was known that

* Germany had a nuclear weapons program.

* Japan had a nuclear weapons program.

* Russia, an ally, had contacts who were key personal in the US weapons program.

* The UK MAUD group blueprinted the path to implementation and talked a reluctant USofA into development.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_progr... )

...and yet, none of them had the bomb to drop on anyone else. Literally a case of a bomb in hand is worth infinite (unrealized) in the bush. Realpolitik runs on what you can do now.

Hindsight.

At the time no one was entirely sure who did and did not have a weapon - the entire US effort was premised on a race to get there before the Germans.

The nuclear scientists of the era were international and inter connected.

...Not hindsight. Realpolitik.

What do you not understand about the human condition?

We are energy/cost optimizers. We want to achieve resolutions of conflict as cheap, and as quickly as possible, i.e. with minimal cost.

We made a bomb. Arguably the biggest bomb there had been any indication of anyone having gotten working before.

Truman was looking at war projections of costs to invade Japan. Then he got the papers that said we could make an entire city disappear with 1 plane, and one bomb.

Do you really think it would have worked out any different for anyone else?

I say: No. It wouldn't have, because using it as soon as you got it is just human nature.

> the USSR has lot multiple wars against non nuclear armed states. > so has the US.

Neither of them has lost a war in which they were defending their own country.

Nukes are much less effective in offensive wars, especially when fighting or even attempting to conquer a neighbor.

> Neither of them has lost a war in which they were defending their own country.

Exactly and Russia isn’t defending its country its trying to invade another country so why would it use one?.

Of course, it is a messy situation, where the bat-shit people and realpolitik have a venn-diagram that has a lot of cross over. Ukraine wasn't some paradise of unification before the war, and Russia wasn't completely evil. But, sorting it out, good luck.

There are some real historians that would agree with a lot of 'Russian Talking Points' does that mean they are bat-shit crazy? OR, is Russia pretty good at adding into their talking points enough 'reality' to make it convincing.

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