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Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

> 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).

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> 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?.

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