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Comment by senordevnyc | Hacker News Reader

Anyone lacking effective nuclear response can be steamrolled by those who do with total impunity.

Ukraine begs to differ.

Ukraine is different and did the reverse, giving up their nukes. They said it was too expensive to keep them, which is only partially true. Ukraine could have deconstructed them and created new Permissive Action Links (PALs) in Dnipro although this process would have taken years and carried a high risk of accidental detonation or radioactive mishaps during the reengineering phase.

And there’s also a small detail of Russia threatening invasion if Ukraine tried to decode those.

Well they always do, so threats by the bad boys are just noise

The US has allegedly said they will retaliate with nuclear strikes on Russia if Russia uses nuclear strikes on Ukraine.

That'll never happen.

Barring an attack on the US itself, the US under the current regime will never attack Russia. Whatever the kompromat happens to be, the President is completely bound by it.

The "kompromat" is the world's largest nuclear arsenal, some five thousand and change warheads, along with a delivery system that includes an HGV MIRV payload that can deliver a multi-megaton warhead at ~mach 20-something.

As if all their rusty crap still works.

Their video recordings of Trump doing God-only-knows-what, on the other hand, appear to be working great. Ditto, the unreleased files hacked from the Republican National Committee's email server in 2016.

> As if all their rusty crap still works.

It doesn't all have to work.

Like a beheaded snake, you can still get bit.

Honestly, I thought part of MAD was how, once a nuclear missile was launched, it would be better for other nuclear states to decimate the country of origin than to wait and figure out where it would hit.

Subs make that more difficult.

Doubt.

Why would Russia use nukes on Ukraine? It will make it even worse pariah than NK.

> pariah

Which recent foreign policy actions by Russia indicate that they care overmuch about soft power, or consider its loss to be a significant risk?

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