Comment by openasocket | Hacker News Reader

Comment by openasocket | Hacker News Reader

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With the expiration of New Start earlier this year, there are no nuclear arms control agreements in effect between the US and Russia, which hasn’t been the case since the 1960s. Russia, China, and the US are all actively modernizing and developing new nuclear capabilities. China has been greatly expanding their nuclear arsenal, building hundreds of new silos. North Korea has an expansive set of tactical and strategic nuclear systems and are in strategic cooperation with Russia. Russia is 4 years into a destabilizing land war, have developed several new weapons systems, and are now in a nuclear weapon sharing agreement with Belarus. And I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of other things.

We are in a period of strategic instability and an arms race that is unlike anything we have seen in the last 50 years. You can quibble with the specifics all you want, but I don’t think anyone can argue that we are at a lesser risk of nuclear war that we were, say, 20 or 30 years ago

Russia is bankrupt, and can't develop anything because it sent its best and brightest people to be drone fodder, and they died. If there's a new nuclear power it will be Iran, and if there's a nuclear first strike it will be by Israel.

In addition, usage of tactical nuclear weapons comes up again and again from Russian sources, driven by the situation in the Ukraine war.

Plus the current US President has purged most of of the military leaders who might resist any unwise or unlawful orders regarding nuclear weaponry. (Or just in-general, for that matter.) Potential orders he mused-about during his first term.

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/military-officials-ousted-r...

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/10...

Yeah, the US regime has basically been speed running the impotent dictator's playbook. Start from a place of weakness and incompetence, and cause a bunch of senseless destruction to distract from it. Using tactical nuclear weapons would be right in line with that, especially after having started this quagmire in Iran with no way to win.

That usually comes up as a detterance which is basically what nukes are at this point. Even Russia is not stupid enough to lob a nuke as an offensive strategy, it is suicide still.

There is increasing pressure from inside the regime for Putin to do so:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/07/11/asia-pacific/ch...

What if they did it? They would be a paria politically, but countries would still buy their oil/gas because they need it and it's cheap, nobody would start nuking Russia over Ukraine [1], and using tactical nukes against nations that don't have them would become much more acceptable.

It is kind of telling that China has to be the ones reigning them in, which is a good sign that they are replacing the US as the world's superpower, which also comes with maintaining some stability in important markets, erm, countries.

Aside from that our best hope is that the functional Russian arsenal is much smaller than Russian claims due to the lack of maintenance, corruption, etc.

[1] Trump would just have a phone call with Putin and then parrot whatever narrative the Kremlin has. For France and UK, nukes are purely for self-protection, so they would only trigger a counter-attack if Russian nukes appear to be coming towards them (so it's probably better for Russia to avoid The Netherlands and Belgium too).

My opnion is that you're underestimating the event where a country uses a nuclear bomb in this way. It signals that they are willing to cross any red lines and become an existential threat. In fact, imagine an alternative scenario where Russia straight up nukes Kiev instead of the gurella warfare and then invasaion/special millitary operation. In that case, there is no way Putin is not done within a week simply due to the fact that he becomes an existential threat for the entire world. A war/definitive millitary becomes much more justifiable in that case than it does currently for the US or EU.

The moment you use them, you lose their value as a deterrance anymore.

The moment you use them, you lose their value as a deterrance anymore.

If they used nukes in Ukraine, the strategic deterrence against other nations with nukes would still be in place.

They didn't use them against Ukraine because of many other reasons, e.g. because they would have taken Kiev in days, it didn't make sense to make land that you want to conquer radioactive, and the political fallout would be too big.

I think now they won't do it because China is too important to them and China made it clear that using tactical nukes is out of the question.

> If they used nukes in Ukraine, the strategic deterrence against other nations with nukes would still be in place.

No it wouldn't be a deterrance anymore again other nations, it will be an actual threat. If they actually do show they are willing to use them in any capacity, esp over Ukraine which is agression they started, other countries cannot just ignore it or bow down to Russia. It also not a deterrance to nuclear powers in the first place and in the second, it becomes an existential threat again.

As for why they didn't use it in Ukraine is primary because they have never done so. The political fallout will be suicide, there is no other option.

I don't see how China fits in with the tactical nukes thing. Your position of "Russia could have nuked, they just didn't want nuclear fallout, political fallout and China being mean" instead of "they didn't nuke because it will be unprecedented and consequeunces will be dire bodering on absolute destruction" seems weak to me.

Risk of any use of nuclear weapons is quite different from "nuclear annihilation". There are vastly fewer and vastly less powerful nuclear bombs/warheads today than 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago.

The shelling of Mauripol in Ukraine at the beginning of the current war was roughly equivalent to Hiroshima in explosive yield. It had a lot more destructive power though, since it was distributed across a huge amount of explosions, and blast damage falls approximately with the square of distance to center of explosion.

Mauripol in 2022 was not a place you wanted to be in. When a bomb falls on top of you, it makes no difference if it is small nuclear or large conventional, you very much die anyway.

I'm not trying to make war seem nice or sell the idea that the world is heading in a great direction, I'm trying to make the point that nuclear annihilation is less of a threat today than before.

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