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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s easy for Americans to see things as a resumption of the Cold War, which we won, and think that’s good.

But this time there are three players in the mutually assured destruction game, and we’ve been poking our thumb in both of their faces. The article mentions how much relations between Moscow and Beijing have improved.

The entire reason we normalized relations with China was to further box in the USSR, stretching them further than they could sustain.

It seems obvious to me that the tables have turned.

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The nuclear aspect of the Cold War is something completely different from the rest of the Cold War which is mostly about influence and economics. Once you have MAD, there isn't really much point is continuing the nuclear game especially for intermediate range ICBMs. So I don't get what this is supposed to achieve other than to send a message that we're going into a new Cold War.

At 7km/s, it would take around 20 minutes for an ICBM fired from the US to reach Moscow. It takes about 3 minutes for an intermediate range missile to travel from Poland to Moscow.

So yes, there is a huge advantage to pursuing intermediate range missiles.

Why is 17 minutes important when the context is Mutually Assured Destruction, possibly enforced via stealth subs you can’t hit preemptively and deadman switches to detect the first strike?

That 17 minutes is important in terms of being able to assess the threat and react. 3 minutes might mean by the time you launch, enough launchers are destroyed that it's "worth it" to eat the counter attack and "win" at MAD.

I thought the point of nuclear submarines was that they don’t get destroyed in the other side’s first strike?

And it takes just a few years to turn those pro-Western countries that might house the missiles into mildly pro-Russian ones. Especially when they realize they're literally in the middle and Russia is way closer. Whether this is a good decision will be judged by the future generations. Looking around in the world doesn't it seem like most of US's allies have turned into disgruntled partners (employees?) at best or hostages at worst? Because they keep electing governments that are increasingly reluctant to be best friends with the US.

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”

― Henry Kissinger

I don't know about friends but he is directly responsible for many of the enemies it has.

Time to watch WarGames again.

As long as Russia is a paltry market with a tiny sphere of economic influence, China will always face the US.

>As long as Russia is a paltry market with a tiny sphere of economic influence, China will always face the US.

A paltry market with a tiny sphere of economic influence... and a military. Despite being third world countries, Iraq and Afghanistan have caused $2.4 trillion in economic damages to the US[0]. Unless you are China, your best bet at subtracting value from the US economy is to get the US involved in a war. Further, as the Ukraine almost showed us, the war doesn't even have to be on your own soil.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

What makes you think the US won't use the same Cold War strategy but in reverse, i.e. normalizing relations with Russia to box in China? After all, only the US has what Russia really wants - control over Russia's western expansion.

I think the Ukraine would take issue with your final claim. Along with all the counties currently sanctioning against Russia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_duri...

Oh I’m certain they would! But sometimes geopolitics means deciding between the lesser of two evils. I’m also quite certain the US views China’s global expansionist policies as much more of a threat then Russian regional expansion.

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