What Nuclear Strategic Theory Says About Deterrence of Irrational Opponents | Hacker News Reader

What Nuclear Strategic Theory Says About Deterrence of Irrational Opponents

rand.org

37 pointsbelter30 comments

An act is rational or irrational depends on whether you can convince yourself.

History is littered with examples where men have slaughtered other men just because their religion "allows" them by some divine right. These men will argue that they acted rationally.

Men will invent "rational" reasons to justify the end objective.

I think that we should break down your thesis into two parts:

1. Those acts preceded by a reason, i.e., the acts are informed by a rationale. The acts are rational to those actors, no matter how irrational they seem to us.

2. Those acts justified in the breach by a rationale. Those are irrational acts.

History has both, of course, but it's the second one that we should fear, because it's unknowable and unpredictable. The first one we can try to predict by understanding an actor's milieu.

Nice breakdown, thanks.

Those would be ‘rational’ reasons as there exists a framework within which different agents can reason within and about.

Irrational is when there is no framework, or it is extremely fluid. E.g. schizophrenia runs in my family, and once people are old enough and symptoms get worse, you can easily tell when one becomes irrational.

The transition in cases of mental disorder is the harder part, because someone’s brain may only be capable of reasoning for 30% of the day, after which it runs out of stamina and a dream-like state can take over (especially if there isn’t enough sleep).

Edit: there is a good meme on this actually: https://memegine.com/m/memes-t5sfcr/p

They didn’t slaughter because of religion, it was always because of power and means to attain or hold it. From the Crusades, Inquisition, Capitalism-Socialism to modern day Jihadism, it’s all ultimately about power.

The word "seems" appears rather a lot in this essay. It's supposedly a strategic analysis but it reads more like a lazy New York Post op ed written by somebody who doesnt understand at all whats going on in Russia or North Korea and ascribes what he doesnt understand to "they be crazy".

Moreover, he outright ignores the brass tacks of what Putin actually he asks for in negotiations for he focuses on the flimsy pretext Putin came up with for justifying the war domestically.

Frankly, I dont think Putin is irrational. He's asked for three things in negotiations, the costs of which are minimal even compared to the cost of the war as it stands right now, and he'd probably be willing to give some ground even on those.

Would Kyiv be prepared to relinquish Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea and establish a Finland-like declaration of neutrality to avoid the complete demolition of the country? Not an inch on any of those right now but when the siege is in its third week and Kyiv has lost power, food and medicine he might change his mind. Notions of sovereignty and national pride can be galvanizing at the beginning but can seem awfully abstract when you start sufferint the true hell of war.

The most worrying part is that the west might try to force Zelensky's hand by threatening to withdraw help if he concedes to Russia. I can imagine that there are hawks in the pentagon right now who are excited that they now a way to collapse Russia from within if Ukraine can be convinced to sustain a half a million or so deaths in the coming onslaught.

> Would Kyiv be prepared to relinquish Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea and establish a Finland-like declaration of neutrality to avoid the widespread demolition of the country? Not an inch on any of those right now but when the siege is in its third week and Kyiv has lost power, food and medicine he might change his mind.

I think I remember something in this direction coming from the Ukranian government already, though in the sense that Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea get an independent status from both Ukraine and Russia.

The most interesting question to me is how an agreement between Ukraine and Russia can be trusted by both sides.

RT said that Ukrainian negotiators softened their stance yesterday but I havent heard it corroborated by any other source so I'd consider it strictly hearsay right now.

Putin wants the neutrality promise to be in the constitution. Presumably shelling would recommence if they tried to take it out again afterwards.

> Would Kyiv be prepared to relinquish Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea and establish a Finland-like declaration of neutrality to avoid the complete demolition of the country?

Ironic that you mention Finland, considering that Finland is now looking to join NATO to secure them from Russian aggression.

I adapted because last time I used the word "neutrality" on its own thinking that its meaning was fairly plain what that meant somebody interpreted it to mean "become a possession of Russia".

If you've got a better suggestion for how to phrase it im all ears.

It has become increasingly clear that reluctance to integrate with euro-atlantic security cooperation means exactly that: high risk of becoming a possession of Russia.

Staying neutral and having greater freedom to pick and choose positions on issues is convenient, but not worth the price tag of Russian invasion. Now that Russia has shown the willingness to engage in conventional war in Europe, illusions of peaceful cooperation have been shattered and the cost/benefit calculus is against neutrality. Sweden has been neutral for 200 years and now they've seriously discussing joining NATO, simply because the cost of staying neutral has grown too large. Even eventual victory in conventional war would mean destroyed cities and unimaginable horror for civilian population.

Ukraine wasnt a possession of Russia before. Finland is not a posession of Russia either.

It wouldnt be a possession by remaining neutral.

In case it's not abundantly clear invasion is not the price of staying neutral. The invasion is the price of admission to NATO.

> invasion is not the price of staying neutral

Pretty much every country in Europe has done the calculus and reached a different result. Even Ireland is reconsidering neutrality after the recent harassment. Acquiring nuclear weapons or at least allying with a nuclear power is looking like the best option to ensure peace in Europe.

The calculus is completely different for countries not on strategically critical sections of Russia's border.

Papua new guinea could join I dont think that would bother them. Not a risk for them.

No country bar perhaps georgia, belarus or kazakhstan would bother them as much as ukraine joining.

Putin may be rational and still decide to launch.

What is or is not rational is based on objectives and timelines. It is imperative we understand what these are, as they form the frame of what decisions might be made.

Are you saying that objectives and timelines are the _only_ factors that can be used to evaluate leadership rationality? In what circumstances is it rational for Putin to trigger a large-scale, first-use nuclear exchange that would probably kill hundreds of millions of people?

Edit: I can see how it might be rational for Putin to threaten to use nuclear weapons. But I can't understand how that extends to actually using them.

alright i will have a go at this:

Let's say Putin's core objective is 'not letting US win' - this is the only thing he cares about.

War goes badly, but this core objective doesn't change. If he wants to achieve this objective, armageddon would achieve it - everyone loses, so US doesn't win. That is better than Russia loses, US wins, so it is rational in this frame to push the button.

But that isn't what he wants. He doesn't want the US to lose; he wants Russia to win. He thinks he needs NATO to collapse for that to happen, but the end goal is Russia winning, not NATO losing.

He can't get Russia winning by a nuclear war.

The larger problem is that he is increasingly surrounded by people who tell him what he wants to hear, not what is true. That might lead to a situation where he thinks Russia can win by a nuclear war.

my example was illustration of how triggering nuclear war could be a rational decision. I do not have any privileged access to Putin's objective

To save his own skin.

He'd also have to be confident that he personally could survive a counter strike - which would be quite a decision to make.

What counterstrike? If he pops a small, relatively clean nuclear weapon over a Ukrainian airfield, the United States will almost certainly not retaliate against the Russian homeland — that path nearly inevitably leads to general war. This is doubly true if Putin decides to cause a high-altitude nuclear EMP event.

We are in a serious policy vice and the odds of him resorting to a nuclear demonstration are non-zero and grow by the day. Even the best outcome of that scenario likely means a massive proliferation crisis as countries around the world put plans into effect to join the nuclear club ASAP.

> To save his own skin.

So Russia as a functioning society is destroyed in the inevitable counter-attack. How does that benefit Putin? How does that allow him to go on living in the way that he clearly wants to?

I think he probably visualizes the gradual encroachment of NATO ending up with a bayonet shoved up his ass a la Libya. He apparently watched the Gadaffi video obsessively and he was certainly publicly outraged about it, particularly in light of the broken promises the west made to gafaffi that he'd be left alone.

In the 2000s he probably would have felt somewhat safe losing power. I think after that video his attitude was probably that if Russia loses its military power and he loses power in Russia he will die a messy and horrible death.

And hes been in this state for over 10 years now. Theres probably some truth to the notion that COVID isolated him but I think Libya contributed most to his paranoia.

Im pretty sure this puts nuclear weapons strikes on large population centers on the table.

>Putin may be rational and still decide to launch

And what about the others who need to follow through to complete his order? Putin can't launch anyway without the cooperation of at least a few others...

"Vladimir Putin's astonishing lapse of judgment in invading Ukraine has fueled speculation that the Russian president may have taken leave of his senses."

Who wrote this click-bait of a poor quality? There are pretty sane and accurate analysis why Ukraine invasion looks like it is and it has nothing to do with Putin being crazy or "had lapse of judgment".

The most important reason why invasion is failing is "Russian peace" (Ruskij mir) - Russian version of Pax Americana. This is the ideology that says that all "Slavic" nations are somehow Russian brothers and sisters, only some of them are occupied by alien "nazi" forces and Russia will free willing Slavic citizens from their Nazi-narco-addicts torment. If you feed everyone around with this kind of propaganda you can't send 500 thousands army to Ukraine since it would suggest that Ukraine citizens are not really waiting for Russian troops with flowers. That's why Russia had to attack Ukraine with insufficient forces, couldn't do proper army mobilization.

Putin and FSB indeed underestimated four elements, but it has nothing to do with Putin being insane:

1. Willingness of Ukrainians do defend their country - a lot of has changed since 2014 both in terms of national identification among Ukrainians and in terms of military forces readiness, the easy path to overtaking Crimea in 2014 did not repeat in 2022.

2. The second thing was NATO (especially USA, UK and Poland, there were some NATO members that were much less enthusiastic) readiness to support Ukraine with both military equipment and, what is much more important, with military intelligence. Satellites, spy planes cruising all day and night over Poland are providing very accurate information about Russian troops movements that's why Ukrainians know when and where they can safely counterattack. This latter aspect is a true "game changer".

3. The size of sanctions against Russia and seizing its reserves in USD and Euro, kept in banks outside Russia - this is a slow killer, but after month or two it will start destroying Russian ability to repair military equipment. Putin was right in his judgment to some extent, Germany, Italy, Austria that are heavily dependent on Russian gas and oil import, France that has a lot of investments in Russia were opposing at the beginning of the war, but, probably Blinken and Biden were very persuasive plus there was a lot of social pressure, even in Germany.

4. China view of this war. During Chinese Winter Olympic Games China and Russia signed some deals, but right now it is clear that China is not that enthusiastic about the invasion and it is clearly looking on the situation development. China cannot be happy also about sudden unity and mobilization against enemy in Western World plus they see how NATO is good in military intelligence and how big is the space between Russian military equipment, capabilities and NATO's one. China's army equipment is in many fields very similar to Russian or is its direct evolution and this equipment seems to be torn apart my rather simple weapons delivered to Ukraine - NLAW, Polish Piorun's, Javelins are short range last-chance anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon, nothing fancy or advanced, but still they manage to cause a lot of losses.

The silent 5th reason is an obvious failure of Russian psy-ops operation. The picture of Ukraine, possessed by Nazis who wanted to attack Russia with chemical and nuclear weapons, who train birds to spread biological warfare and all of this is done by narcotics addicts is really hard to sell. Some will buy even the most stupid propaganda (like Paulo Coelho) but for general public that sounds nuts.

Another thing that is missing in this article is the process of firing atomic missiles. There is no such a thing like red button kept in some suitcase, which was popularized by Hollywood movies - using nuclear weapon is a process that involves several people, so one crazy person, even such powerful as Putin wants to be seen, cannot get crazy and irrationally attack USA or whatever other country.

It does not mean that Russia will not use tactical nuclear weapon, they have this way of acting in their strategy, and such move will also has nothing to do with "irrationality". In fact from the military perspective it makes perfect sense to attack Kiev with nukes, but it is hardly doubtful if Russian would risk that.

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