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Comment by Kibae | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to go against the grain here and say denuclearization is not the solution for peace. I believe the reason the world has been at (relative) peace since WWII is because of the threat of a nuclear war.

If Ukraine had kept their nuclear weapons, do you think Putin would even consider invading? I don't think so.

A better solution to denuclearization, in my opinion is to adopt a "No First Use" policy [1]. I suspect internally the US and NATO do follow this policy but will not disclose it publicly for strategic reasons.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

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A no first use policy is never going to happen, because it completely flies against all of the prevailing wisdom about nuclear deterrence[1]. Nuclear powers benefit heavily from ambiguity about where their "red line" is that would need to be crossed for them to use nukes, because that limits the ability of others to act against them for fear of crossing the line. Drawing a lower bound on where your red line is, like with a no first use policy, frees up others to act against you because they know how far they can safely go (literally anything short of using your own nukes in the case of a no first use policy).

[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...

China and India have a no first use policy, even though they have nuclear armed neighbors.

No, if you connect a nuclear launch to the decision of a single human mind, eventually that mind will have a stray thought, and press the button. To think otherwise is to assume that any human mind remains stable, sane and rational for its tenure manning the button. Nevermind morality or compassion! But nothing could be further from the truth. Organic mushy brains are inherently unstable and irrational in the long run. If the button exists, its only a matter of time before someone pushes it.

That's why deployment processes require multi-user launch approval (eg 2 simultaneous keys).

That's the launch infrastructure and only in some circumstances is that required.

An order from the US president to launch nuclear weapons can only be rescinded by the US president: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Nuclear-button-U.S.-has-no-...

This is well known, there was a submarine captain who was dismissed for inquiring about it in the US Navy.

Sure the order can't be rescinded. But it's also possible for the individuals to be insubordinate.

Until some kind of glitch causes one country to freak out and launch, it has almost happened on at least one occasion that I know of.

War is not peace, cold or otherwise.

Policies do not work when someone irrational is at the helm of a country.

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