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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how you can think that logic would work in Europe, but didn't work in the many parts of the world that went on to have full on wars WW2 style. Vietnam, Iran/Iraq, Many Arab/Israeli conflicts, etc, etc. What's special about Europe that would have made it immune?

The answer is profuse nuclear weapons that made any direct conflict in Europe unthinkable for either side. Ukraine demonstrates clearly that when conventional war is thinkable, it only takes one side to feel they have the upper hand to make it happen. Nukes are the only reason Russian tanks aren't already dipping their treads in the sea along the coast of the Baltic States, or at least trying to.

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Nuclear weapons aren't protecting baltic states, they are protecting Russia's imperial ambitions. It's army performanc is so abysmall european powers alone could steamroll all of it's offensibe force without US getting involved

If the recent conflict has shown us anything, is that Russian military is overhyped, complacent and corrupt, and performs terribly in confrontation with much smaller, poorly eqipped, and also somehwat corrupt military.

Russians have always had trouble with their offensives. But I doubt anyone thinks a pan european army can just roll into russia. The country is big. Supply lines breaks down. The winter is terrible. The russians are tough as hell and fierce when defending.

> But I doubt anyone thinks a pan european army can just roll into russia

Actually, that's quite easy as history demonstrates though you can indeed also easily become overstretched. One reason the Russians have stockpiled nuclear weapons is that they do not want this to happen again! They do like to act tough but they know that without nukes they are at a huge disadvantage against the West.

I mean their country is fading away fast. Instead of trying to fix it, they're trying to bring in new population, talent, and resources by trying to attack and absorb Ukraine.

Oh yeah U am not advocating invasion of Russia, the logistics and moral situation will totally flip.

In Europe, the threat of the USSR did bring the West together but quite apart from that the big powers, especially France and Germany decided very consciously that they could not go on having more and more destructive wars every generation or so (remember that for France and Germany WWII is actually no. 3 since the first was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870).

So this is a specific context in Europe and specific "paradigm shift" born from that specific context. Indeed, Europe 'learned' that they could not continue to slaughter each others and that led to the EU today (so not just fear of nuclear weapons but decision to bury the hatchet and cooperate on friendly terms instead).

I don't think that there is a similar history anywhere else in the world.

I suspect the existence of nuclear weapons and e.g. France having them actually had a significant impact on them forming that realisation.

Not really. France got its first nukes in 1960 and what had happened in both world wars was enough to change everyone's perception nukes or no nukes: The same would had happened if nukes had not even existed.

Nukes are a guarantee against invasion and in the context for France and the Cold War especially aimed against the USSR. But they don't mean you need to be friendly and cooperate. France and Germany (and others in Europe) really made a decision quite irrespective of the existence of nukes to stop European self-destruction and to work peacefully together from then on.

Why do you think the conflicts in Asia, the middle-east etc. happened? Because the nuclear superpowers are fighting their wars there. One could very well argue that nuclear powers have created such an imbalance that the nuclear powers could act towards other powers like they did, because they knew the others would never directly intervene because of the danger of a nuclear war.

Did the fact they were nuclear powers have any effect on their sponsorship of foreign conflicts? I don't see how it's relevant, they'd have done it anyway. Also the nuclear powers often did intervene directly, as China and the USA did in Korea, and the USA did in Vietnam and Iraq, and Russia and later the USA did in Afghanistan.

The Korean war would not have happened if China had been a nuclear power with significant perceived military power.

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