Give War a Chance | Hacker News Reader

Give War a Chance

taibbi.substack.com

15 pointsandrenth13 comments

At a gut level, having no classified info, but a civilians understanding of just how quickly the components of nuclear weapons degrade just sitting there, plus having seen the lack of maintenance endemic in the Russian military, it seems like this is the point at which the odds of a given Russian device actually working are at their lowest, and this is likely to be corrected, baring collapse of the nation.

It's tempting to just play the odds... but even so, the expected costs are still likely to be civilization ending.

Side thought - in Planet of the Apes, there is no way a 2000 year old nuke (The Alpha-Omega Bomb) could ever actually work. You need the resources of an advanced technological nation-state to keep them viable.

> and this is likely to be corrected

I think you mean, unlikely?

I think now that the true state of corruption has come to light, crackdowns to correct this will happen, it will be harsh, but much effort will be put into reinvigorating the only effective deterrent left, nuclear weapons. There might even be a test pushing the limits of the test ban treaty to make sure they work, and everyone else knows it.

Do nuclear weapons paired with economic independence (or leverage) mean countries can have a blank check to have their way with neighbors?

Generally that is how it works. Which is how the concept of buffer states came to be.

Similarly, I remember reading that in terms of game theory, it’s optimal to only have two powers with nuclear weapons. Chances for instability increases with more agents added, especially of lower power due to compensation or posturing. Something like that.

He’s right about 9/11 and the “World-domination advocates” exploiting the event to expand the scope of the US response from self-defense (neutralizing Al Quaeda) to hegemony-expansion (invading Iraq, and subsequent regime-change efforts).

It’s unpleasant at best to see them again crawling out of the woodwork, after causing so much damage to the US, Iraq, and the world, not to mention fomenting both Putin and the CCP's current aggressive expansionary posture. They defined the "New World Order" for the next half-century at least, as less about order and more about power. And now US appeals to a "rules-based international order" is falling on deaf ears because of the neocons.

And the media propaganda machine ramping up war justification, where have I seen this before.

On the other hand, Ukraine is, unlike Iraq, already a democracy, being invaded by an autocracy. Russia’s real objective is most likely to control Ukraine’s newly discovered natural gas reserves and maintain Russia’s energy leverage over the democratic EU [1]. Allowing an autocracy to do both of those things is equally distasteful.

Kinzinger isn’t entirely wrong in his assessment that allowing Russian nuclear saber rattling to deter the West may encourage every other 2-bit autocracy to pursue nukes, but unfortunately that cat’s already out of the bag.

When Gadhafi gave up his nuke program and later was regime-changed and assassinated anyway, and when Trump unilaterally backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, that showed the world that the US won’t honor such agreements, and that acquiring nukes is the only effective measure of regime security.

Still, allowing Putin’s nuclear saber rattling to deter the West from defending 1) a fellow democracy from invasion, and 2) the EU’s independence from energy leverage/blackmail/extortion by an autocracy, will only embolden autocracies to do more of the same. Appeasement of strongmen has historically not worked out too well. They invariably interpret it as weakness, and double down.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE&t=9m

I don't think the EU is being extorted, exactly. It's simply that, for the countries that have done harsh sanctions on Russian gas, it's basically free for them: they weren't importing any anyway.

Germany has a real and significant dependence on Russian gas. It would actually have an economic effect if they sanctioned it tomorrow - companies would go bust. It would, however, be totally doable. It's not the case that it's a unbearable cost to pay, it's simply that it is a cost.

People make out that Russia has the EU over a barrel, but it's more the other way around them: energy is literally the most fungible input. Having higher energy costs is bad for your economy, but it's not nearly as bad as having your major export (gas) embargoed. It's not like they can just pick up all their pipelines and point them at China.

Just to revisit this 2 weeks later, even the European Commission President is now saying Russia is trying to blackmail the EU by cutting off energy supplies:

https://youtu.be/W-601_tkKyk

But you’re right this will ultimately hurt Russia more than the EU. EU will find other sources of energy, and Russia will lose a major revenue stream that they really can’t afford to lose.

Isn't this more or less Mearsheimer argument again? Some time ago I read McFaul's and Sestanovich's arguments against Mearsheimer and Mearsheimers reply [1]. Although I lean more against Mearsheimer arguments, he writes this in his reply:

> I did call NATO expansion "the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia's orbit and integrate it into the West."

> Yet I also emphasized that the strategy had two other "critical elements":

> EU expansion and democracy promotion.

So, no matter what side of the arguments you fall on, it becomes more or less: Russia (or Putin) sees democratic (or western) values in its vicinity as a threat, which it is willing to violently neutralize.

The question boils down to: Is Europe/EU, NATO or the U.S. willing to allow Russia to attack and overthrow sovereign countries, because it doesn't like them being or becoming democratic?

If the answer is no, which it (in this day and age) is, then war (cold or not) with Russia is inevitable in my opinion.

[1] https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Mosco...

Interesting debate. I do however wonder at what point does the ends not justify the means?

Imagining there is a continuity of situations where a "point" is reached seems wrong.

Climate activists have tried this line of argument and it doesn't work at all. The world is on fire any pain we endure today is a fraction of the expected pain in the future. Ok sure.

The lie is that the ends can be reached at all. Instead we will just have the means, the war.

The means, not the intent, produce the ends.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com