Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

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The invasion of Ukraine had a curious effect on me. Before, when I read about the 50s and some (US) generals advocating for a nuclear first strike against Soviet Russia, I was dumbfounded. How could military leaders be so fucking stupid? How could someone remotely intelligent even contemplate a nuclear exchange, let alone a first strike?

Nowadays, the apparent incompetence of the Russian army, compared with the apparent utter irrationality of the Russian leadership got me thinking. Assuming that Russia loses the next big battle and ends up in the defensive, it's totally possible that the Russian leadership decides to deploy tactical nukes in an attempt to "escalate to deescalate". Such a scenario can very easily lead to a NATO-Russia war and consequently to a large-scale nuclear exchange. Hence, a nuclear first strike doesn't look so outlandish anymore. After all, the incompetence of the Russian army has been proven, so maybe their second strike would be somehow survivable.

It's an odd train of thoughts, but presented with the facts of Russia's irrational invasion of Ukraine and its utter incompetence in military strategy, it's hard to argue that it's not at least reasonable.

The logic is simple, post WW2, the US was the only one with the bomb and could have secured a monopoly on power, but it didn't and here we are. In Einstein's biography, I found out he was a proponent of all nations ceding their military power to a single entity like the UN, but obviously this didn't and wouldn't happen since it would end the idea of sovereignty. Clearly though we will never have world security unless something like this happens. Even if we get through this crisis, it will only be a matter of time before another arises (maybe China, India, Pakistan etc.).

As recently as last year I have read people proclaiming that war was "obsolete" because it was too expensive because we are too economically intertwined, but apparently this is not a big enough of a deterrent for some leaders, so again we can never count on this idea again, it was naive.

> The logic is simple, post WW2, the US was the only one with the bomb and could have secured a monopoly on power, but it didn't and here we are.

How? The nuclear umbrella makes sense as a defensive strategy: you can't advance when entire divisions can be destroyed by nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense as an offensive strategy on the operational level. It might work on the strategic level, but that would be such a horrible war crime you would essentially throw away any chance of maintaining popular legitimacy.

> As recently as last year I have read people proclaiming that war was "obsolete" because it was too expensive because we are too economically intertwined, but apparently this is not a big enough of a deterrent for some leaders, so again we can never count on this idea again, it was naive.

You might be right about this, but I'm not yet writing it off. So far, it seems the most affected countries are not as integrated as the others, like Sri Lanka, and Pakistan (of course them more so than Sri Lanka).

When it hits an economically integrated country with power, then we'll see what happens.

Looking back with a purely amoral, realpolitik perspective perhaps at the end of WW2 the US should have leveraged it's temporary monopoly on nuclear weapons to conquer the USSR and impose a true Pax Americana on the entire world? There were a few political and military leaders at the time who advocated exactly that but they were seen as fringe warmongers and no one else wanted to attack an erstwhile ally. Would the world be better or worse off today if we had followed that path? I don't presume to know the answer but it's interesting to speculate in an alternate history sense.

That proposal is not realistic. The U.S. had a very small number of nuclear weapons available. If I remember correctly, the number remained in the single digits for several years after 1945. To "conquer the USSR" would have required thousands of nuclear weapons, and they were not available nor was it possible to make that many. And regarding a non-nuclear war, the U.S. was pretty tired of fighting by the end of WW2.

This invasion of Ukraine has had a different effect on me, and that is that the level of incompetence displayed by Russia's armed forces is staggering and leaves me wondering how Russia at this point could launch an overseas war (nuclear or conventional) against the United States at all.

The amount of technology that must go right and logistics involved to successfully deliver a nuclear weapon to a foreign overseas country is enormously difficult. I now seriously wonder if Russia is actually capable of delivering 10% of their first strike weapons to the United States in an attack.

Please, please do not underestimate anyone. Let's remember that it is Russia who successfully puts astronauts up in space on like daily basis (to paint a picture). They are the only nation who has constant human presence in space for the last 35 or so years. To think they are not capable of maintaining their nuclear arsenal and hitting targets is very naive.

Let's be objective here. Ukraine is the second largest country (by area) and seventh largest (by population) in Europe. They have a powerful and well trained army with extensive combat experience in the last 8 years. They have strong dug lines on the front and fortified lines around and in largest cities.

This war has also made me change my perspective on working on weapons, etc. I've always been more of a "how could you justify spending your life working on weapons?" person, but after Russia invaded and started a needless war, I've been thankful that the US and others have been able to provide weapon systems for Ukraine to defend itself. I wish we lived in a world where weapons development was unnecessary but as long as madmen like Putin can single-handedly order a senseless invasion, we obviously need to be well armed.

Tactical nukes are indeed the big worry. By the way people talk, I don't think most people appreciate the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Tactical nuclear weapons aren't "end of the world" (but we certainly benefit from collectively pretending that they are!). The use of tactical nuclear weapons would fall right in line with Russia's apparent goal in Ukraine - turn it into a destroyed shithole incapable of economic development ("neutrality"). Use of tactical nukes would trigger NATO Article 4, but it seems that Russia actually wants to go to war with EU/US ("NATO") to justify their struggle (analogous to NK's "Juche"), and so I'd think we'd still be left with the same calculus regarding escalation to strategic nukes.

Unfortunately the only workable strategy seems to be containment and hoping the wheels come off domestically ("SU 2.0"). This doesn't mean we should heed Putler's boasting about his phallic red button in response to any aid to Ukraine, but it does mean a long period of watching genocide and other organized crimes against humanity while waiting for those wheels to work themselves off.

Using nukes at all is an escalation. Not something you want to roll the dice on given the scale of destruction and the window of time in which things would go very downhill.

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