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Comment by qiskit | Hacker News Reader

> Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced.

Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes.

> To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

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> Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union

We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them).

With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

> Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2].

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...

> With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

Totally correct. It's impossible to talk of global peace when you know that 2 most malevolent political entities on the planet were not only let to live, but empowered by yesterday's victor, all knowing that internal elites of USSR, and PRC were burning with "Never forget USA!" It was totally the West repeating the folly of king Helu.

Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

We already seen that UN based security can work in nineties, when Russia, and China were made to lay cathartic.

If we can defeat the USSR 2.0, and PRC, we would have a very real shot at working global security system as was imagined by UN's forefathers.

>Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

Does global here mean "the US, Europe, Australia and Japan"? I followed this a bit, but it's concerning that you don't consider the US a malevolent entity. By numbers alone, the in the last 30 years the US has done the most harm to innocent civilians worldwide.

I read the GP a lot more differently, in that non-proliferation was a mistake and if you are a nation-state it's likely of utmost importance that you begin to build nukes in order to prevent Russia (if you are Ukraine), China (if you are Taiwan) or the US (if you are Iran, Palestine, Libya), for fucking your shit up.

I'm interested what numbers you're pulling that tell the story of the US doing more harm (define harm?) to innocent civilians versus, just the first example that comes to mind, the uyghur genocide.

It might make sense to integrate the effect.

Are aspects of US power malevolent? Absolutely.

Did US protected trade routes also bring billions out of poverty by letting the spice flow? Absolutely.

Are all countries flawed? Absolutely.

>"were not only let to live"

At that point Russia was choke full of nukes. How can you possibly not "let them live" without being annihilated in return.

>"UN based security can work"

Remind me when did UN security ever stop the US doing whatever they've decided to do.

> why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes

Partly because Ukraine never had nukes. They had Russian nukes on their soil, but no ability to use them. Letting Russia take them back was the only reasonable answer.

Also, it was hardly a guarantee that Ukraine was going to end up with a democratic government, could just as easily have been a string of dictators. We don't need yet more dictators-with-nukes.

Your arguing is a bit odd. You say that Ukraine had no abilities to use Russian nukes, but then in the 2nd paragraph you say -- hypothetically assuming that Ukraine would end up in a dictatorship -- that "we" (probably the western portion of the world?) "do not need yet more dictators-with-nukes".

But Ukrainians could not use these Russian nukes in the first place, so it would probably be better to let them keep these because they would end up not being able to use them anyway. I guess there is something missing :)

I think the GP is implying an "even if" between their two lines of argument.

On a side note, given enough time, they presumably could reverse-engineer plenty of bomb design secrets even if the permissive action links couldn't be circumvented. Permissive action links are insurance against maniac generals, rogue commanders, wealthy terrorists, etc., not against a decade or two of nation-state-funded reverse-engineering.

My understanding is that some of the PALs for two-point nuclear weapons will result in the wrong timing of the two initiations if the wrong code is used... resulting in a small dirty bomb instead of a thermonuclear blast. I presume reverse-engineering the correct timings for the two detonators is significantly easier than designing the weapon in the first place.

I would rather a hundred, a thousand, a million people die in conventional warfare repressed by brutal dictatorships than a single nuclear weapon get detonated in anger. When that starts, the death of billions is not far behind. Nuclear weapons are the first of the real short term man-made existential threats, and as long as anyone has them we have to try anything and everything to make sure they don't proliferate.

I would advocate for the existing ones being destroyed as well, but I think that cat is not going back in the bag. It does make one consider the other short term (and longer term) man-made existential threats and why we aren't frantically trying to keep those cats from emerging from their respective bags.

Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands.

The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.

Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet.

If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.

no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.

The reason is the very legitimate fear of a rogue nation with an unstable or autocratic government trying to use nuclear weapons as an element of international blackmail or to deter retaliation for its own military adventurism. Which is more or less exactly what we see happening with Russia right now, so the fear wasn't unfounded. I mean, if we could have gotten Russia to give up their bombs too, we would have preferred that.

As it happened, Ukraine turned out to be less of a risk than Russia. Which is unfortunate. But the logical calculus is pretty clear.

What about a mafia nation selling those assets to the highest bidder? I think that is what worried the US the most because it was more plausible.

I guess there was a fear that all those former-Soviet republics would turn into rogue states or end up selling them to terrorists or something. But surely Russia itself would be responsible enough? That was a bit of a misjudgement.

Most of the world would much rather no Russian nukes but didn't have the power to get that.

Ukraine found out they basically could afford to maintain the nukes. So the next best thing was getting an agreement that the worlds major powers would not respect its sovereignty and territory. Even Russia signed on to this agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

They were Russian nukes. Yes, they were sited on Ukraine land, but Russia had the keys and controlled them. Ensuring they were disposed of was a decent option.

Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

> Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

You keep forgeting that Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state like Belarus until the first Orange Revolution took place. Saakashvili tried it and lost because Russia would not allow a former militarised satellite which they do not control in its proximity. That's part of the reason for the Ukraine invasion: they would rather start a war or several wars than lose control over these countries. Kazahstan's Tokayev is playing the right card while Russia is being busy in Ukraine: diversifying, sharing and reforming power rather than militarising. I'd really like to see one or several trans Caspian gas pipelines to Azerbaidjan, Georgia and Turkey or through the Black Sea, allowing Kazahstan to sell gas to the EU. Militarising is an option when Russia grows weaker and Western money flows in your former Soviet satellite. It was also an option after '91, until the early 2000s, but the US was being busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Central Asia and the Caucaz to a lesser extent is the key to further weakening Russia.

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