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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

>"PPP's primary purpose is living standard comparisons"

Which is the only thing that matters to people.

>"When in a war, you are buying ammunition and weaponry with USD, not PPP. When there's a energy shock, you are importing oil and gas with USD, not PPP. When you are in a AI race, you are buying GPUs with USD, not PPP."

Thank you for confirming the purpose of USD - make every other country into a servant.

Practically speaking nobody has attacked the EU country. Rather quite the opposite. EU also happens to have their own weaponry. And in a worst case they can just produce whole bunch of nukes and declare simple policy: do not attack us or else you will be nuked.

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> do not attack us or else you will be nuked

This sentiment has been expressed a few times in this thread now. Is it really true?

From my understanding nuclear war at any scale will be devastating for the entire planet, not just the aggressor. So the threat of nuclear retaliation hinges on the aggressor believing the defender to be either be suicidal a or mad.

The default assumption of people being rational means it should be quite safe to attack despite talks of nuclear retaliation.

There are very well studied escalation scenarios where high altitude strikes, acting basically as EMPs, with good meteorological information taken into account to manage fallout, can mean nukes can come into play and be effective as defense. Anyways the way things are going we have a non-zero chance of testing the hypothesis.

> From my understanding nuclear war at any scale will be devastating for the entire planet, not just the aggressor. So the threat of nuclear retaliation hinges on the aggressor believing the defender to be either be suicidal a or mad.

It kind of depends on which countries you're talking about.

The US and Russia have enough nukes that if they're involved, that's definitely true.

But what about Pakistan? Or Israel? There are several nuclear powers who would have a hard time devastating a single country, not to mention the entire world.

> what about Pakistan

First source I found now: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1...

> the climatic effects of the smoke produced by an India-Pakistan nuclear war would not be confined to the subcontinent, or even to Asia. Those effects would be enormous and global in scope.

Salami tactics puts you in a losing position if your only option is nukes. Your enemy will play the Hungry game of buying off politicians and importing as many loyalists as they can in your country. Then they'll "democratically" vote in authoritarianism. Then they'll start on the next slice.

> they can just produce whole bunch of nukes

That might be a bit difficult with no uranium reserves.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

People like you, is why Europe passed on global leadership to the USA.

Ukraine can be burning on your front door, and you still think EU is safe. Guess what, EU is safe only because of NATO. Russia has attacked basically every neighboring country in Europe that is not in NATO.

Nukes don't work against salami slicing. Russia takes Estonia tomorrow, are you going to throw a nuke against Russia? No, you'll won't risk annihilation for Estonia, so you'll ignore it. So the next day Russia takes Latvia. And so on so forth. The only way of fighting salami slicing is applying proportional response, which requires a conventional army.

Also, Ukraine living standards isn't very high right now, regardless what their PPP is, and getting conquered by Russia, means you get used as battle-slaved for the next conquest. This snowball tactic was innovated by the Mongols, using the conquered people as cannon fodder for the next war.

> Russia has attacked basically every neighboring country in Europe that is not in NATO.

That's not true, Russia has participated or initiated the following wars in the greater European area (i.e. excluding Syria for example, but including the Caucasus) after the USSR collapsed:

* Georgia (a couple of times)

* South Ossetia

* Abhkazia

* Transnitria (part of Moldova)

* Chechnya (also a couple of times)

* Dagestan

* Ukraine

Mostly,these were local conflicts inherited from the USSR or border region disputes, not country invasions like in Ukraine.

Russia did not invade, or threaten to invade, any of its main European neighbours:

* Finland (which only became NATO last year)

* Norway and the Baltic states (members of NATO)

* Azerbajan

* Turkey (border by sea)

A lot of bad things are happening already, no need to make things up.

Belarus is defacto under occupation ever since 2020.

In any case, OP said "basically every neighbor" and you're doing a victory lap because only about half of their neighbors have been invaded.

Belarus is the closest ally of Russia and has a defense pact with them. Saying Belarus is under Russian occupation is like saying NATO countries are under USA occupation because it keeps bases and bombs there.

Rarely do "defense pacts" include the staging of offensive invasions from the territory of your allies.

Or stealing every piece of military equipment that isn't nailed down for use in an offensive war in which the allied nation isn't a party to.

A large part of NATO's deterrence is the same kind of "we promise to nuke Russia if they invade Estonia".

And obviously, without NATO, a EU defense force would quickly spring up (including possibly the UK), and more money would be put into all kinds of weapons.

Yes Minister had 'funny' skit back in the day about Salami Tactics demonstrating this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg-UqIIvang

>"People like you, is why Europe passed on global leadership to the USA."

Forget to take your meds?

> Russia has attacked basically every neighboring country in Europe that is not in NATO.

What are you talking about? Russia hasn't invaded anyone in Europe except Ukraine since WW2

Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been invaded once more by Russia decades after the WW2 invasion (1956 & 1968), even if you do not count the Caucasian countries as European.

Before that, there were threats to invade Tito's Yugoslavia, but those have been not accomplished.

Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Moldova, Ukraine, arguably Belarus in 2020.

Plus an attempted coup in Montenegro.

What others said + East Germany in 1953 + the threats to Poland in 1980.

The photos from the former, in particular, are practically iconic.

How is it possible to miss this history?

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