Hacker News Reader

Comment by sys32768 | Hacker News Reader

This just a few days after Joe Biden authorizes Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles in Russia.

How many of Russia's ~5k nukes are these countries willing to take hits from in order to protect Ukraine?

France and the UK have enough nukes to ensure MAD with Russia. It is highly unlikely that the US would stay neutral in a nuclear exchange between the EU and Russia.

Country division amongst the superpowers political spheres was acceptable in the early cold war as both sides maintained large conventional armies capable of waging a painful non-nuclear war, and both sides were hesitant to engage in a conflict larger than the one they had just exited (WW2).

Accepting that a nuclear power can perform any action they want to except against another nuclear power is a dangerous road. The more likely outcome of which is that neither side makes the launch decision.

What's the alternative? Hand the world to Russia? If you have nukes you're allowed to conquer the world for fear of retaliation? Sounds like an equally dark timeline.

Diplomacy.

But war is a racket.

How well has diplomacy worked so far? What kind of diplomatic steps do you specificallyh propose?

That's the problem with such people. They think it is a simple problem that can be solved easily. And pretend that when i.e Scholz and Putin were on the phone last week, they were talking about the weather and potato salad recipes. Because, as you know, it is such a simple problem. That russia has commited large parts of its industry to the war effords and if there was peace tomorrow, would need lots of money to transition back, probably never even crossed their mind.

Apologies for not being charitable but the main problem with "such people" is that they argue in bad faith and will say anything which they think will help Russian interests.

There just exist some cases which you cannot argue in good faith (inb4: yes, Russia is obviously not the only one and yes, West also supports and supported many indefensible atrocities but no, it just doesn't follow that the West should let Putin get away just because of this).

Bullies don't care about diplomacy.

If you expect Russia to be willing to find an agreement that does not restrict Ukraine's freedom or take its territories, you are wrong, or such a war would have never begun in the first place.

Russia is not interested in diplomacy.

"War is diplomacy by other means" - Clausewitz

Russia cant use nukes, nor can they directly attack Nato. They threaten this as a means of their propaganda because it works.

The current situation is Russia cant fully mobilize its population (hence NK). Russia is going all in to the extent it can with what it has, hoping to either break Ukraine will or sue for more favorable peace id guess. Allowing longer term weapons for Ukraine is a gamble by west that it slows Russia again (bleeding them out faster) without impacting russian support (eg raising viability of full russian mobilization). Thats my guesses anyways.

Putin knows that if he were to try it there'll be a nuke dropped directly on him.

>How many of Russia's ~5k nukes are these countries willing to take hits from in order to protect Ukraine?

yeah, we should just let Putin take Ukraine then when they come from Moldova we should let genocide that country too because nukes and cheap gas, and when they come from Poland and Baltics we should also let him have it, Putin has nukes and Westerners can just watch Netflix to feel better.

I understand that it is normal to be egotistical, but Putin took parts of Georgia, took Crimea , started separatists movement in Ukraine, it is obvious that just bending over and letting Putin screw you in the ass will not be enough, he will want more, you need to hit him in the balls.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com