DoD Adjusts Nuclear Deterrence Strategy as Nuclear Peer Adversaries Escalate | Hacker News Reader

DoD Adjusts Nuclear Deterrence Strategy as Nuclear Peer Adversaries Escalate

defense.gov

13 pointsironyman17 comments

The members of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continue to believe that the nuclear threat is as great as it has ever been: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072256/doomsday-clock-d...

Unfortunately, as we've seen with Russia, the alternative to having a credible deterrence strategy is being vulnerable to nuclear blackmail.

Give Ukraine all the tools that are needed to win this war. Putin's regime will collapse, sending a clear message to other dictators. The policy conducted by th West since 2008 war in Georgia has clearly failed - in 2014 with Crimea and in 2022 with the full scale invasion. How long are we going to idle?

I agree. Historically Russia has only respected force. Showing them enough force is the best way to encourage them towards serious negotiations.

Only warmongering blood thirsty chipmunks can argue for what you are arguing here.

no worries mate, our new President is a President of Peace, unlike our previous President that won a Nobel Peace Prize. “Defense” budget is about to be slashed by 95% and most military personnel will be honorably discharged. Like few weeks after the inauguration

You don't seem to understand the Ukrainian perspective here.

So pretty straight from one Captain I know: in 1991 the Budapest agreement had Ukraine relinquish its nukes in exchange for security guarantees from both Russia and the US, amongst others. Clearly these guarantees were lies so let's grab some plutonium from the plants we got, and make imprecisely-yielding trucks to save our motherland. This is the escalation we want to avoid, chipmunk Putin and his mafia have a lot more to lose with their decades of graft, I fear cornered Uk generals with enough bullet-in-the-head short-term POW sons and Bucha-burn-after-use daughters to their name may have much less to hesitate for.

In 1991 the Budapest agreement had Ukraine relinquish its nukes in exchange for security guarantees from both Russia and the US, amongst others.

Actually the Budapest Memorandum (from 1994, not 1991) explicitly avoided any mention of security guarantees as such, which has been seen as one of its major shortcomings.

It asked that the signatories respect each others' borders, which was in itself significant. But this by itself does not amount to any kind of security guarantee.

What tools do you propose to give them?

> in light of enhanced nuclear capabilities of China and Russia and possible lack of nuclear arms control agreements after February, said Johnson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction policy

nice lie, right there.

but world has changed, now you can just ask intelligent AI simple question "who tore up nuclear agreements and when ?"

> Agreement: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, was signed in 2015 by Iran and six world powers (U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany).

> Action: In May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the agreement, citing concerns that it was insufficient to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and did not address Iran's missile program or regional activities.

> Agreement: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by the United States and the Soviet Union, banned ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

> Action: In 2019, the United States formally withdrew from the treaty under President Trump, claiming that Russia had been violating the terms by deploying banned missiles.

> These include the B61-13 gravity bomb, delivered by aircraft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb

Finally some good news for Boeing!

> Also, the U.S. remains committed to a safe, secure and reliable nuclear deterrent, he said.

really deranged warmongers you have there in D.C., there are no escape, only https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

The entire point of MAD is ensuring that no one ever kicks off a nuclear war. But I guess in internet logic, stopping a war from happening is "warmongering."

it is warmongering if country in question is the one who caused war in the first place.

MAD doesn't have a point, MAD is a fact observed, not an actively sought state (it is, in fact, the result of opponents with sufficiently similar capacity each seeking unilateral overmatch capacity, and neither being willing to sacrifice its own total destruction capability while the other retains it.)

MAD also assumes a level of rationality that I am starting to doubt exists in many world leaders...

Nonsense. The concept of MAD had been discussed in the literature for nearly a century before the invention of nuclear weapons.

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