Prime Minister of Poland says country must pursue nuclear weapons | Hacker News Reader

Prime Minister of Poland says country must pursue nuclear weapons

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This is not a surprise. One of the main points of NATO in the first place is to prevent nuclear proliferation. If the US is going to close its "nuclear umbrella", all of our allies are going to make their own.

Also, if people are not aware, Poland has the highest % GDP dedicated to military in the Europe, outspending even the US. Their military has bought and stocked up on every single advanced weapon system. It cannot be understated how badly they were treated the USSR and how much they don't want to dragged into the Russian sphere again should Ukraine fall.

Also the isolationist argument "it's cheaper for USA to exit the long-term commitments to enforce the world order and hide behind the beautiful 2 oceans" is akin to let's not pay the cops to patrol the streets and let people buy weapons to protect themselves.

So USA would get less security, less help from their NATO partners and less power projection over the world because they have limped NATO.

Idiocracy...

We've seen several countries give up nuclear weapons & lose their sovereignty to countries with nukes later on. We haven't yet seen a country with nukes lose its sovereignty. Without reliable guarantees from multi-national alliances with nukes the individual countries will want nukes. It's reasonable to assume at this point that nuclear weapons are required to maintain sovereignty, so we should expect substantial nuclear proliferation.

This is huge, and confusing. Poland doesn't have any nuclear reactors, or nuclear expertise of any kind. The latency to obtain nuclear weapons—unless some allied country literally gifts them—would presumably be extremely long. AFAIK it also doesn't have long-range missiles, nor any missile industry: hence no credible, modern delivery mechanism.

Poland is a signatory of the international nonproliferation treaty, although that's merely symbolic because anyone can exit with just 90 days' notice[0].

Less symbolically, Poland has a Section 123 treaty agreement with the United States[1], which obligates nonproliferation and is tied to literally tens of billions[2] in ongoing commercial nuclear power investments. Granted that in the current political climate, anything could happen; during the ancien régime, this action would (I understand) have triggered automatic US sanctions on nuclear technology—something that'd be stupidly expensive with the amount of nuclear reactors Poland is currently buying from the USA (and from Korea, another 123 signatory).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

[1] https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/123-agreements-peaceful-cooperat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_reactors_in_Euro...

Ukraine could easily help them. They have the people and technical know-how.

Poland does have one nuclear reactor, although it is a small 30 MW research reactor and not a power plant.

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

Are treaties with the US worth anything? Ukraine, trade war, ...

Sorry, I wish it wouldn't be such a bleak outlook. With DT and El Moron siding with Russia, I think Poland's approach could be the necessary kick in the butt the whole EU needs to get they sh*t together and _not_ depend on the US.

It's a classic example of "The best time to do it was yesterday, the second best time to do it is today."

We're on Trump's second term, the countries facing Russia would be insane to rely on us or respect agreements with us.

I'm fairly sure that you can make nuclear weapons if you have money and a few universities with good physics departments. I don't doubt that Poland has these things.

France has muttered about making its nukes available to other European countries. France also has the world’s largest nuclear reprocessing plant, and actually burns plutonium in its reactors (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcoule_Nuclear_Site), so is in a good position to produce more warheads quickly, if required.

> Less symbolically, Poland has a Section 123 treaty agreement with the United States[1], which obligates nonproliferation and is tied to literally tens of billions[2] in ongoing commercial nuclear power investments.

I mean, Poland has another treaty with the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty), but, y’know…

> something that'd be stupidly expensive with the amount of nuclear reactors Poland is currently buying from the USA

Those are now not due to start til _2040_, so I’d be surprised if much money has changed hands yet. Other nuclear vendors are available (notably, again, France).

Like, this is all obviously very extreme stuff, but if we are seeing a US re-alignment towards Russia, which, well, is kind of how things are looking, then, y’know, it’s an extreme situation.

I don't find your technial arguments particularly compelling.

The US hired a couple college grads to do the Nth Country Project, to build a bomb. In 1964. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817514 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2025-0...

Sure, ICBM's are big and expensive to build. I'm not sure that Poland feels compelled to have such range, at least from the start. This also depends on how big a bomb they feel they need, and how miniaturizable the bomb is. Maybe you want to go bigger, but the US built the considerable B54 portable nuclear munitions in 1963, weighing ~50 lbs. A medium sized drone of today could carry that quite a long range.

I really wish this was unnecessary. The US abandoning allies and siding with the Russians is below my worst expectations, and I expected a good amount of this egregious nation destroying shit.

I would like to see Canada arm itself with Nuclear Weapons. It is the only guarantee the USA/Russia will respect its territorial integrity.

North Korea has been the perfect example, and soon to be Iran, when it comes to securing yourself from invasion. Ukraine has been a lesson for the entire world, Nuclear Weapons are your only guarantee.

What a sad state of affairs really. Using nukes on your closest neighbour ? I understand why it is a deterrent but man, what happened in the past 6 months that we are now seeing news like these...?

I'm kidding. We know exactly what, I mean WHO, happened.

North Korea and Iran are highly isolated regimes. Nearly all other countries are NPT signatories and can't just up and start assembling nukes in a basement without effectively dismantling the entire non-proliferation framework. It's unlikely Canada (or Poland) has any intent of doing that.

Nothing is stopping them from leaving the treaty. If it means your survival, it is a no brainer. Depending on other nations to honor their agreements for protection, etc is a joke. You have the US President openly speaking about annexing other nations and joining hands with Russia, Iran and North Korea. If that isn't enough of a warning than I don't know what is.

Nothing is stopping them from leaving the treaty.

Clearly, a lot of things are stopping them from leaving the treaty.

> can't just up and start assembling nukes in a basement without effectively dismantling the entire non-proliferation framework

Genuinely curious: what reason do you see they have to avoid this dismantling?

The fact that it's been reasonably (if imperfectly) effective for a very long time and statistically speaking, nobody is really looking forward to a universe in which, say, border or trade disputes turn into nuclear brinkmanship and the risk of proliferation to non-state actors is greatly increased. These agreements exist and continue to exist because the parties find them beneficial. I don't think a bit of ill-conceived smack talk from a Polish PM changes that.

I mean, Israel, South Africa, India and Pakistan did it, and the world didn’t end.

The NPT is arguably a relic of a world in which NATO was considered reliable. We may not be in that world anymore. If Putin invades Poland, will the US help? Or will Putin wave the piss tape in Trump’s face and bring him to heel? This is not as clear-cut as one might like it to be.

I didn't say anything about the world ending and none of these countries were NPT signatories. South Africa joined eventually.

We don't need to do this directly, but any attempt is high stakes. Cuba armed itself by proxy and while it has had some form of "independence" at what cost?

I wish it wasn't necessary, but it is.

You can't rely on other countries.

Be good if Europe could produce a shared deterrent, under article 5-like auspices; the more independent actors you have with nuclear capabilities, the more likely they are to be used.

This is the inevitable consequence of the USA not paying it's debts in terms of the Budapest Memorandum anymore. Other countries know they cannot rely on non-military-action-binding treaty arrangements with the USA. And the only other protection is via nuclear weapons (which Ukraine gave up in exachange for protection in the Budapest Memorandum (and other protection agreements with France and China).

Of course, there are obvious bad regimes which are more or less left alone because they have them and obvious good ones which are destroyed because they don’t.

Bad and good as defined by the aggression they express towards neighbors and their own populations.

The sad irony is war can be very profitable for those in the right places.

Time to invest in companies that produce uranium? What are the ingredients that will be needed for all this re-proliferation, and which companies are in the supply chain?

Evidently also planning military training for all men…

here's a bbc article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy83r93l208o

> The prime minister said his government was also "carefully examining" France's proposal to include Europe under its nuclear umbrella.

> "I would like to know first of all in detail what it means in terms of the authority over these weapons," he said.

> Tusk pointed out Ukraine was invaded after it got rid of its own nuclear arsenal, adding Warsaw would like to acquire its own nuclear weapons, however remote a possibility that may be.

> "Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal, that is beyond doubt. In any case the road to that would be very long and there would have to be a consensus too," he said.

also, fuck trump and fuck anyone who thought letting him wreck the modern world was a good idea because it'd make them richer or make it easier to harm groups they don't like.

I'd like echo that statement. We are all less safe because of these assholes. This will escalate now, more and more countries will realize they cannot rely on the good 'ol USA anymore, and will arm themselves. MAGA has done more in the last 3 weeks to cause WW III than anything done in the last 50 years. It occurs to me again: Something that takes 1000 good people decades to build can be destroyed overnight by idiots. Fuck these guys to eternity.

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