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Comment by motorest | Hacker News Reader

> both have nukes and that acts as a strong deterrent for both of them not to escalate (which they didnt).

Your original point was that nukes prevented attacks. India vs Pakistan rejects your hypothesis.

You then proceeded to move the goalpost from "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" to "yeah countries with nukes get attacked, but attacks don't escalate" which is also an absurd argument to make.

It's a particularly silly point to make in light of India Vs Pakistan because it was described as an electoral stunt to save face, which means nuclear nations still attack themselves even for the flimsiest reasons.

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> is also an absurd argument to make.

It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments. Nukes certainly act as deterrent for escalating a war. yes , attacks will exist , but we are not escalating with russia for a reason. you are being pedantic , but the argument for deterrence still stands strong.

> It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments.

I agree, simplistic comments on the line of "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" are silly and don't pass the smell test. Don't you agree?

Well then you should explain how it doesn't make sense. Focusing on how he didn't mention the case where both countries have nuclear weapons is not convincing.

If neither India nor Pakistan had nukes, they would be at war today. Their nukes saved a lot of lives.

So far… trading a more devastating consequence for a decreased likelihood on average will always appear to work until it doesn’t. There may become a time when the use of nukes is tolerated and expected and the only way to win a conflict is to carpet nuke your enemy.

The whole point of MAD is that you can't prevent a second strike from also eliminating your own country. This was all worked out 70-80 years ago.

As a peer mentioned, nukes not being used has nothing to do with them not being tolerated. It's all about there being no win condition. A single modern nuke can wipe a city out of existence. Even more so when you consider that most are on rockets that split into multiple warheads both to increase destruction and to sidestep any sort of missile defenses. Scale that up and you can wipe entire countries out of existence.

If you enter into a scenario against a nuclear opponent where they go nuclear (which you going nuclear would certainly do) then you may well defeat them, but they're simultaneously also defeat you. This is a big part of the reason that Russia is so paranoid about the US surrounding it with military bases. The only possible way to treat to sidestep this problem is with a massive decapitation strike where you try to nuke your enemy into oblivion before they have any chance to respond with their own nukes. Realistically, it's probably impossible, but but it remains the Achille's Heel of MAD / mutually assured destruction. And drones/internal strike issues are certainly going to be causing some consternation.

Well, there's also missile defense, but I think that's a dead end. We're talking about the offensive goal being to shoot a bullet at the side of a massive barn, and the defensive goal being to shoot down that bullet. It seems impossible to imagine a state of technology between near peers where the latter becomes easier than the former.

Others have explained why MAD has nothing to do with "tolerating" the use of nukes, and is instead more about game theory.

But let me put it in familiar worlds from pop culture:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

(Because Iran doesn't have nukes, it's currently being forced into playing and making losing moves.)

I completely understand MAD and game theory.

What I’m saying precisely is that quite often things will appear to be one way for a long time even if the underlying premise is wrong. E.g. the chicken who thinks the farmer is nice because the farmer feeds, houses, and provides safety until the inevitable untimely end for the chicken.

Similar situations which are assumed to be impossible have risks pushed right up to the edge until it becomes inevitable. Sure Pakistan and India narrowly averted this time but what if they didn’t. Take for example the concept that US housing market couldn’t crash simultaneously across the US, this enabled cheap debt which pushed the market to the edge until one day it went over the edge.

There is additionally the problem of victory disease, it looks like you’re winning right up until you fail.

There is a survivability bias, we wouldn’t be discussing the viability of MAD had it not worked out thus far.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon they’ll be able to avoid being invaded while being able to constantly needle Israel, to the point the survival of Israel would be at stake. Similar to how Israel is needling Iran now but with proxies. At that point Israel must make a choice, peacefully collapse or escalate and I’m confident they’ll escalate. I don’t think it’s a question of if but a question of when, once the threshold has been crossed the once unthinkable becomes routine.

Additionally the inaction of a strong adversary is often seen incorrectly as sign of weakness, but it is the cornered rats that lashes out. We can cross Russia’s and Chinas red lines all day every day, right up until they think they’re a cornered rat and then we can’t. How confident can we really be that we know exactly where that limit is. Because the bellicose are more often promoted the people marking these assessments are more likely to have an overly optimistic on the location of that limit. It appears to me China and Russia have a wait and see approach to the US which appears to be in terminal decline, and yet again the west is taking that as a sign of weakness.

When you have morons in charge not even MAD can save you.

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