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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there's any question at this point that it's in Nordic self interest to develop a nuclear deterrent. This has also become true for other regions in the world.

This is all a horrible development for the overall future of humanity, but it's the world we live in now. At a minimum hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned off from more beneficial uses over the coming decades, and the risk of major accidents will increase. The worst change is of course the fact that the odds of a complete societal collapse have increased dramatically.

Almost all of the world's nukes are controlled by aging old dictators or aspiring dictators who are surrounded by sycophants and treat competence as much less important than personal loyalty. Geopolitical risks are only going to increase as these rulers become more erratic and demented.

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> I don't think there's any question at this point that it's in Nordic self interest to develop a nuclear deterrent.

Yes, it definitely is.

> The worst change is of course the fact that the odds of a complete societal collapse have increased dramatically.

A nuke means that anyone who wants to invade you needs to price in a total loss of their largest city as a possible outcome. That is a great disincentive, one that Ukraine probably wishes it had against Russia.

> and the risk of major accidents will increase.

I don't think that's reasonable to say about a bunch of countries getting their first nuke. The concern should be more with countries like the US and Russia that have so many nukes, which they can't possibly use effectively, and don't have the ability to properly maintain.

If every western country had exactly one nuke, the world would probably be much safer than if the US has all of them.

> A nuke means that anyone who wants to invade you needs to price in a total loss of their largest city as a possible outcome. That is a great disincentive, one that Ukraine probably wishes it had against Russia.

It's even more complex than that. If Ukraine responded conventional war with nukes, it can be sure Russia would retaliate with even more nukes, practically extinguishing their statehood.

The equilibrium is reached when the exchange is equally devastating, so the only winning move is attacking first, and only if the attacked won't be able to retaliate. The Cold War never ended, just warmed a little, because it doesn't exist (yet) a guaranteed way to avoid an all-out nuclear retaliation.

That the Cold war was cold is also a joke. It was full, full, full of hot conflicts with client states.

What it seems to have deterred is two major states warring directly.

that was the etymology, given the world we were emerging was one where major world powers came directly to blows amongst themselves rather than through the countless small-scale, regional proxy wars we saw over the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Conventional proxy wars are significantly cooler than all-out thermonuclear war.

Even as the aggressor, you don't want to be nuked even if it might warrant a response.

Russia didn’t start this war with the intention of getting into a protracted slugging match over 20% of Ukraine - they got into for the whole thing.

Luckily Ukraine beat back the drive on Kyiv. But if Russia’s success metric at the outset of the war (the complete capitulation and conquest of Ukraine) carried a credible risk of losing Moscow or even smaller cities closer to the front would they have been anywhere near as likely to have made such an attempt?

Russia did not start this war after a rational and accurate assessment of reality.

Why do you believe they would rationally and accurately assess nuclear war probabilities?

The entire problem is that these leaders are fucking nuts, and surrounded by people who cannot defect from sycophancy to burst the stupidity bubble and bring people back to reality.

What would have saved Ukraine is actual support.

Arguably what would have been Ukraine's best bet is if they had substantial independent oil reserves that they could not tap alone. The USA would have "liberated" them years ago. Hell, Trump is literally going this direction now, demanding "mineral rights" to do what we should be doing already.

Re-read what you wrote. That's exactly what this was is about: who gets to control a colony. And from that angle, the US went from having 0% of Ukraine as its colony to having 75%, including all mineral rights. At this point continuing the war is too expensive, which is why the US and Russia want to just stop. Europe keeps jamming up the gears though because they got a terrible deal.

Why just western countries? Let the entire world function under this same system of threat/protection. Why should it only be limited to your side?

It's not up to me. So I'm not "letting" or not "letting" anyone do anything.

I was stating what I believe to be a true counter-factual. If every western country had 1 nuke, the world would be safer than if a single country has all the nukes.

The west is also not "my side". I have no stake in most western countries, and their success or failure is not something I feel as part of my day-to-day. I'm glad there is more than one, so if something goes wrong I can go to another one.

The west gets special treatment because it is filled with prosperous democracies. Democracies are relatively stable, and rarely do things outside their Overton windows, like launching a nuclear weapon unprovoked. Prosperity is what makes people peaceful. Prosperous people have more to lose. No one in the west wants to backslide towards a state of nature because an invasion or unprovoked conflict went the wrong way.

You should travel more. Your view on what prosperity looks like just might change.

I am not convinced that the likes of Putin or Trump would care about the total destruction of their largest city, so long as they weren't there at the time.

Longterm klingons dont go to space, they goto heaven. Tribalist warrior cultures do not survive the nuclear age .

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