That is assuming nuclear war breaks out with zero warning. There is usually a build up to wars that could involve ramping up production of a nuclear arsenal before any nuclear weapons are actually used.
What type of warning do you expect to see? We currently have a war in Ukraine involving between 2-4 of the major nuclear powers depending on how you want to count them (Russia, US, UK, China). Russia is bleeding heavily and it is hard to tell how close they are to some sort of internal crisis or collapse into groupthink by the military leaders. There have probably been Able Archer style near misses and we could have a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis without much changing. China is building up its nuclear arsenal and the political positioning in APAC suggests that a US-China war is on the cards.
If we escalated in to full-scale nuclear war this July that'd be unexpected but we're way past 0 warning. There are lots of warnings. In terms of raw risk the last few years might be the biggest risk of a nuclear war breaking out that the species has ever faced.
Maybe we aren't at 0 warning at the moment, but if there is a spectrum from 0 warning to imminent, we are close enough to 0 that the distinction doesn't really matter. The US, UK, and China are not actively fighting in Ukraine and even if they were, this wouldn't be the first time these countries have directly fought each other in a proxy war in the nuclear age. So unless you think the Russian military personnel that would actually carry out a full scale attack on the West would prefer destroying civilization to losing in Ukraine, I would expect some type of escalation beyond the position we have been in for the better part of the last 80 years.
“Civilization destruction” isn’t a realistic scenario and I think people need to get over that. It’s not the 1980s. It’s almost certain what would actually happen is one or two pop off in a conflict zone like Ukraine and then nukes start getting used tactically like conventional weapons.
The larger issue is once the “nuclear taboo” is broken nation states will start using them. Nukes aren’t magic, they’re just really big bombs. Most likely the smaller ones are more practical to deliver and will be used on military targets (Bunker busting, destroying fortifications, etc). It wouldn’t play out like Mad Max but basically WWII but with small nukes and regional missile defense systems playing a huge role.
>but basically WWII but with small nukes and regional missile defense systems playing a huge role
So a total war scenario, but with multi megaton nuclear weapons? That sounds civilization ending to me.
“There was a strong wind that night and as I came out of the shelter, all I could see around us was fire…burning clothing, 'tatami' mats, and debris were blowing down the road and it looked like a flowing river of fire… I remember seeing other families, like us, holding hands and running through the fires…I saw a baby on fire on a mother's back. I saw children on fire, but they were still running. I saw people catch fire when they fell onto the road because it was so hot.” [1] This isn’t an account of the atomic bombs. This is the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed more people and destroyed more homes than either atomic bombs. The US was firebombing Japanese cities week after week, leveling over 60 Japanese cities and killing between 330,000 and 900,000 people (though we will never know for sure because the very records needed were obliterated in the conflagrations). WWII destruction was limited completely by the technology of the time. Total war means total war.
I think it's common knowledge that preventing a tactical nuclear war from escalating to a strategic nuclear war is basically impossible. Even a tactical nuke targeting a military base in its entirety is strategic enough to warrant a response targeting an industrial center (city). Then there you have it, the strategic nukes launch on population centers.
I think a Mad Max style post apocalypse type situation wouldn't come about until maybe 30 years after a full nuclear war. As disease and civilization continue to deteriorate over time eventually I can see much of the word getting to that state. Kind of like how a polluted lake doesn't kill all the fish immediately, it slowly dies over time.
>I think a Mad Max style post apocalypse type situation wouldn't come about until maybe 30 years after a full nuclear war. As disease and civilization continue to deteriorate over time eventually I can see much of the word getting to that state.
This sounds exactly like Mad Max. If you remember, in the very first "Mad Max" movie, civilization was not completely gone yet: Max was a policeman, but civilization was in tatters and murderous biker gangs ran wild. The later movies showed civilization being completely gone.
People can barely afford to exist now, not only would there be real wealth destruction through the course of the destructive war there would be a significant reverse wealth effect kicking in. A veritable economic implosion. WWII had a stimulus wealth effect following on from a Great Depression deflationary super-cycle capped by being able to destroy the completion by having them bomb each other. WWIII has none of those, so any belief that the impact to the average individual could be less than completely ruinous is completely misplaced.
This line of thinking is both wrong and frightening. Military escalation is always messy and uncertain, and history is full of wars that escalated beyond either side's overall interest. Imperfect information, poor decisions, and tactically reasonable but strategically catastrophic decisions are all ways that can lead to things getting out of hand.
On top of all that, the only practical way to have any hope of "winning" a nuclear exchange is to hit the other side so unexpectedly hard and fast that they can't mount a strong enough response to completely destroy you in return. There were multiple serious high level discussions about doing exactly that at various points during the Cold War by both sides.
We should all want the world to be as many rungs down the escalation ladder as possible. One or more countries breaking the prohibition on nuclear weapon use and using tactical nuclear weapons would bring the world dangerously close to a full nuclear war. Being a few short steps from such an event is not a stable situation, and it is one that will break badly at some point.
Our current situation is too unstable; deliberately making things much worse is a terrible notion.
Interestingly the very reason why nuclear weapons and the logic of their deployment are so dangerous and unstable, so much that two geopolitical adversaries with lots at stake actually agreed on never using them, led us nowadays to underestimate the danger of nuclear arsenals because in so many years "nothing bad happened". Human psychology is just not very well adapted to stay in perpetual alertness. We tend to normalize situations unfold over long periods of time.
> On top of all that, the only practical way to have any hope of "winning" a nuclear exchange is to hit the other side so unexpectedly hard and fast that they can't mount a strong enough response to completely destroy you in return. There were multiple serious high level discussions about doing exactly that at various points during the Cold War by both sides.
to demonstrate this point you can find the end of the movie War Games on youtube. A rouge AI (heh) is determined to launch an ICBM and only when the computer is tasked to play itself in a game of nuclear war does it determine there is no possible way to win. The movie ends with the iconic robotic voiced line "strange game, the only winning move is not to play".
Interesting quote: "Physicists have testified at United States Congressional hearings that weapons with yields of 10 kt (42 TJ) or less can produce a large EMP."
From ChatGPT:
Normalcy bias is when people underestimate the possibility and impact of a disaster, believing things will always stay the same. It leads to inaction and unpreparedness during emergencies.
> I would expect some type of escalation beyond the position we have been in for the better part of the last 80 years.
We have escalated beyond the point we have been in for the last 80 years. Russia have lost more troops than in any war since WWII. That is a lot of dead Slavs. Their strategic nuclear defences have already been attacked [0] and NATO currently appears to be organising direct strikes on Russian territory. They've made it quite clear that they want the war to continue until something in Russia breaks. When more warnings are you expecting to see? There are a lot of warnings out there.
We could easily discover that someone tried to launch the nukes already in this conflict. It would be precedented; the situation is more tense than it ever has been before and we've had fortuitous near misses in similar situations. We're already in territory where we are rolling the dice for a catastrophe with low odds.
Well. Ukraine just wants to shoot at the places where rockets and artillery are shooting at them. It happens that the Russians conveniently are doing so behind the border. They can shoot at you. But you can't shoot back.
I honestly don't understand how people can spin this up as that NATO wants to strike Russia with a straight face.
Russia has very good influence operations and seeds this type of propaganda. It’s all over on social media.
See Maria Butina and the total ownership of the NRA. Starting with Putin bare-chested riding horses in the GWB “I’m looking into his soul” era to today, the American right wingers are pretty much pro-Russia… amazing feat considering that killing Russians has been historically a priority for them since 1917.
> They've made it quite clear that they want the war to continue until something in Russia breaks.
Huh? I'd expect most non-Russian-aligned parties would be happy to see Russia retreat from Ukraine, pay reparations, and call that a peace. Russia only needs to break if Russia persists in occupying other countries.
That's simply not going to happen. The West isn't sending enough military aid to tip the scales, and this is an existential war for Russia and they are managing it well enough.
The likelihood of it is kinda irrelevant, if it were to happen I expect it would satisfy "The West", hence the want the war to continue part sounds wrong.
> They've made it quite clear that they want the war to continue until something in Russia breaks.
The war can end tomorrow. All that has to happen is for Russia to pack up and leave the territory of another sovereign country. It's really that simple.
If Russia gives up, the war ends. If Ukraine gives up, there is a genocide.
I really don’t understand tankie logic. The nation that has been your geopolitical rival for a century is suddenly the beacon of western civilisation and ideals, despite stating they hate you and everything you stand for, and then attacking a country for merely thinking of allying with you!?
“I believe everything this former KGB operative says about my government! Finally, a neutral party without self-interests who can reveal the truth!”
How often you you come across people saying any of that, though? That is a straw man position of the people pointing out that this conflict was quite a likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion and that the strategic pressure on Russia has been extraordinarily damaging to US interests, European interests, Russian interests and the global security situation. The only people who ended up benefiting from NATO expansion so far have been India and to a lesser extent China.
> How often you you come across people saying any of that, though?
I'm paraphrasing, but I have friends that believe 100% of Russian propaganda they hear on the Internet and 0% of western mainstream media. "What the BBC is saying is just propaganda!" is a common comment I hear from people quoting Russian disinformation verbatim.
> likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion
That is literal Russian disinformation. If they cared about NATO expansion, they would have invaded Finland to stop them joining. Or would have bolstered their border defence with them instead of reallocating the local troops to go fight in Ukraine, as they have.
They only cared about Ukraine joining NATO because that would have stopped them invading, as they were planning for over a decade and are doing right now.
A thief that plans to rob you cares deeply about your security system being upgraded! Not upgrading your security to appease the thief will not stop the robbery.
PS: Alexander Lukashenko accidentally let slip in early 2022 that the next target for invasion after Ukraine would have been Moldova. Guess which country Trump suddenly thought shouldn't be joining NATO right after meeting Putin?
Not any other country in Europe. No. Just Moldova, very specifically. Trump was very concerned about it, a country he would not have known the name of or been able to place on a map the day before that meeting. (Or, most likely, even after that meeting.)
You’re wilfully ignoring the reality that Moldova was always going to be invaded. Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.”
The same applies to Ukraine, and all of the -stans.
This. Is. The. Stated. Plan.
PS: the same people that believe Russian disinformation now will also believe the made up bullshit excuse China will cook up for invading Taiwan, something they’ve been planning and practising for literally decades now.
PS: I know a sociopath narcissist. She’ll make up a hundred reasons why she did something bad and argue them vehemently, but always pivoting on a dime and switching arguments mid-sentence if proven wrong. The real unstated reason is always “because I wanted to”, but she can’t say that so instead everyone gets an endless stream of ever changing “logic” of why things had to be so. Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same.
There is a subtle detail here in that there is an alternative to being invaded: you can surrender and become a puppet state.
All these words about "NATO expansion" and "western influence" are just a code word for what ultimately just means "no longer under former Soviet-block influence".
Just about any sovereign choice that a country like Ukraine makes that is not bowing their head to Moscow is by definition taken as a direct assault to their god-given right to rule their former empire.
So let's just cut all this crap about NATO or whatnot and let them say clearly:
"I want all the territories of the former Russian empire to remain under their former rulers. Ukraine. Georgia, ... are not free to do what they want with themselves, they are not really sovereign. We Russians have a god-given mandate to rule them. And when they don't want to be ruled by us we will leverage the Russian minorities we have planted in those countries to justify invasion"
It's a perfectly simple and honest way of framing what they really want. And they can claim that "the west" has already done much of that meddling with their imperialistic past and whatnot. Then we can discuss things. But you have to be honest about exactly what you want to happen.
There is no point pretending that the problem is NATO expansion and if it wasn't for NATO a former-soviet country could just do whatever they wanted. The desire of joining NATO is just a reaction to a threat of being dragged back into the Russian influence sphere against their will!
> Not because it might join NATO but because Russia has to invade it “while it still can.”
Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation, but for no reason and with no ability for countries to comply with their demands rather than being invaded. You might want to come up with a better theory before trying to put it to people. This type of nonsense is why the so called "disinformation" does a lot better - it involves the Russian government having motives and acting in a reasonable if stupid manner.
I've found people struggle to come up with a motivation that isn't NATO expansion. One fellow said it wasn't NATO expansion it was that Ukraine was about to integrate with the EU which is a bit ... we can call it EU expansion if that makes people more comfortable. Same difference. Big lump of people who turn out to be disturbingly cheered at the thought of killing lots of Russians. Lots of US funding.
> Russian arguments for invading Ukraine are precisely this, and Chinese arguments for Taiwan will be the same.
I mean, sure. But you're not grappling with the obvious question of why did Russia decide that it wanted to invade Ukraine. In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state. Even in the 10s as the situation started to deteriorate Russia didn't abandon negotiating.
The issue here is that like everyone else they have 30+ years of experience watching how the post-USSR NATO and they had some idea of what was about to happen, ie, Ukraine folded in to the greater anti-Russia military alliance. Obviously they are still a bit naive given that Ukraine was much better prepared than they expected.
[0] I wouldn't say that was acting out of sociopath narcissism on that one. More it was forced to.
> Your argument here appears to literally be that Russia invades countries randomly. Not just without provocation
No, not randomly! There's has been a plan in motion since well before 2014 to reinstate the former Soviet Union. Putin has repeatedly said that this is his "dream". These countries aren't picked at random, they're all former members of the USSR.
Look at it this way: Belarus is a puppet state without border controls, a part of the new Russian empire all but officially. Ukraine very nearly fell within days during 2022. If it had, the Russians would have kept right on rolling through Transnistria and into Moldova. Kazakhstan or one of the smaller -stans would be next, and so on, until the former USSR was reformed.
> Not just without provocation.
Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it.
I want you to pause for a second here and think about what you just said.
Are you the type of person to believe that everyone that gets punched in the face "provoked" it somehow? Or every woman that got raped was responsible by "provoking" the rapist?
I ask you to ask yourself these questions because there are people that think that YES, every woman that got raped was at least partly responsible for it.
Are you that person?
If not, why does the same logic not apply to Ukraine?
Must they have "provoked" Russia?
And if they did provoke them somehow, was Russia justified in killing hundreds of thousands of people in response?
What... exactly... was the thing that Ukraine did that justifies 200K dead, 500K+ wounded, millions displaced, etc. Please be specific, outlining how the provocation is somehow a worse outcome for Russia than the dead and wounded they have caused.
Just to reiterate: before you go off on a tangent, please very specifically explain how Ukraine joining NATO has a "greater material impact" on Russia than hundreds of thousands dead and wounded.
By specific, I mean: "If Russia hadn't invaded, they would have lost N million people to X because Ukraine would have done Y, and the evidence for this is Z." Make sure 'N' is > 200K and the source of the information predates 2022.
> In the 90s it decided it "wanted" to give Ukraine independence [0] and through the 90s and 00s decided that it was happy to have Ukraine as an independent state.
At no point was Russia happy about the USSR member states leaving, and Putin has repeatedly stated that this is the "greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century".
You're arguing against the core motivation stated by Putin himself repeatedly in personal interviews.
If you want to know why people don't take the BBC seriously and have a bit more respect for the Russian position, it is because 60% of those arguments are just not taking a serious situation seriously.
Armies don't just charge out because Putin has his "dream", and certainly not sustaining the sort of punishment that the Russians have had to undergo in Ukraine. We can see from the response to Prigozhin's coup that the military actually supports the war to a significant extent; if it was unpopular then Putin would have been rolled by now. You aren't trying to understand the Russian motivation; this is unhelpful straw-manning and caricaturing.
And othering the Russians with irrational motivations is stupid. As a culture we've passed up too many opportunities to calm the situation down because of a russophobic attitude out of the US. Years of unhinged rhetoric from 2016 onwards turned out to be unhelpful in de-escalating a dangerous situation.
> Countries can be invaded even if they didn't "provoke" it...
I'm not going to quote specific parts but addressing the points you raise from this onwards - nearly nothing justifies war. But what does happen regularly is unfair war. The lesson out of something like the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 is if a major power tells you to do something you have about a month to comply before something unjustified happens and the faster the weak roll over the better it is for them.
If I can swallow that and stay friends with my US friends - which I can - then I can handle almost anything.
> At no point was Russia happy about the USSR member states leaving, and Putin has repeatedly stated that this is the "greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century".
That would be like the British PM lamenting the fall of the British empire. I don't see why believing that would lead to a war or even bad feelings. I do see why NATO expansion into Eastern Europe would though, especially given that with hindsight we know NATO sees Ukraine as an arena to inflict crippling losses on Russia. People in the Russian military probably have sleepless nights worrying about NATO.
And I note you didn't link to speeches by Putin. That'd be wise, it is rare to see a western media outlet accurately representing even western politicians. Not as a partisan thing, but as a blanket failure. It is better to go to the source material.
You are ridiculously overintellectualizing the situation by trying to construct a rational argument for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There isn't any more rational argument for it than there was for the German murder of Jews by the millions. Just a dictator with unhealthy obsessions in either case.
During WWII, Russia first allied with Germans and together they rolled over entire Europe until there was no-one else left and they attacked each other for the final deathmatch. Out of two bad choices, the US supported Russia with massive military aid against Germany. As an unintentional side-effect, that aid allowed Russia to prevent half of Europe from restoring their independence as Germans were defeated, and enabled Russians to dig in to dominate and exploit Central and Eastern Europe for 50 years. Entire generations of Russians, including Putin, grew up thinking that it was the norm. When the domination withered away, Russians saw that as a great humiliation and historic injustice that they are trying to reverse.
There's nothing more to it, really. All that huffing and puffing about NATO is only because NATO stands in the way. Drop the ambition of enslaving Europe again and NATO isn't an issue anymore. Russian complaints about NATO are best summed up as thieves complaining about neighbourhood watch.
If we entertain multiple theories though, the "Putin is just crazy!" theory fits, but so does the "gee, it is pretty easy to see why they'd be scared of NATO, look at what NATO did to them at the first opportunity" theory. Especially since it has been a factor in conversation for decades. People have been pointing out that NATO expansion was raising tension with Russia since the fall of the USSR.
It is just too easy to draw parallels between what is happening in Ukraine and what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan in the earlier part of the century. There is a lot of precedent for the globe standing aside and lodging strongly worded diplomatic protests to this sort of meaningless violence. The determination of NATO to do as much damage as they can to the Russian military is concerning; that isn't the sort of thing a group open to diplomatic solutions would do. With hindsight it seems likely that their policies of strategic pressure in Russia provoked the entire conflict.
> There's nothing more to it, really. All that huffing and puffing about NATO is only because NATO stands in the way.
If NATO wasn't involved it does seem likely that nobody would be talking about NATO's involvement.
If you want to argue that NATO should be involved then sure, that is a popular position. I'd disagree; the downside is large and the upside is hard to spot. But to argue that Russia isn't acting with reference to NATO's involvement is just displaying a void of strategic empathy. What they've been doing makes a lot of sense through the lens of a group of people panicking as NATO keeps tightening the noose on them.
> People have been pointing out that NATO expansion was raising tension with Russia since the fall of the USSR.
NATO does not expand on its own like a dough left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because we were scared stiff when we saw the methods Russia used in the First Chechen War in 1994. Nothing had changed since Russia invaded us during the WWII. As an insurance and deterrent against that happening to us again, we made a decision to build relations with other European nations to ensure tight cooperation and remove as many obstacles as possible for coming to mutual aid, hoping that even the possibility of receiving aid through organizations like NATO would make a Russian invasion less likely.
This is "raising tensions" only because Russia intends to invade us as soon as they can, and us being in NATO makes that more costly and risky for them, because they can't be sure where the aid ends - might go as far as American nukes flying.
> What they've been doing makes a lot of sense through the lens of a group of people panicking as NATO keeps tightening the noose on them.
Nobody in Russia is panicking. The narrative about NATO tightening a noose is an artificial talking point thrown to western useful idiots for self-flagellation to undermine the support of Ukraine. It is not a topic of discussion in Russian political and military circles. Instead, they talk about reclaiming their lost prestige and taking back what "belongs to them". For Russians of Putin's generation, the domination over Central and Eastern Europe was normalcy and they want it back.
Armies don't just charge out because Hitler has his "dream", and certainly not sustaining the sort of punishment that the Germans have had to undergo in Poland. We can see from the response to Ernst Röhm that the military actually supports the Führer to a significant extent; if it was unpopular then Hitler would have been rolled by now. You aren't trying to understand the German motivation; this is unhelpful straw-manning and caricaturing.
And othering the Germans with irrational motivations is stupid. As a culture we've passed up too many opportunities to calm the situation down because of a Germanophobic attitude out of the US. Years of unhinged rhetoric from 1930 onwards turned out to be unhelpful in de-escalating a dangerous situation.
And I note you didn't link to speeches by Hitler. That'd be wise, it is rare to see a Anglo-American media outlet accurately representing even Anglo-American politicians. Not as a partisan thing, but as a blanket failure. It is better to go to the source material.
If we entertain multiple theories though, the "Hitler is just crazy!" theory fits, but so does the "gee, it is pretty easy to see why they'd be scared of France and Britain, look at what France and Britain did to them at the first opportunity" theory. Especially since it has been a factor in conversation for decades. People have been pointing out that the Treaty of Versailles was raising tension with Germany since the end of the Great War.
If the Treaty of Versailles wasn't involved in German Rearmament it does seem likely that nobody would be talking about the Treaty of Versailles.
But to argue that Germany isn't acting with reference to the Treaty of Versailles is just displaying a void of strategic empathy. What they've been doing makes a lot of sense through the lens of a group of people panicking as France and Britain keeps tightening the noose on them.
> If we entertain multiple theories though, the "Hitler is just crazy!" theory fits, but so does the "gee, it is pretty easy to see why they'd be scared of France and Britain, look at what France and Britain did to them at the first opportunity" theory.
Well, yes. As a Brit I would like to believe I would have been saying things like "this Treaty of Versailles approach is a disaster, we're just giving the Germans reasons to re-arm and fight us. We should have made more of an effort towards ensuring that Germany is prosperous and wealthy despite losing the Great War. Given what the British and the French did to them at the first opportunity, they are likely to be really angry with us the next time tensions rise".
Given what then happened, I would probably have scored myself pretty well for geopolitical acumen too. roenxi approved policies towards Germany in the interbellum period would have been less likely to see the British Empire make enemies and get its back broken. As we saw in the aftermath of WWII, the policies that work were occupation, respectful treatment, rebuilding and creating prosperity in the vanquished countries [0]. Similarly, the policies that would have helped with Ukraine would be a similar approach. We can't manage occupation but Russia seemed to be feeling cooperative back in the 90s, we should have taken advantage of that when the chance was open and tried to achieve all the other parts. Not salami tactics of advancing a hostile military alliance towards their borders.
Creating reasons for great powers to fight you is remarkably foolish policy. Even middle powers for that matter. That is not the sort of thing that should be done. These stupid policies have consequences.
[0] Policies adopted because, given the sheer scale of the disaster that was WWII, even the politicians had to admit that a new approach from WWI's failed peace was needed.
One or more nuclear powers has been at war for basically the entire nuclear era. They have all had wars in which they have "lost more troops than in any war since WWII". Even if this is the end of the Putin regime, this wouldn't even be the first time that the Soviet Union/Russia collapsed. I don't know what the path you think you see from where we are now to "full scale nuclear war", but it seems incredibly silly to suggest "the situation is more tense than it ever has been before", especially after you have already name checked Able Archer and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
> I don't know what the path you think you see from where we are now to "full scale nuclear war", but it seems incredibly silly to suggest "the situation is more tense than it ever has been before", especially after you have already name checked Able Archer and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Able Archer was one of a series of (annual) scheduled training exercises. The Cuban missile crisis was a fairly civil dispute over where people stationed military assets that was resolved diplomatically. The Ukraine War has involved the mobilisation of the Russian military with estimates in the 100s of thousands for Russian casualties and active strikes on Russian military infrastructure.
How are you construing the first two are more tense than the last? The last is a significant escalation of tensions from the first two. We're a long way up the escalation ladder.
And, putting it to you a second time, what warnings are you expecting to see months before a nuclear war starts? I don't think you can see any path from any scenario to nuclear war. I doubt you would have seen a path from Able Archer to nuclear war, or a path from the US deploying missiles in Turkey to nuclear war either.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US dropped depth charges in the vicinity of the Soviet submarine B-59. This was meant as a sign to surface, but it was interpreted by the sub as an attack suggesting war had already broken out. The Soviet rules of engagement allowed for the launch of nuclear weapons in this situation if all three of the sub's highest ranking officers agreed. Two of them were in agreement, but Vasily Arkhipov disagreed. His decision that day single-handedly stopped nuclear war.
So yes, I think we were closer to "full scale nuclear war" during the Cuban Missile Crisis than we are today. There isn't much point in continuing the conversation if you can't agree with that.
That is kinda my point though - you don't seem able to predict that sort of thing with foresight. Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path. For 40 years [0] after the crisis you wouldn't have believed there was a path.
Then, 40 years later, someone ion the Russian military would explain to you that a person attempted to fire the nukes and it was narrowly prevented by a coincidence. At that point you would see a path to nuclear war. And based on my read of this conversation you probably wouldn't make the connection with the escalatory policy in Turkey as a threat to the Soviets without decades in hindsight either. That was less threatening than the NATO work the US has been orchestrating in Europe.
The publicly available information we have on the Ukraine war suggests a tenser situation than the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Russia's mainland nuclear defence infrastructure has literally been targeted. That is pretty dicey compared to harassing a presumed-harmless submarine near Cuba.
[0] In case you haven't read up on it, the incident you are referring too wasn't publicly discussed until 2002. A lot of other details also weren't available without hindsight.
> Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path.
Come on, people couldn't see a path to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short. I know it is hard to say "I was wrong", but it is better than tying yourself into knots until you are spouting nonsense like this.
The reality of the situation, whether it was known in real time or not, is that one person prevented the use of nuclear weapons in 1962. How do you get closer to the use of nuclear weapons than it being prevented by one person? Half a person preventing it?
> The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short.
Yes, but the reason the Ukraine war isn't called the "Ukraine crisis" is because the crisis point came, went and then a war began. That is why tensions are higher - we're further up the escalation ladder. The Russian army has partly mobilised and people are shooting at them. The situation is a lot more fraught than a relatively civil argument over where missile emplacements were going to be put and nobody had any actual intentions of killing any Russians.
I put my challenge to you again - what warnings are you expecting to see months before a nuclear war starts? Your last answer was that you'd discover those signs 40 years post-hoc when the Russians told you and I don't think you can defend that as a rational position. If you want an explicit reason, 40 years hindsight is not a warning sign. Warning signs come before the event.
> fairly civil dispute over where people stationed military assets
Your argument is that USSR stationing assets, including nukes, in Cuba isn't a provocation against the US while the mere thought of Ukraine joining NATO (not involving any actual NATO assets in Ukraine before the invasion in 2014!) is a provocation?
This is purpose of NATO - to prevent the lines on the map from changing. Ukraine may not be a member of NATO officially but it doesn't need to be - the Soviet era reason for Ukraine is the same as the NATO, a buffer state.
Russian aggression reinforced the need for a buffer state - before it wasn't obvious, now it is. NATO is intending to force Russia to leave Ukraine and they are willing to play a very long game bc it's a buffer state in play, not a NATO state.
The end result of this strategy is either Russia breaks or the war escalates.
> biggest risk of a nuclear war breaking out that the species has ever faced
I think this is absurd and I really don’t like this line of thinking. This is being blown away out of proportion.
Russia wants ukraine and China wants Taiwan. These are localised issues, nobody is invading Texas, and core territories of nuclear powers are not in danger.
Much bigger chunks of lands have changed hands over the last 60 years, think collapse of USSR, the debacle in Afghanistan, Vietnam war, etc. The world did not end.
In 2008 American banks did more damage to the world than Russia/China would by successfully taking these areas of land.
Starting a nuclear exchange over these relatively small-ish issues would be peak idiocy. Yes, it sucks for the locals but there are 3 civil wars in Africa and conflict in the Middle East causing the same amount of misery, they are easier to solve but no one cares.
> Starting a nuclear exchange over these relatively small-ish issues would be peak idiocy
Starting nuclear war under any conditions would be peak idiocy. We still have relatively regular near misses. The current issues appear to be more significant than situations that have caused near misses in the past.
We have the warning. Now would be the time to start building more weapons. Maybe that is what the transparency report is about, so we can show that we've done so next year?
France being the only sensible one putting Putin back in his place by telling him "we also have nuclear warheads" instead of "we avoid escalation". That's how nuclear deterrent is supposed to work.
That strategy would work if you weren’t trying to reason with a Soviet-era psychopath whose only concern is his own legacy. If he’s on his last legs tomorrow you don’t think his final move will be nuclear revenge? This man has demonstrated that he will kill anyone who gets in his way, even his own citizens, in brutal ways.
That "psychopath" (more exactly - sociopath) values his palaces and riches more than burning in a nuclear war. I.e. he can bluff and blackmail, but he is a coward who is obsessed with money and hedonistic pursuits. That's why the idea conveyed to him that if he makes any nuclear attack he personally will be immediately killed (by conventional weapons) made him tone his idiotic threats down by a lot. Those who see their legacy in palaces with golden toilet brushes aren't going to die as martyrs.
Macron understood it well and basically told him to get lost with his threats, or in simple words - France also has nuclear weapons. That's the only language Putin understands.
Can't enjoy palaces and riches if you're on your death bed. Think about it. You've been a dictator for 20 years and killed anybody who stood in your way. Delusion has set in and you're convinced you've been poisoned by your enemy. Why wouldn't you get revenge while you still can?
It is precisely the fact that dictators like Putin are so pampered and disconnected from the consequences of their actions that worries me. He won't think twice about the lives that will be lost. He's constructed his own alternate historical timeline to justify his assault on Ukraine. He could do the same to justify dropping some nukes.
He'll try to enjoy them until the last moment, or flee to Africa in the style of Nazis fleeing to South America and such. That's his whole mentality - a thug who can only intimidate and blackmail but is an essence a coward.
> It is precisely the fact that dictators like Putin are so pampered and disconnected from the consequences of their actions that worries me.
Which is exactly the reason to make it clear that consequence of his actions like nuclear war would he his immediate death. I.e. the logic goes the other way around and that logic works. You can't use the logic of "let's not escalate" with such people.
During times of escalating tensions with a resourceful geopolitical adversary, you would try to cool things off with diplomacy but simultaneously... start building lots of new nuclear weapons?
It's not clear there's any such thing as "tactical nukes" given that they're strategically useless, and it's actually not even clear there's such a thing as nuclear exchange that isn't full scale war. At least as told by Ellsberg in the Doomsday Machine, there was literally no mechanism for the US to launch a partial nuclear attack.
All these other comments should just go read the book, it's worth it and a good, if horrifying read. What 'no mechanism' above means is that for many decades the SIOP consisted of 'launch everything'. The only way it was a 'plan' was to time the arrival times to avoid fratricide. This btw meant that even if there was a 'tactical' shooting event in Western Europe, all the targets in China would have been hit, even if they weren't involved. Needless to say, Japan was never informed of this....
From a MAD game theoretic perspective that makes a lot of sense. To avoid non-essential use of nukes, only give policymakers the option of launching everything. Then they will only launch in extreme circumstances. Hopefully only circumstances where there are already missiles inbound.
This avoids the possibility of gradual nuclear escalation, which can be more easily miscalibrated.
This seems somewhat impractical, assuredly - plans would have been made in a dark drawer for the case that an earstwhile allied country became politically unstable.
On both sides of the wall - it would have been feasible for a country to attempt to establish it's own alignment separate from the superpowers through the use of nuclear weapons
There are a limited set of scenarios where a major nuclear state might use a tactical weapon against a lower-tier state. For example, if the USA got into a conflict with Iran and we had actionable intelligence that they were assembling a nuclear weapon in an underground bunker then we might take it out with a small number of tactical nuclear ground strikes. I'm not recommending this but you can game out scenarios where this seems like the least bad course of action.
B-2 bomber crews regularly train for this exact mission.
Things would have to get very very dire to go the tactical nuke route for the US. Not only is there a fear of tactical nuclear war escalating to strategic war there's the fear of demonstrating tactical nuclear war is feasible. If it works and Iran's nuclear capability is destroyed and nothing else happens then it will be all to easy for another power to use tactical nukes and then nuclear weapons become a common component on the battlefield. That makes escalation to the big strategic weapons easier.
>"Iran’s underground nuclear facility could be between 80 meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet) below the surface... That could be a problem for the GBU-57 since the US Air Force stated that the bomb could rip through 60 meters (200 feet) of cement and ground before detonating. US officials have talked about detonating two of these bombs consecutively to guarantee the destruction of a location. However, the new depth of the Natanz tunnels still poses a significant obstacle." [1]
The US military has a long history of making technically true statements about it's weapons, but which are still misleading.
If a bomb can actually rip through 200 meters of cement and ground, then the 60 meter statement is also true.
It also has a history of revealing the actual limits of weapons systems, but only after better capabilities exist (with the limits of those still classified or understated) - that is the 60M limit was the max of the old bomb and they don't need to know about the new one.
I can see how it comes off as dismissive my bad - it was intended to be a "take such analyses with a grain of salt if you aren't privvy to classified, relevant information".
The main difference between tactical and strategic comes down to intended use. Tactical nukes are intended for battlefield use, strategic nukes are intended to end other civilizations. They also come in different delivery methods. For instance there are tactical nuclear landmines, artillery, and so on, whereas most strategic weapons are just going to be missiles and ICBMs in particular.
But I do agree that the labeling is largely pointless because there are nominally "tactical" weapons with payloads exceeding 100kt. For contrast, Hiroshima (which was enough to destroy a mid-sized city and kill hundreds of thousands with a single bomb) was 16kt. So "tactical weapons" can easily destroy cities. Even if strategic weapons can be hundreds of times higher yield, at some point you're just beating a dead horse, or city as it may be.
> there are tactical nuclear landmines, artillery, and so on,
Not sure about the landmines, but the US and USSR retired their nuclear artillery decades ago. I'm not sure how much effort it would be to put existing warheads inside shells, or about other countries.
I take the disarmament claims with some degree of skepticism. Alot of these weapons provide substantial flexibility and destructive capability, which superpowers are generally not fond of relinquishing. A lot of the nuclear disarmament stuff hit its peak in the years following the collapse of the USSR, at which point US and Russian relations looked very positive and optimistic moving forward. We're now back to lows not seen since the Cold War.
In any case, for the specifics - Wiki gives 2004 [1] as the date the US reportedly dismantled its nuclear artillery, and in 2000 Russia reported that "nearly all" of its nuclear artillery had been dismantled. Nuclear landmines [2] fall under 'atomic demolition munitions' which are basically any sort of small/mobile nuke, so you get everything from landmines to the suitcase nuke weirdness.
Wargames have answered that quite clearly. Proud Prophet [1] is what you're looking for. All sorts of different approaches to nuclear engagement were trialed and they all ended up in the end of the world, or at least the end of North America, Europe, and most of the northern hemisphere, alongside just about everybody living there. The scenario you're describing would fall under the 'de-escalatory nuclear strike' category - same outcome. The outcome of these wargames is what drove the shift more towards seeking more of a de-escalatory approach with the USSR.
I take tactical to mean something like "< 100 kilotons", meaning the damage would be much more limited than a large device. Those devices certainly exist. Where it's somewhat plausible a nation could use one and face some retaliation that doesn't escalate into a global doomsday.
Depends a lot on who/where/why, how much primary and collateral damage, and so on. You may be right that any use of any nuclear weapon turns into a global doomsday. It's hard to say unless it really happens. I'm often surprised that terrible war related incidents end up not escalating beyond the general region where they happened.
NK's geographic position is interesting. Unless US boat is launching east from PRC's Yellow / Bohai sea / PLAN bastion, there isn't a trajectory to NK that doesn't look like it's heading towards PRC mainland. And even then, unless timed during summer months, prevailing winds is going to push fallout / radiation towards BJ. During winter downwind will drift to SKR / JP / east coast PRC. I don't know what proportional counter retaliation is, maybe a few nukes off CONUS west coast urban centres, but PRC isn't going to sit there and eat incidental radiation over major population centres even if target is NK.
Assuming you're striking first, yes. Nuclear subs take ~15 minutes to deploy, though, and that isn't the first option when counter striking. The U.S. president has six minutes to decide/launch a counter attack from the missile silos.
Annie Jacobsen has a book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" on all this where she interviews high ranking officials and pries into government documents related to nuclear war.
I'm pretty sure she isn't. I take it as more of a research effort into highly classified areas of the government. She doesn't really push a narrative IMO.
> Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to Russia that the US is attacking NK and not just nuking Kamchatka?
I guess that depends on current relations between the two countries and assumes there wouldn't be a breakdown of communications when launches are detected.
> Can the trajectory of an ICBM be inferred by the height of it’s arc?
From the book I mentioned in another comment, Russia has very flawed satellite systems for tracking nuclear launches. There is a lot of focus on the fact that you don't have much time in the event of an imminent nuclear strike so I don't think there is much calculations being done if the missile is (generally) coming towards your homeland.
I dunno...too hypothetical a question to answer, since we already have enough nukes to destroy everything and nobody is going to reduce their arsenal to one.
I hope the readers here are aware that this is just the political smear machine being turned on by WaPo employees and their political friends that don't like this guy because he told them that 'woke' doesn't sell and that WaPo is dying because of them.
The timing of this NPR story is not a coincidence and is politically driven. That doesn't mean that it has no merit, but read it with a skeptical eye.
I hope readers realize anyone using the term woke in 2024 to express an opinion can and should ignored. The term has been fully co-opted into smear that basically is a catch-all for all the terms for all the bad words that used to be used for black people, gay people, and most other minorities in the US.
They said smear not slur, and they are pretty plainly correct considering we have everything from sitting politicians using it to describe any legislation that honestly reports US history, to youtube personalities using it to rant for hours about minorities in star wars.
You can go pretty deep if you try to discover the fundamental belief systems or reasoning behind the 'core' DEI people. A lot of people just casually agree that "being fair" and "not being racist" is good. And it certainly is. And like many movements that involve propaganda/control/power, the key to enlisting large support is to hide the real motivations and goals within a cozy shell of easily consumable "moral" niceties.
Ironically, the methods that the DEI types use are not even hidden. There are numerous books and "scholarly" articles that discuss their methods in detail and also their true purpose.
At it's root DEI is one of the byproducts of Critical Race Theory which is derived from Critical Theory which is (arguably) the root of Marxism and a bunch of other -isms. You can think of Critical Theory as the most abstract form of that particular tree of political theory and Marxism applies it to class inequality and CRT applies it to race/gender inequality. This is a simplification, but it's good enough for now.
The CRT leader types are without a doubt anti-meritocracy, anti-science, anti-civilization, anti-family, etc.. They have said so directly and emphatically in books, papers, talks, etc..
I don't think your post here is substantive. You are only vaguely complaining about an ill-defined group of people, as is customary in political speech.
If you wanted to discredit "numerous books" you should have named at least one. Do you have an example?
The hate is so deep that people lose their minds when it comes to a minor Tesla issue and conveniently forget the HUGE list of problems and recalls from all manufacturers over the years.
In many cases they just don't know about them because they're not pushed so hard in the media and people don't upvote negative stories about other car manufacturers like they do with negative Tesla stories on HN and Reddit.
It's very affective, that's why the oil lobby pushes negative EV news so hard in the media, especially right wing media.
That's a gross mis categorization and wildly reductionist to boot. The issue is this: a cult of personality has developed around a loudmouth sociopath with a track record of making wildly arrogant statements (See: I know more about manufacturing than anyone else on the planet) that are not, and never have been, backed by observational data. When Tesla set out to make cars they intentionally adopted the move fast and break shit approach, tossing over a century of industry knowledge overboard in the process. Net result: grotesque body fitment issues that are reminiscent of automobiles built in the 1920s, constant dumb software issues, trivially avoidable production bottlenecks, and borderline malicious marketing around half-baked assisted driving features (this list is incomplete). Then there is the comprehensive travesty Tesla calls a cybertruck. This much stupidity wouldn't be tolerated from any other auto manufacturer.
The preceding sentence explained why. Car wash damage is surprisingly common. I've known people who have had side mirrors damaged (not Teslas) and seeing damage to rear wipers is common enough that I've seen the results of it.
This whole story was essentially made up by mischaracterizing some guy's tiktok. :facepalm
That seems unbelievable to be honest. You mean if the car wash breaks a wiper the dealer just replaced it?
I had a hard time getting my dealer to replace what was clearly warranty work (engine issues) due to them pretending the factory warranty extension didn't apply.
And here you have dealers replacing things that are explicitly excluded? Weird.
Yeah basically it's 15% worse case if your company stock is on a consistent downward or sideways trajectory. And 15%+ is the stock is generally rising.
There is always a small black-swan chance I guess. In all the places I've worked, the shares are purchased at the close of the trading day and available to sell by the next morning.
Yeah, and black swan is going to happen only once in a while if you do this for five years, maybe once you loose more than 15%, but other times you'll make money
That's relatively rare in tech, but some companies are very touchy about their trading windows. Usually smaller companies, lower floats, lawyers trying to manage insider trading risks, etc..
For larger companies, it's almost always -- ESPP purchase happens, you can sell it immediately.
