> Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.
Yep. Some similar grandstanding by the Chinese Army in 1960s accelerated the Indian nuclear weapons programme (overriding the utter lack of political will of its then primary leaders). After, buoyed by newly acquired capabilities, in 1980s, the Indian Army conducted largest ever military exercise (Operation Brasstacks) providing much needed impetus & driving consensus in Pakistan to push forward no matter the cost, embodied in this notorious quip by their ex Prime Minister, "[Pakistan] will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own [atomic weapon]."
The untold stories of these godly bombs are the devastation they wreak without needing to be ever "used". Devil's greatest trick...
>Some similar grandstanding by the Chinese Army in 1960s accelerated the Indian nuclear weapons programme (overriding the utter lack of political will of its then primary leaders).
I've read about the Indian military and how it's so disorganized. I mean really as in each branch does not even have the capability of communicating with the other branches. And that's now in 2024 I can only imagine in the 1960s.
Is that due to fear of an atomic bomb or more because of the artillery pieces aimed at Seoul as well as surrounding countries being unwilling to take in large amounts of North Korean refugees?
I don't see why they wouldn't. They signed a mutual defense hacked with North Korea last year and the Korean army is fighting to expel the Ukrainian army from it's counter offensive incursion into Russia
The regime in NK persists because a great power (namely, Beijing) does not want an ally of the West on its border and is willing to spend the lives of 100s of 1000s of its soldiers to prevent that from happening (as illustrated by Beijing's choices during the Korean War).
Iraq, Libya or Lebanon don't have that advantage (and Kiev would get that advantage only if switches to being pro-Russian).
The episode starts with a strawman (that Ukraine never had nukes) and proceeds to beat it up. It's a strawman for reasons I will not go into for long, but ones that should be obvious to a fourth grader: physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to make it (which Ukraine also had) are far more important than electronic systems of control. This now classic 1993 paper by Mearsheimer is a much more clear-eyed take, his recent positions notwithstanding. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
Aside from either, how many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Apart from Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero. Finally (and this also applies to my post), social media is the worst place for any foreign policy discussion because it offers asymmetric returns to a foreign actor attempting to subvert a country's policy who happens to speak the country's language, and English is a very popular international language spoken by many people abroad at this point in history.
How many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Aside from Ukraine invading Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero.
The answer is Israel was subject to a full-scale invasion in 1973, despite having nuclear weapons since 1966. There have been regular border skirmishes between India and Pakistan since long after they both went nuclear. We also have Argentina's seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Israel didn't, and still hasn't, claimed to possess nuclear weapons. While it now is widely believed they do, that is far less of a deterrent. It's also worth noting that the US, one of Israel's closest allies and possessing arguably the best intelligence apparatus in the world, was not aware that Israel had the bomb until 1975, it's extremely doubtful the surrounding arab states knew earlier.
None of the conflicts between India and Pakistan since either of the powers got Nuclear weapons (1974 and 1998, respectively) could be reasonably characterized as invasions.
The Falkland islands are a British overseas territory. They are self governing, but the UK is responsible for their defense and foreing affairs. Classic protectorate. Obviously invading the Falklands is very different from invading the UK.
I guess you could look at their non-admission as evidence to the contrary, but it's not like they're selling enriched uranium as a souvenir to tourists at Ben Gurion international.
Further, while it was widely suspected Israel had a nuclear weapons program, that's a very different thing than having a bomb. Iran is believed to have had a nuclear weapons program. So have many countries.
That's very much not what matters. If you wanted to travel to the UK and your plane took you to the Falkland Islands, you'd be very pissed off and say "you didn't take me to the UK!" If someone says "where is the UK?" the correct answer is not "the south Atlantic." There is the United Kingdom the nation and United Kingdom the place. An invasion means troops in the place.
> (physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to produce are far more important than electronic systems of control).
Sure, but I don't think you understand what goes into keeping nuclear weapons ready. Even assuming Ukraine can manufacture the complete supply chain required for ICBMs, they still have to make and maintain their own warheads. That means either refining nuclear material domestically (where it will get destroyed at any cost by Russia) or importing it from an ally a-la the United States who has no desire to deal with the consequences of that. Ukraine is a strong country, but they cannot sabre-rattle the way Russia can.
Also, I don't think you can cherry-pick Mearsheimer so easily. Even in Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent we see him discounting NATO as an impotent defense, an assumption that that very much isn't true today and one that he (somehow) still seems to believe in. I think his essay is showing it's age, and then some.
Read Mearsheimer's paper again. Nuclear deterrent is far cheaper than equivalent conventional deterrent. A country under existential threat will find means, one way or another, to fund it.
I assume they are speaking from the perspective of the regime. Is the regime that makes decisions such as prioritizing nuclear development over food and commerce and international relations
>At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons.
Project Sundial was the ultimate expression of power, a bomb so big it would detonated here in the US, to kill everyone on the planet.
I think that the "dead hand" system[1] built by the Soviets, and still operational today, might have incorporated a copy of this idea. This would nicely explain the hesitancy/restraint of the US in the Ukrainian conflict.
It's worth noting that the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was about 30 Gigatons TNT equivalent. Certainly a catastrophic event that affected climate around the globe, but a far cry from "killing everyone on the planet."
Not substantially. The fallout produced would obviously be substantially larger than any one nuclear explosion, but it's still a small amount on a planetary scale. If you naively scaled up the contamination area of the castle bravo test from 15 Mt to 15 Gt, it would be 3% of earth's surface area. Further, the range that fallout can travel is limited by the half lives of the particles, not the size of the explosions, so it does not scale like this.
We also have experience with large amounts of fallout released into the atmosphere. For comparison, in a 12 month period from 1961 to 1962 there were 340 Megatons worth of nukes detonated in atmosphere. While I would recommend against detonating a few times that much all at once, it's a few percent increase in global cancer rates scenario, not a nuclear hellscape scenario.
> it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters
Fires, not fallout. Volcanoes don't spark continent-wide fires. Sundial would. That sooty matter lofted into the stratosphere is what makes it unique from a volcano. Not the radioactivity.
Let's view earth as if we are aliens (or even normal people) visiting our moon, watching the blue planet and the behavior of its inhabitants.
So these conscious people were building several 100 Mton weapons AND detonated one of them on the surface of the planet! Knowing that it would kill and destroy life and atmosphere around it and contaminate earth. AND they were starting a program for building a Gigaton weapon??
It is just surreal that anyone would even think of doing such, let alone doing so.
We don't really know what aliens would think, so you're anthropomorphizing. If the aliens were Klingons they might find it endearing. There's zero evidence that peace without weapons is possible.
> There's zero evidence that peace without weapons is possible.
I think a world without defenses would not exist. To me it is just a law of nature that defenses need to exist for life to be present. Attacks are part of nature.
However in that comparison I would call the gigaton bomb a self destroying auto immune disease.
> I would call the gigaton bomb a self destroying auto immune disease
We had Project Sundial levels of nuclear weapons on Earth during the Cold War. The only difference in consolidating it into a single weapon is fault tolerance.
Essentially all of those are true already, mostly through the military and police, and mostly through Dead hand guarantees.
If you destroy a city, shoot up a school, kill a family, or kill an individual, someone with weapons will likely come to retaliate even if your victim is dead
it isnt the weapons, its the mentality that requires them.
as long as children are trained to be highly, aggressively, competitive and benefit at the loosers expense, calling it sport, the mentality will continue.
It's funny how people love to imagine uber-intelligent benevolent alien overlords who always happen to agree with whatever point they're trying to make. It's an extension of the "if you disagree with me, you don't actually have an opinion, you're just having an emotional reaction to my rational points" nonsense that's all over the internet.
Hmmm I fail to understand your reasoning. I did not write this for anyone to agree or disagree with me. It is just something I imagine, and in my imagination the aliens happen to be not klingons nor their real world counterparts. In my imagination (and i guess maybe in that of the reader of my comment as well) they are sentient logical beings not being in favor of peace nor war. So in that context those beings would think, what the f are they doing, this does not make any sense!
I suppose the reasoning is that intelligent aliens perhaps would actually think that it was a good accomplishment, given that they know of much bigger wars that involve multiple planets and perhaps themselves have bombs that are capable of destroying entire planets? There's no way to know if extremely intelligent aliens would actually be peaceful or extreme beligerent dickheads. I don't think we have any evidence of a successful species even on Earth that behaves like peace-loving hippies.
There's no "more evolved" animal in your list. They are all different animals that are each perfectly evolved for the habitat they occupy (dogs are domesticated wolves, not "evolved wolves", by the way).
You could argue that humans are more "civilized" , but not more evolved. But to claim that humans are less aggressive than other animals is amusing to me. Humans are the only ones capable of (and willing to commit multiple times) war and genocide on a large scale. We may be less aggressive on an individual level, normally, but in the sense we're discussing what matters is the collective aggressiveness, of which humans are in my view the greatest by far.
If you take evolved literally as number of years of evolution, then the ants are more evolved, since they were there before humans. Of course, I meant evolved not in that way, more as civilized indeed, but also that trait is hard to define.
Indeed humans have the high score in collective aggresiveness. Group think and influencing large amounts of people appear to be the greatest strength and greatest vice at the same time of humans.
I've been told that for a sufficiently large thermonuclear bomb, it isn't even necessary to compress the secondary -- just heating it is enough. Teller's original "Super" idea would work at scale. So once you've made a big enough bomb, attach it to a big tank of deuterium with thick walls and you're good.
The problem of making such a bomb comes down to the problem of economically producing deuterium.
Appropriately timed video about the American version of this, that (presumably) got stopped at the planning phase.
A bomb so big, you did not even need to deploy it to enemy territory. You just set it off in your own back yard. It was going to destroy the entire planet anyway.
The documentary mentioned in the article is definitely worth watching. Some parts of it are undoubtedly propaganda, but it still offers an incredible view on what detonating a nuclear bomb actually looked like.
For reference, there is declassified footage (very clear images, even with some original voice over) of the RDS-4 bomb[0] ("only" 1.5 Megatons) detonating at the infamous Semipalatinsk Test Site[1] (now Kazakhstan).
Wanted to say something similar. It's really effective to bring home how stupidly massive this thing really was. You just keep on scrolling and scrolling and the little bombs don't end!
Kurzgesagt recently made a video about Final Bomb which would have destroyed a big part of planet earth, some 400km would have immediately burned https://youtu.be/E55uSCO5D2w
I wish I could believe the argument that Russian corruption has reached the point at which their nukes are no longer a threat and the alternative view amounts to fear mongering. But it seems unlikely that they have regressed so far in the means of power in the last sixty years. As the Doomsday Clock moves ever closer to midnight it concerns me that its political salience has only diminished.
They are corrupt. Next time Russia will colapse and ask for food aid (see Bush Legs 1990), we should exchange it for nukes. Food for nukes, sounds sweet.
I always wondered about the bush legs
were there given to Russia for free? Or were they sold to Russia for cheap? Are there any documents about the numbers online?
someone please chime in, if im totally off base, but i have developed the impression that, if you keep all the wealth your economy generates and dont pay down your debts, you get reduced credit rating from world bank.
"helping" other nations is one way of spreading wealth, to those in need, with incumbency to pay it forward.
Yeah, it's not particularly plausible. Even if you believe that they are in a truly atrocious state of repair, that, say, 95% of them will fail to land on target and detonate, a nuclear strike from Russia would still be catastrophic.
The main reasons most observers are not super worried about nukes in the context of their invasion of Ukraine, is that MAD is still an effective policy against an all-out attack against NATO, and NATO (especially the US) has a credible red line of any attempt at a 'small-scale' use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine that will bring them into the war.
The main effect of nukes, though, is to make Ukraine's allies nervous about the collapse of the russian government, because that is a plausible situation in which nukes could be used. The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes.
Yes, this is arguably one of the points of overkill.
Nukes are so powerful, and major powers have 100s to 1000s of them.
Only 1 needs to get through to change history.
> and NATO (especially the US) has a credible red line of any attempt at a 'small-scale' use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine that will bring them into the war.
Do you feel that USA red line is still credible post election? I'm genuinely curious how you see it. To me it sounded like the new commander in chief wants nothing to do with the whole conflict there.
The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses,
My sense is it's not that they don't want Ukraine to win that hard -- they just (very reasonably) don't see how anyone can expect that to reasonably happen within any meaningful time frame.
So they fall back on the next-best alternative, that Ukraine not lose, as a sibling commenter already pointed out. Much more definable, and infinitely more achievable -- if there's a broadly shared understanding (and consensus reality) in place as what that would necessarily entail.
Only problem is -- there's still been a lot of noise among those who run things in the US/West about pretending to believe in the former ("Ukraine must simply win") as a stated goal. Leading inevitably to reduced confidence in what the US/West says, and to the further erosion of public discourse as we're seeing here.
> The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes
I've always thought the US wanted Ukraine not to lose. Tying up Russia's armed forces in an endless war of attrition seems like an ideal result on all grounds except humanitarian ones.
European countries have slightly different incentives because they would also like to stop the refugee crisis, but the US is basically the marginal supplier of arms here - if Estonia finds it can lend another 5 fighter jets, the US can just provide 5 fewer.
> The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes.
What level of US support would allow Ukraine to win by way of Russia collapsing?
Leaving same weapons just on time totaly aside: when Prigozhin started march to Moscow, and roads were dug - US called kremlin to assure "we have nothing in common, stay strong Vlad". Just imagine what if words "If Prigozhin will become leader we will speak with him" came from the White House...
Citation? I can’t find any information online about the White House response during the crisis, only a statement afterwards that Biden considered it an internal affair.
As Prighozin's escapade and surprising support from most of russian troops showed it may not require much, rather the right dose at right moment at right place.
Absolutely nobody is happy about the war in russia, from the very bottom all the way to the top. So nobody really knows how far the theoretical tipping point is, of course oligarchs with dictator promptly kill any emerging threat.
> Absolutely nobody is happy about the war in russia
I don't really go on Reddit much anymore these days, but the last time I was on there there were several subreddits where you could find people who were rather gleeful about the affair, trading anecdotes about Russian losses/deaths.
I find reddit to be a terrible place to gauge general public sentiment on almost any topic. Nowhere else can you find such a high concentration of content openly celebrating the misfortunes of your fellow man.
Just look at instantkarma, clevercomebacks, murderedbywords, fightporn, facepalm, leopardsatemyface etc etc etc. Most of the content is at the expense of someone else, and everyone is out to "score points".
I believe on an absolute scale, the vast majority of Humans are "not too impressive".
I wonder if this has something to do with why all Humans have a strong innate aversion to discussing absolute scales outside of physics, and will not talk about the proposition of whether they do.
Full support, i.e. actually throwing everything that Ukraine is asking for. If Russia is resoundingly pushed out of Ukraine, such that they cannot claim any victory at all, it may threaten the stability of Putin's power, given how much he's staked on success with the invasion.
How likely this is depends on who you ask, but the US seems to be trying to trying to avoid taking any risks at all there.
There's a bit of a paradox with this analysis: a win for Ukraine means pushing Russia out. But Russia collapses if it's pushed out of Ukraine. Therefore there's no way to support Ukraine enough that they win. Could explain the timid attitude of the US and the mixed messaging - sometimes you could be mistaken for thinking that the US's position is that Ukraine already won by not being fully subjugated.
With the new President, who knows what the US's goal will be. Given the messaging from Trump and the head of "DOGE" it's looking ominous for Ukraine. (personally I'm baffled as to why making America great would require rewarding Russian imperialism, so I can't really get my head round their attitudes. Is it just contrarianism?)
But Russia collapses if it's pushed out of Ukraine.
No, it just goes back into its corner with its tail between its legs for a while, like all colonial powers do. Whenever they choose to enmesh themselves in conflicts that are definitely not existential to them, or even in their coldly calculated rational interests.
Just like the French, the British, and the US have all done, and as it has itself done, countless times (and quite recently).
> Could explain the timid attitude of the US and the mixed messaging
The US has given Ukraine over 80 billion US Dollars, I believe. It also applied every possible sanction it could on Russia, to the point there's nearly nothing left to sanction, from what I have read on the topic. Biden has also been about as clear about the US being on Ukraine's side, for as long as it takes, as he could've been without declaring full on war on Russia.
Do you really believe that's a "timid attitude"? The way I see it, the only way for the US to do more is to send troops on the ground, which amounts to full on war with Russia and the prospect of nuclear retaliation.
Because if he was, why not do it now? If your plan is to burn your country and the world to the ground, then there's not much reason to delay.
Putin is saving his own life first and foremost with his actions, so he's not suicidal. But then secondly if you listen to the man it's apparent he believes he's rebuilding the Soviet Union as he imagined it when he was stationed in Berlin as a young KGB officer, and that belief is powered by a very specific lens he casts over Russian history.
Which is to say: he doesn't want to destroy the empire he see's as his legacy (which is notably different to whether he actually cares at all about the Russian people in it - the Russian government historically does not overly concern itself with dead Russians unless politically convenient to).
EDIT: The third element of course is that there's not literally "a button". No leader has unilateral release control of strategic nuclear weapons, so the reality is one "mad man" can't fire them - orders have to be issued, codes input etc. If Russia was going to launch it's ICBMs, then you can't do it by waking up in a bad mood one day unless at least a few of your top generals agree with you.
I've first read about Putin having a terminal stage of cancer in 2004 (that's not a joke). Since then I clearly recall him getting sick with some other kinds of cancer at least 3 other times.
Unless you want to argue that Putin is immortal, he'll die of something. Unless that something is very sudden (possible) it will be fairly described as a terminal illness.
I don't think that U.S. corruption is something to be ignored either. It surprises me that people are concerned about Putin pushing the button, but don't consider Trump pushing the button.
> It surprises me that people are concerned about Putin pushing the button, but don't consider Trump pushing the button
Great many people are concerned about that.
There are similar concerns that some boastful and bellicose messaging from him might be misinterpreted by adversaries and that triggers a nuclear exchange. This is the plot of the speculative fiction novel titled "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States" by Dr Jeffrey Lewis for example.
> I don't think that U.S. corruption is something to be ignored either.
Thorrez's comment is correct. It appears that you mean "corruption" in a different sense than the one discussed.
Corruption here is not about the politicians being up to no good, but in a more specific sense. For example if a significant percentage of the missiles don't launch because the grease which should have been used to lubricate the turbopumps have been sold on the black market. Or the metal body of valves was replaced with cheaper inferior kind which causes those valves to seize up.
And of course the answer here is not binary. It is not that every missile will fail, or every missile will succeed. It is about the probabilities. Will 5%, 10% 45%, or 95% be a dud? Obviously the Russian state is trying to work hard to push that percentage down, while entropy and corruption is "working" to push it up.
You're using "corruption" in a different way than delichon. delichon is using it to mean government members take so much money for themselves that the bombs and the rest of the military stop functioning.
War's ultimate purpose is to shift the situation into a point where diplomacy can happen. It occurs when both sides disagree on the situation strongly enough that they prefer war to any diplomatic option available, and it continues until a diplomatic option can be agreed.
Currently, Ukraine and Russia's diplomatic goals are still incompatible, and both believe they will be able to shift the balance of the war in their favor.
Clausewitz said it best - war is just politics executed with other means.
War starts when the cost/benefit analysis of violent means comes up better than the alternative (peaceful) means. War ends when the opposite happens, and the cost/benefit of the continuation of violence starts to come down in comparison with peace.
The benefit component is for the most part a zero-sum game (fixed land area), while the cost component is variable and growing with time. One way to force peace is to impose great costs on one or both warring sides.
That is not what Clausewitz said. He said that war is a paradoxical trinity of policy, rage, and chance, and that each war is a chameleon that takes on its own unique form.
More people like to glibly quote Clausewitz than have actually read and understood Clausewitz.
Goals are not rational. Neither Putin's goal of controlling Ukraine nor Ukraine's desire for independence are rational, they're subjective preferences.
You can ask - was Putin's decision to invade Ukraine rational given his values, priorities, risk aversion, willingness to bear the costs and information he had? Apart from the last, they're all subjective and thus it doesn't make sense to judge them as (ir)rational. The last one is objective, but having wrong information is not irrational either.
Some people just want to fight. As a goal by itself. Sure you can say that if they want to fight, fighting is the rational choice, but that definition would make every action 'rational'.
> Some people just want to fight. As a goal by itself.
Can you make some examples of war where fighting itself was the primary goal?
> that definition would make every action 'rational'.
As mentioned above, goals themselves are not something we can evaluate as rational or not.
But given you have a goal, you can question whether the actions you undertake to achieve that goal are rational. Let's say you want to start a family and want to buy a house. Going into a casino and throwing money into the slot machines is not a rational way to achieve it, esp. since there is plenty of information available explaining in painstaking detail that this won't work.
Can you make some examples of war where fighting itself was the primary goal?
It's possible that we're seeing one now in Ukraine. The Russian army isn't exactly made up of economic elites, being composed largely of men from outlying territories who are either a possible long-term threat to Putin's vision of Soviet-era revanchism or impoverished people who are literally more trouble to feed than they're worth. From Putin's point of view, a meat grinder may be just what the (mad) doctor ordered.
Certainly that dovetails with Kim's motivation to send his own hungry soldiers to the Ukraine front. Now that he has nukes, what does he need such a large army for? Like the ragtag derelicts and criminal elements who make up the Russian armed forces, those troops are more of a liability to Kim than an asset.
See also concerns about China's surplus of young men who will never find mates thanks to the effects of the regime's one-child policy. A literal incel army. It's not hard to imagine that Beijing might find a war to be a convenient way to rebalance the population and remove a potential source of agitation.
Even in the scenarios you describe, the wars would be based on political goals (even if the goal is killing your own citizens by sending them to war), not because anyone is "wanting to fight". Very different things.
The purpose of diplomacy is to achieve national goals in the international field. Wars happen when two nations have incompatible goals and diplomacy isn't able to resolve them. The wars are fought to achieve national goals, or change the other nation's goals. Diplomacy is ultimately what resolves wars by making the new national goals compatible. Every single treaty or armistice ending a war is a result of diplomacy, even unconditional surrenders.
What do you think diplomacy is? Why do you think it accomplishes anything? It certainly does, but you are discussing it as though it is not something that is formed against a backdrop of self-interest, geography, history, and military capability.
Diplomacy is distinctly not "just talking nicely".
> 'weakness' of Russia is a fallacy that need not be tested
What? We've already seen a real-world test of Russia's military prowess. It's why every customer of Russian military kit that has the option to replace them is.
Strong disagree. There is no diplomacy to be had when one side insists of war, because that's what they want. See Ukraine, everyone who is anyone tried to prevent the war, but Putin still went ahead with it. The leaked call with Macron is a good example, it's circling on Youtube and a variety of news outlets.
> See Ukraine, everyone who is anyone tried to prevent the war
Another rumour is that a peace deal of some sort deal was available to Ukraine but "the West" advised otherwise.
Who knows what the truth of the matter is, but what can be known is that we don't know, although that requires certain skills and some conscious effort, which seems to be a bit much to ask of people when the war drums are banging (state propaganda, 2nd order citizen propaganda like on HN, etc).
There's always some sort of peace deal available to any participant in a war: surrendering to your opponent's demands. War happens when those demands are not acceptable. Roughly speaking the difference between Ukraine's and Russia's demands is that Russia wants Ukraine to remain isolated from the west and militarily weak (which would make it easy for them to just go for it again), and Ukraine wants to align as tightly with the west as necessary to ensure Russia doesn't invade again, or failing that build up a credible enough deterrence themselves to achieve the same result.
I think it is incredibly fascinating how easily smart people can be confused by simple, repetitive propaganda. And they are big talkers about the narrative, but can be silenced (the only remaining option being a downvote), essentially without exception, with the mere unusual usage of language.
Imagine if someone was to weaponize, and then scale, this simple trick.
Do you think that diplomacy is just some magical spell that automatically makes everyone agree? It's not actually possible to just diplomacy harder in all situations and make things OK.
Diplomacy is able to prevent wars stemming from miscommunication / misunderstandings. There's not much you can do if both sides understand the other side's strategic aims correctly and still want to go to war.
There can still be things to be done, just not always.
For example had NATO countries all offered 50% of their GDP for the next decade as gifts to Russia in return for Putin calling all his troops out of Ukraine, it's very likely he would have ended the war on day two.
Of course, that's not an offer NATO countries would have been willing to make (and even if they had made a deal like that, at a price less ridiculously high than 50% of GDP, it could easily lead to Russia starting the exact same war a decade later, now with much better funding).
I'm not suggesting the above as a serious "this should have been the way to deal with it", just as a random, over-exaggerated example that there are diplomatic options above and beyond preventing wars that stem from miscommunication / misunderstandings.
The nuance here is that it's not the diplomats saving the peace (they obviously can't make such offer on their own), it's the NATO countries dramatically changing their strategic posture (willing to become economic vassals) and diplomats communicating the change. Putin would likely agree to such proposal since it would still further his goal of Russia becoming a dominant power on the continent.
This nuance is important, because sometimes people blame "weak diplomats" etc, but it's not their fault, they can't find equilibrium of strategic interests where there's none.
If anybody prevented war, it wasn't some last minute magic but rather slow and tedious effort years and decades before. Not something you get famous for.
It is also possible for war to be prevented by last minute magic deplomacy, albeit I would agree that it's the much less likely of the two options.
But it's also something that's much less likely to become public knowledge. Slow and tedious efforts over years and decades contains plenty of discussions of the sort that often can be made public to make both sides look good (or for each side to make themselves look good to their domestic audience), while last minute, last ditch deals to prevent a war that was about to happen is much more likely to involve deals/threats/whatever that one or both parties require remain classified for many decades.
> Name a single effective Western diplomat capable of preventing wars?
I mean all of them? Today the USA is not bombing London, Berlin is not bombing Paris, Switzerland is not bombing Sweden, Finland is not bombing Norway, Turkey is not bombing India.
If you only count the wars which happened then you ignore all the ones which were prevented.
Ye thanks for the reminder arethuza. Better not forget I might get glass schrapnel in the left side of the face without notice. WFH would have its advantages.
> Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.
Not to be confused with the way democracy, love, and science produce beautiful, useful and eco-friendly nuclear weapons.
'The concept was originally developed by the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was seen as a "cleaner" bomb for use against massed Soviet armored divisions.'
> Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.
Yep. Some similar grandstanding by the Chinese Army in 1960s accelerated the Indian nuclear weapons programme (overriding the utter lack of political will of its then primary leaders). After, buoyed by newly acquired capabilities, in 1980s, the Indian Army conducted largest ever military exercise (Operation Brasstacks) providing much needed impetus & driving consensus in Pakistan to push forward no matter the cost, embodied in this notorious quip by their ex Prime Minister, "[Pakistan] will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own [atomic weapon]."
The untold stories of these godly bombs are the devastation they wreak without needing to be ever "used". Devil's greatest trick...
>Some similar grandstanding by the Chinese Army in 1960s accelerated the Indian nuclear weapons programme (overriding the utter lack of political will of its then primary leaders).
I've read about the Indian military and how it's so disorganized. I mean really as in each branch does not even have the capability of communicating with the other branches. And that's now in 2024 I can only imagine in the 1960s.
Much more recently, you saw North Korea go through famine and economic development to build the bomb
One can argue they are faring better than Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or Lebanon.
Is that due to fear of an atomic bomb or more because of the artillery pieces aimed at Seoul as well as surrounding countries being unwilling to take in large amounts of North Korean refugees?
NK sold a lot of its artillery supplies to Russia, probably because they aren't that important anymore, after they got nukes. See https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorean-artillery-...
SK probably wouldn't mind receiving some NK refugees, to make for their ~0.7 fertility rates.
No one could possibly say for sure. But undoubtedly if the west was apprehensive about war with North Korea then, they are more so now.
The Kim clan is definitely doing ok, could you present the argument for the rest of the population?
How can you know, when every single piece of information about North Korea that you have comes from western media ?
Good point. Has Russian media acknowledged the presence of North Korean combatants in the Ukraine theatre? I've only heard that from Western sources.
I don't see why they wouldn't. They signed a mutual defense hacked with North Korea last year and the Korean army is fighting to expel the Ukrainian army from it's counter offensive incursion into Russia
Seems safe to say they're doing better than Gaddafi
The regime in NK persists because a great power (namely, Beijing) does not want an ally of the West on its border and is willing to spend the lives of 100s of 1000s of its soldiers to prevent that from happening (as illustrated by Beijing's choices during the Korean War).
Iraq, Libya or Lebanon don't have that advantage (and Kiev would get that advantage only if switches to being pro-Russian).
I don't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine if it still had nuclear weapons.
This episode of Arms Control Wonk is worth a listen if you think this true: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1215097/deterrence-i....
The episode starts with a strawman (that Ukraine never had nukes) and proceeds to beat it up. It's a strawman for reasons I will not go into for long, but ones that should be obvious to a fourth grader: physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to make it (which Ukraine also had) are far more important than electronic systems of control. This now classic 1993 paper by Mearsheimer is a much more clear-eyed take, his recent positions notwithstanding. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
Aside from either, how many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Apart from Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero. Finally (and this also applies to my post), social media is the worst place for any foreign policy discussion because it offers asymmetric returns to a foreign actor attempting to subvert a country's policy who happens to speak the country's language, and English is a very popular international language spoken by many people abroad at this point in history.
How many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Aside from Ukraine invading Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero.
The answer is Israel was subject to a full-scale invasion in 1973, despite having nuclear weapons since 1966. There have been regular border skirmishes between India and Pakistan since long after they both went nuclear. We also have Argentina's seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Israel didn't, and still hasn't, claimed to possess nuclear weapons. While it now is widely believed they do, that is far less of a deterrent. It's also worth noting that the US, one of Israel's closest allies and possessing arguably the best intelligence apparatus in the world, was not aware that Israel had the bomb until 1975, it's extremely doubtful the surrounding arab states knew earlier.
None of the conflicts between India and Pakistan since either of the powers got Nuclear weapons (1974 and 1998, respectively) could be reasonably characterized as invasions.
The Falkland islands are a British overseas territory. They are self governing, but the UK is responsible for their defense and foreing affairs. Classic protectorate. Obviously invading the Falklands is very different from invading the UK.
There has not been much of a question surrounding Israel's nuclear capability since the Apollo Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_affair
I guess you could look at their non-admission as evidence to the contrary, but it's not like they're selling enriched uranium as a souvenir to tourists at Ben Gurion international.
The apollo affair was reported in 1976.
Further, while it was widely suspected Israel had a nuclear weapons program, that's a very different thing than having a bomb. Iran is believed to have had a nuclear weapons program. So have many countries.
What matters is that the Falkland islands are considered to be a part of UK's sovereign territory.
That's very much not what matters. If you wanted to travel to the UK and your plane took you to the Falkland Islands, you'd be very pissed off and say "you didn't take me to the UK!" If someone says "where is the UK?" the correct answer is not "the south Atlantic." There is the United Kingdom the nation and United Kingdom the place. An invasion means troops in the place.
You are being childish.
You're being obtuse. We all know what parent comment meant, what any reasonable person means when they use the term invade.
> (physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to produce are far more important than electronic systems of control).
Sure, but I don't think you understand what goes into keeping nuclear weapons ready. Even assuming Ukraine can manufacture the complete supply chain required for ICBMs, they still have to make and maintain their own warheads. That means either refining nuclear material domestically (where it will get destroyed at any cost by Russia) or importing it from an ally a-la the United States who has no desire to deal with the consequences of that. Ukraine is a strong country, but they cannot sabre-rattle the way Russia can.
Also, I don't think you can cherry-pick Mearsheimer so easily. Even in Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent we see him discounting NATO as an impotent defense, an assumption that that very much isn't true today and one that he (somehow) still seems to believe in. I think his essay is showing it's age, and then some.
Read Mearsheimer's paper again. Nuclear deterrent is far cheaper than equivalent conventional deterrent. A country under existential threat will find means, one way or another, to fund it.
European countries practically begged the US to place nuclear weapons after the Berlin blockade.
>Aside from either, how many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years?
Great Britain was, in 1982 (the Falklands War). It that such a fat zero?
Today it wouldn't. Because it would have invaded them sooner as they tried to acquire those nuclear weapons.
I tend to agree (without having thought about the question much) but I hope you don't think that contradicts or supports anything I wrote.
> One can argue they are faring better than Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or Lebanon
How? Are you saying the median person in any of those making an informed decision would swap places with a random person in North Korea?
I assume they are speaking from the perspective of the regime. Is the regime that makes decisions such as prioritizing nuclear development over food and commerce and international relations
Can you blame them really? American regime change is real and Koreans have a... complicated past with China.
Besides nukes are cheap compared to fielding 20 tank divisions as the Europeans did for 50 years in West Germany.
Sure but that's keep the Kim family in power. It has nothing to do with the plight of the North Korean people.
Edit: fixed family name
Tiny nitpick: the family name is "Kim", Jong Un is his first name. Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sung.
Yeah when I wrote that I knew I was forgetting something about how that works, thanks.
It was similar for China—Mao launched the nuclear bomb program after the U.S. threatened to use nuclear weapons against China.
>At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons.
Project Sundial was the ultimate expression of power, a bomb so big it would detonated here in the US, to kill everyone on the planet.
I think that the "dead hand" system[1] built by the Soviets, and still operational today, might have incorporated a copy of this idea. This would nicely explain the hesitancy/restraint of the US in the Ukrainian conflict.
Nobody wants a 10+ Gigaton bomb going off.
It's worth noting that the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was about 30 Gigatons TNT equivalent. Certainly a catastrophic event that affected climate around the globe, but a far cry from "killing everyone on the planet."
Of course it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters.
Not substantially. The fallout produced would obviously be substantially larger than any one nuclear explosion, but it's still a small amount on a planetary scale. If you naively scaled up the contamination area of the castle bravo test from 15 Mt to 15 Gt, it would be 3% of earth's surface area. Further, the range that fallout can travel is limited by the half lives of the particles, not the size of the explosions, so it does not scale like this.
We also have experience with large amounts of fallout released into the atmosphere. For comparison, in a 12 month period from 1961 to 1962 there were 340 Megatons worth of nukes detonated in atmosphere. While I would recommend against detonating a few times that much all at once, it's a few percent increase in global cancer rates scenario, not a nuclear hellscape scenario.
> it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters
Fires, not fallout. Volcanoes don't spark continent-wide fires. Sundial would. That sooty matter lofted into the stratosphere is what makes it unique from a volcano. Not the radioactivity.
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.
Looking for the dead hand [1] reference. Did you forget to add it?
Yep... Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
A real life swordholder.
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Let's view earth as if we are aliens (or even normal people) visiting our moon, watching the blue planet and the behavior of its inhabitants.
So these conscious people were building several 100 Mton weapons AND detonated one of them on the surface of the planet! Knowing that it would kill and destroy life and atmosphere around it and contaminate earth. AND they were starting a program for building a Gigaton weapon??
It is just surreal that anyone would even think of doing such, let alone doing so.
Actually, it's better (worse) than that - the gigaton bomb was really being developed to be a primary for a 10 gigaton bomb!
"When you merely wish to bury bombs, there is no limit to the size."
We don't really know what aliens would think, so you're anthropomorphizing. If the aliens were Klingons they might find it endearing. There's zero evidence that peace without weapons is possible.
> There's zero evidence that peace without weapons is possible.
I think a world without defenses would not exist. To me it is just a law of nature that defenses need to exist for life to be present. Attacks are part of nature.
However in that comparison I would call the gigaton bomb a self destroying auto immune disease.
> I would call the gigaton bomb a self destroying auto immune disease
We had Project Sundial levels of nuclear weapons on Earth during the Cold War. The only difference in consolidating it into a single weapon is fault tolerance.
> There's zero evidence that peace without weapons is possible.
How do you apply that? To countries? Cities? Schools? Homes? Individuals?
It gets ugly fast.
Essentially all of those are true already, mostly through the military and police, and mostly through Dead hand guarantees.
If you destroy a city, shoot up a school, kill a family, or kill an individual, someone with weapons will likely come to retaliate even if your victim is dead
it isnt the weapons, its the mentality that requires them.
as long as children are trained to be highly, aggressively, competitive and benefit at the loosers expense, calling it sport, the mentality will continue.
Defenselessness is a unstable solution. It only takes one person out of 7 billion to defect.
You would have to simultaneously train every child to be a pacifist, and do it with 100% success rate
It's funny how people love to imagine uber-intelligent benevolent alien overlords who always happen to agree with whatever point they're trying to make. It's an extension of the "if you disagree with me, you don't actually have an opinion, you're just having an emotional reaction to my rational points" nonsense that's all over the internet.
Hmmm I fail to understand your reasoning. I did not write this for anyone to agree or disagree with me. It is just something I imagine, and in my imagination the aliens happen to be not klingons nor their real world counterparts. In my imagination (and i guess maybe in that of the reader of my comment as well) they are sentient logical beings not being in favor of peace nor war. So in that context those beings would think, what the f are they doing, this does not make any sense!
I suppose the reasoning is that intelligent aliens perhaps would actually think that it was a good accomplishment, given that they know of much bigger wars that involve multiple planets and perhaps themselves have bombs that are capable of destroying entire planets? There's no way to know if extremely intelligent aliens would actually be peaceful or extreme beligerent dickheads. I don't think we have any evidence of a successful species even on Earth that behaves like peace-loving hippies.
In my very limited and probably naive model, Ant > crocodile > wolf > dog > human > smarterThanHumanAlien
The less evolved, the more aggressive.
There's no "more evolved" animal in your list. They are all different animals that are each perfectly evolved for the habitat they occupy (dogs are domesticated wolves, not "evolved wolves", by the way).
You could argue that humans are more "civilized" , but not more evolved. But to claim that humans are less aggressive than other animals is amusing to me. Humans are the only ones capable of (and willing to commit multiple times) war and genocide on a large scale. We may be less aggressive on an individual level, normally, but in the sense we're discussing what matters is the collective aggressiveness, of which humans are in my view the greatest by far.
If you take evolved literally as number of years of evolution, then the ants are more evolved, since they were there before humans. Of course, I meant evolved not in that way, more as civilized indeed, but also that trait is hard to define.
Indeed humans have the high score in collective aggresiveness. Group think and influencing large amounts of people appear to be the greatest strength and greatest vice at the same time of humans.
I've been told that for a sufficiently large thermonuclear bomb, it isn't even necessary to compress the secondary -- just heating it is enough. Teller's original "Super" idea would work at scale. So once you've made a big enough bomb, attach it to a big tank of deuterium with thick walls and you're good.
The problem of making such a bomb comes down to the problem of economically producing deuterium.
A la Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, https://youtu.be/bPBzj90Su8A?feature=shared
Sort of describing the DeathWorlders series
Appropriately timed video about the American version of this, that (presumably) got stopped at the planning phase.
A bomb so big, you did not even need to deploy it to enemy territory. You just set it off in your own back yard. It was going to destroy the entire planet anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E55uSCO5D2w&t=642s
Sundial was the 10Gt bomb - which is 2 orders of magnitude more powerful than the Tsar Bomba (as designed, not as tested).
Edit: Good video!!
The documentary mentioned in the article is definitely worth watching. Some parts of it are undoubtedly propaganda, but it still offers an incredible view on what detonating a nuclear bomb actually looked like.
For reference, there is declassified footage (very clear images, even with some original voice over) of the RDS-4 bomb[0] ("only" 1.5 Megatons) detonating at the infamous Semipalatinsk Test Site[1] (now Kazakhstan).
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHRLEMTsLyA
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipalatinsk_Test_Site
Wow, and that's "only" 1.5 megaton, not even that large by the standards of modern arsenals. Absolutely terrifying.
Maybe this? https://youtu.be/Swmcldi_jc4
Yep that's the one
I like the little bombs on the left of the page showing the difference. Nice touch.
Wanted to say something similar. It's really effective to bring home how stupidly massive this thing really was. You just keep on scrolling and scrolling and the little bombs don't end!
Perplexing is the nature of human - to create and destroy, compete, and fear itself.
Kurzgesagt recently made a video about Final Bomb which would have destroyed a big part of planet earth, some 400km would have immediately burned https://youtu.be/E55uSCO5D2w
I wish I could believe the argument that Russian corruption has reached the point at which their nukes are no longer a threat and the alternative view amounts to fear mongering. But it seems unlikely that they have regressed so far in the means of power in the last sixty years. As the Doomsday Clock moves ever closer to midnight it concerns me that its political salience has only diminished.
They are corrupt. Next time Russia will colapse and ask for food aid (see Bush Legs 1990), we should exchange it for nukes. Food for nukes, sounds sweet.
Russians now pay a third or less what you are probably currently paying for eggs.
I don't mind paying a little more for my eggs, personally, if I get to enjoy living in an actual civilization as a bonus.
> Russians now pay a third or less what you are probably currently paying for eggs
Now do it as a fraction of real disposable income.
(You're not wrong. American eggs are pricey [1]. But they'll always be pricey relative to Russia's simply because the dollar is strong.)
[1] https://www.globalproductprices.com/rankings/egg_prices/
I always wondered about the bush legs were there given to Russia for free? Or were they sold to Russia for cheap? Are there any documents about the numbers online?
They were being imported and paid for. It's funny that this is being considered as "help".
someone please chime in, if im totally off base, but i have developed the impression that, if you keep all the wealth your economy generates and dont pay down your debts, you get reduced credit rating from world bank.
"helping" other nations is one way of spreading wealth, to those in need, with incumbency to pay it forward.
please be gentle.
AS long as the nukes don't go to the US.
Yeah, it's not particularly plausible. Even if you believe that they are in a truly atrocious state of repair, that, say, 95% of them will fail to land on target and detonate, a nuclear strike from Russia would still be catastrophic.
The main reasons most observers are not super worried about nukes in the context of their invasion of Ukraine, is that MAD is still an effective policy against an all-out attack against NATO, and NATO (especially the US) has a credible red line of any attempt at a 'small-scale' use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine that will bring them into the war.
The main effect of nukes, though, is to make Ukraine's allies nervous about the collapse of the russian government, because that is a plausible situation in which nukes could be used. The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes.
Yes, this is arguably one of the points of overkill. Nukes are so powerful, and major powers have 100s to 1000s of them. Only 1 needs to get through to change history.
> and NATO (especially the US) has a credible red line of any attempt at a 'small-scale' use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine that will bring them into the war.
Do you feel that USA red line is still credible post election? I'm genuinely curious how you see it. To me it sounded like the new commander in chief wants nothing to do with the whole conflict there.
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The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses,
My sense is it's not that they don't want Ukraine to win that hard -- they just (very reasonably) don't see how anyone can expect that to reasonably happen within any meaningful time frame.
So they fall back on the next-best alternative, that Ukraine not lose, as a sibling commenter already pointed out. Much more definable, and infinitely more achievable -- if there's a broadly shared understanding (and consensus reality) in place as what that would necessarily entail.
Only problem is -- there's still been a lot of noise among those who run things in the US/West about pretending to believe in the former ("Ukraine must simply win") as a stated goal. Leading inevitably to reduced confidence in what the US/West says, and to the further erosion of public discourse as we're seeing here.
> The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes
I've always thought the US wanted Ukraine not to lose. Tying up Russia's armed forces in an endless war of attrition seems like an ideal result on all grounds except humanitarian ones.
European countries have slightly different incentives because they would also like to stop the refugee crisis, but the US is basically the marginal supplier of arms here - if Estonia finds it can lend another 5 fighter jets, the US can just provide 5 fewer.
> The US, especially, seems to by trying to help Ukraine win, but not win so hard that Russia collapses, and it's not obvious that a level of support exists that would satisfy both outcomes.
What level of US support would allow Ukraine to win by way of Russia collapsing?
Leaving same weapons just on time totaly aside: when Prigozhin started march to Moscow, and roads were dug - US called kremlin to assure "we have nothing in common, stay strong Vlad". Just imagine what if words "If Prigozhin will become leader we will speak with him" came from the White House...
Citation? I can’t find any information online about the White House response during the crisis, only a statement afterwards that Biden considered it an internal affair.
As Prighozin's escapade and surprising support from most of russian troops showed it may not require much, rather the right dose at right moment at right place.
Absolutely nobody is happy about the war in russia, from the very bottom all the way to the top. So nobody really knows how far the theoretical tipping point is, of course oligarchs with dictator promptly kill any emerging threat.
> Absolutely nobody is happy about the war in russia
I don't really go on Reddit much anymore these days, but the last time I was on there there were several subreddits where you could find people who were rather gleeful about the affair, trading anecdotes about Russian losses/deaths.
I find reddit to be a terrible place to gauge general public sentiment on almost any topic. Nowhere else can you find such a high concentration of content openly celebrating the misfortunes of your fellow man.
Just look at instantkarma, clevercomebacks, murderedbywords, fightporn, facepalm, leopardsatemyface etc etc etc. Most of the content is at the expense of someone else, and everyone is out to "score points".
I believe on an absolute scale, the vast majority of Humans are "not too impressive".
I wonder if this has something to do with why all Humans have a strong innate aversion to discussing absolute scales outside of physics, and will not talk about the proposition of whether they do.
Full support, i.e. actually throwing everything that Ukraine is asking for. If Russia is resoundingly pushed out of Ukraine, such that they cannot claim any victory at all, it may threaten the stability of Putin's power, given how much he's staked on success with the invasion.
How likely this is depends on who you ask, but the US seems to be trying to trying to avoid taking any risks at all there.
There's a bit of a paradox with this analysis: a win for Ukraine means pushing Russia out. But Russia collapses if it's pushed out of Ukraine. Therefore there's no way to support Ukraine enough that they win. Could explain the timid attitude of the US and the mixed messaging - sometimes you could be mistaken for thinking that the US's position is that Ukraine already won by not being fully subjugated.
With the new President, who knows what the US's goal will be. Given the messaging from Trump and the head of "DOGE" it's looking ominous for Ukraine. (personally I'm baffled as to why making America great would require rewarding Russian imperialism, so I can't really get my head round their attitudes. Is it just contrarianism?)
But Russia collapses if it's pushed out of Ukraine.
No, it just goes back into its corner with its tail between its legs for a while, like all colonial powers do. Whenever they choose to enmesh themselves in conflicts that are definitely not existential to them, or even in their coldly calculated rational interests.
Just like the French, the British, and the US have all done, and as it has itself done, countless times (and quite recently).
> Could explain the timid attitude of the US and the mixed messaging
The US has given Ukraine over 80 billion US Dollars, I believe. It also applied every possible sanction it could on Russia, to the point there's nearly nothing left to sanction, from what I have read on the topic. Biden has also been about as clear about the US being on Ukraine's side, for as long as it takes, as he could've been without declaring full on war on Russia.
Do you really believe that's a "timid attitude"? The way I see it, the only way for the US to do more is to send troops on the ground, which amounts to full on war with Russia and the prospect of nuclear retaliation.
One thing that worries me is what if Putin gets a terminal illness? What incentive would he not have to go out by pushing the button?
Because if he was, why not do it now? If your plan is to burn your country and the world to the ground, then there's not much reason to delay.
Putin is saving his own life first and foremost with his actions, so he's not suicidal. But then secondly if you listen to the man it's apparent he believes he's rebuilding the Soviet Union as he imagined it when he was stationed in Berlin as a young KGB officer, and that belief is powered by a very specific lens he casts over Russian history.
Which is to say: he doesn't want to destroy the empire he see's as his legacy (which is notably different to whether he actually cares at all about the Russian people in it - the Russian government historically does not overly concern itself with dead Russians unless politically convenient to).
EDIT: The third element of course is that there's not literally "a button". No leader has unilateral release control of strategic nuclear weapons, so the reality is one "mad man" can't fire them - orders have to be issued, codes input etc. If Russia was going to launch it's ICBMs, then you can't do it by waking up in a bad mood one day unless at least a few of your top generals agree with you.
> If your plan is to burn your country and the world to the ground, then there's not much reason to delay.
I didn't say that's his plan now. But if he got cancer or something I could see him doing it as a defiant act.
> he believes he's rebuilding the Soviet Union as he imagined it
I agree with that. But people who are corned can act out.
>it's apparent he believes he's rebuilding the Soviet Union
Russia has nothing in common (as a state) with the Soviet Union.
His daugther?
And his country and his legacy.
World leaders don't do bad things "because YOLO". They do bad things as a means to some other end.
I've first read about Putin having a terminal stage of cancer in 2004 (that's not a joke). Since then I clearly recall him getting sick with some other kinds of cancer at least 3 other times.
Aren't you (yet) tired of dreaming about this?
That was a hypothetical, not a claim.
Unless you want to argue that Putin is immortal, he'll die of something. Unless that something is very sudden (possible) it will be fairly described as a terminal illness.
>That was a hypothetical, not a claim.
Those were all factual claims. Everybody will die, of course. But this belief "Putin is dying" seems to be a kind of spirituous ritual.
> what if Putin gets a terminal illness
No, this is a hypothetical.
I don't think that U.S. corruption is something to be ignored either. It surprises me that people are concerned about Putin pushing the button, but don't consider Trump pushing the button.
> It surprises me that people are concerned about Putin pushing the button, but don't consider Trump pushing the button
Great many people are concerned about that.
There are similar concerns that some boastful and bellicose messaging from him might be misinterpreted by adversaries and that triggers a nuclear exchange. This is the plot of the speculative fiction novel titled "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States" by Dr Jeffrey Lewis for example.
> I don't think that U.S. corruption is something to be ignored either.
Thorrez's comment is correct. It appears that you mean "corruption" in a different sense than the one discussed.
Corruption here is not about the politicians being up to no good, but in a more specific sense. For example if a significant percentage of the missiles don't launch because the grease which should have been used to lubricate the turbopumps have been sold on the black market. Or the metal body of valves was replaced with cheaper inferior kind which causes those valves to seize up.
And of course the answer here is not binary. It is not that every missile will fail, or every missile will succeed. It is about the probabilities. Will 5%, 10% 45%, or 95% be a dud? Obviously the Russian state is trying to work hard to push that percentage down, while entropy and corruption is "working" to push it up.
You're using "corruption" in a different way than delichon. delichon is using it to mean government members take so much money for themselves that the bombs and the rest of the military stop functioning.
It is never a good idea to believe ones own propaganda. The 'weakness' of Russia is a fallacy that need not be tested, ever, with aggression.
A far better use of ones time is to wonder where all the diplomacy has gone.
War's ultimate purpose is to shift the situation into a point where diplomacy can happen. It occurs when both sides disagree on the situation strongly enough that they prefer war to any diplomatic option available, and it continues until a diplomatic option can be agreed.
Currently, Ukraine and Russia's diplomatic goals are still incompatible, and both believe they will be able to shift the balance of the war in their favor.
Clausewitz said it best - war is just politics executed with other means.
War starts when the cost/benefit analysis of violent means comes up better than the alternative (peaceful) means. War ends when the opposite happens, and the cost/benefit of the continuation of violence starts to come down in comparison with peace.
The benefit component is for the most part a zero-sum game (fixed land area), while the cost component is variable and growing with time. One way to force peace is to impose great costs on one or both warring sides.
That is not what Clausewitz said. He said that war is a paradoxical trinity of policy, rage, and chance, and that each war is a chameleon that takes on its own unique form.
More people like to glibly quote Clausewitz than have actually read and understood Clausewitz.
TBH I don't care if it was Clausewitz or someone else who said that.
It's still a useful way to look at how the world works.
That makes it sound like wars are only fought for rational reasons. I disagree.
Goals are not rational. Neither Putin's goal of controlling Ukraine nor Ukraine's desire for independence are rational, they're subjective preferences.
You can ask - was Putin's decision to invade Ukraine rational given his values, priorities, risk aversion, willingness to bear the costs and information he had? Apart from the last, they're all subjective and thus it doesn't make sense to judge them as (ir)rational. The last one is objective, but having wrong information is not irrational either.
Some people just want to fight. As a goal by itself. Sure you can say that if they want to fight, fighting is the rational choice, but that definition would make every action 'rational'.
> Some people just want to fight. As a goal by itself.
Can you make some examples of war where fighting itself was the primary goal?
> that definition would make every action 'rational'.
As mentioned above, goals themselves are not something we can evaluate as rational or not.
But given you have a goal, you can question whether the actions you undertake to achieve that goal are rational. Let's say you want to start a family and want to buy a house. Going into a casino and throwing money into the slot machines is not a rational way to achieve it, esp. since there is plenty of information available explaining in painstaking detail that this won't work.
Can you make some examples of war where fighting itself was the primary goal?
It's possible that we're seeing one now in Ukraine. The Russian army isn't exactly made up of economic elites, being composed largely of men from outlying territories who are either a possible long-term threat to Putin's vision of Soviet-era revanchism or impoverished people who are literally more trouble to feed than they're worth. From Putin's point of view, a meat grinder may be just what the (mad) doctor ordered.
Certainly that dovetails with Kim's motivation to send his own hungry soldiers to the Ukraine front. Now that he has nukes, what does he need such a large army for? Like the ragtag derelicts and criminal elements who make up the Russian armed forces, those troops are more of a liability to Kim than an asset.
See also concerns about China's surplus of young men who will never find mates thanks to the effects of the regime's one-child policy. A literal incel army. It's not hard to imagine that Beijing might find a war to be a convenient way to rebalance the population and remove a potential source of agitation.
Even in the scenarios you describe, the wars would be based on political goals (even if the goal is killing your own citizens by sending them to war), not because anyone is "wanting to fight". Very different things.
>War's ultimate purpose is to shift the situation into a point where diplomacy can happen.
Sorry but that is just plain nonsense. The purpose of diplomacy is to avoid war. War destroys any reason for diplomacy.
The purpose of diplomacy is to achieve national goals in the international field. Wars happen when two nations have incompatible goals and diplomacy isn't able to resolve them. The wars are fought to achieve national goals, or change the other nation's goals. Diplomacy is ultimately what resolves wars by making the new national goals compatible. Every single treaty or armistice ending a war is a result of diplomacy, even unconditional surrenders.
If that were true, wars would never end.
And? Multiple wars are happening today: because diplomacy failed.
What do you think diplomacy is? Why do you think it accomplishes anything? It certainly does, but you are discussing it as though it is not something that is formed against a backdrop of self-interest, geography, history, and military capability.
Diplomacy is distinctly not "just talking nicely".
And many more wars have ended, because the war eventually brought both sides to the table (even if that is an unconditional surrender).
> 'weakness' of Russia is a fallacy that need not be tested
What? We've already seen a real-world test of Russia's military prowess. It's why every customer of Russian military kit that has the option to replace them is.
Strong disagree. There is no diplomacy to be had when one side insists of war, because that's what they want. See Ukraine, everyone who is anyone tried to prevent the war, but Putin still went ahead with it. The leaked call with Macron is a good example, it's circling on Youtube and a variety of news outlets.
> See Ukraine, everyone who is anyone tried to prevent the war
Another rumour is that a peace deal of some sort deal was available to Ukraine but "the West" advised otherwise.
Who knows what the truth of the matter is, but what can be known is that we don't know, although that requires certain skills and some conscious effort, which seems to be a bit much to ask of people when the war drums are banging (state propaganda, 2nd order citizen propaganda like on HN, etc).
There's always some sort of peace deal available to any participant in a war: surrendering to your opponent's demands. War happens when those demands are not acceptable. Roughly speaking the difference between Ukraine's and Russia's demands is that Russia wants Ukraine to remain isolated from the west and militarily weak (which would make it easy for them to just go for it again), and Ukraine wants to align as tightly with the west as necessary to ensure Russia doesn't invade again, or failing that build up a credible enough deterrence themselves to achieve the same result.
That's not a rumour, there were several peace talks already, it was all over the news at the time but people seem to always forget every time.
Wikipedia has a list of all of them so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ...
I think it is incredibly fascinating how easily smart people can be confused by simple, repetitive propaganda. And they are big talkers about the narrative, but can be silenced (the only remaining option being a downvote), essentially without exception, with the mere unusual usage of language.
Imagine if someone was to weaponize, and then scale, this simple trick.
War is the end of diplomacy. Name a single effective Western diplomat capable of preventing wars?
Do you think that diplomacy is just some magical spell that automatically makes everyone agree? It's not actually possible to just diplomacy harder in all situations and make things OK.
Diplomacy is able to prevent wars stemming from miscommunication / misunderstandings. There's not much you can do if both sides understand the other side's strategic aims correctly and still want to go to war.
There can still be things to be done, just not always.
For example had NATO countries all offered 50% of their GDP for the next decade as gifts to Russia in return for Putin calling all his troops out of Ukraine, it's very likely he would have ended the war on day two.
Of course, that's not an offer NATO countries would have been willing to make (and even if they had made a deal like that, at a price less ridiculously high than 50% of GDP, it could easily lead to Russia starting the exact same war a decade later, now with much better funding).
I'm not suggesting the above as a serious "this should have been the way to deal with it", just as a random, over-exaggerated example that there are diplomatic options above and beyond preventing wars that stem from miscommunication / misunderstandings.
The nuance here is that it's not the diplomats saving the peace (they obviously can't make such offer on their own), it's the NATO countries dramatically changing their strategic posture (willing to become economic vassals) and diplomats communicating the change. Putin would likely agree to such proposal since it would still further his goal of Russia becoming a dominant power on the continent.
This nuance is important, because sometimes people blame "weak diplomats" etc, but it's not their fault, they can't find equilibrium of strategic interests where there's none.
If anybody prevented war, it wasn't some last minute magic but rather slow and tedious effort years and decades before. Not something you get famous for.
It is also possible for war to be prevented by last minute magic deplomacy, albeit I would agree that it's the much less likely of the two options.
But it's also something that's much less likely to become public knowledge. Slow and tedious efforts over years and decades contains plenty of discussions of the sort that often can be made public to make both sides look good (or for each side to make themselves look good to their domestic audience), while last minute, last ditch deals to prevent a war that was about to happen is much more likely to involve deals/threats/whatever that one or both parties require remain classified for many decades.
> Name a single effective Western diplomat capable of preventing wars?
I mean all of them? Today the USA is not bombing London, Berlin is not bombing Paris, Switzerland is not bombing Sweden, Finland is not bombing Norway, Turkey is not bombing India.
If you only count the wars which happened then you ignore all the ones which were prevented.
Grandpa Buff
Ye thanks for the reminder arethuza. Better not forget I might get glass schrapnel in the left side of the face without notice. WFH would have its advantages.
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“New” would be relative. I don’t think anyone but you can know the answer without giving the article a read.
> Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.
Not to be confused with the way democracy, love, and science produce beautiful, useful and eco-friendly nuclear weapons.
So true! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
'The concept was originally developed by the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was seen as a "cleaner" bomb for use against massed Soviet armored divisions.'
It seems you have no understanding at all of the goals of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
It's worth reading up on.
Democracy in the US isn't mutually exclusive with any of those?
I don't think anyone is claiming that nationalism, fear, and high-technology were a problem unique to the Soviet Union.
Interesting point of view.