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Comment by ajmurmann

4 years ago

> I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world would have become sans nuke.

Interesting. I expected that nuklear weapons made us more docile. It's a huge deterrence for big powers to go to war with each other. I think we are seeing this play out in Ukraine right now. If Russia had no nuclear weapons, I'd expect NATO to have intervened much more directly at this point, especially after seeing that Russia seems much weaker than expected.

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ajmurmann

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anonAndOn  4 years ago

That is precisely why Putin keeps saber rattling about Russia's nukes. NATO (but mostly the US) would wipe out the Russian forces in Ukraine in a matter of days. Since he's committed so much of Russia's military to the invasion, the west would effectively castrate Russian defenses and likely all manner of hell would break loose in all those oppressed satellite regimes (hello! Chechenia, Georgia, Belarus, etc.)

  • zozbot234  4 years ago

    The normalization of saber-rattling about nukes is one of the most unsettling outcomes of this whole conflict TBH, and hopefully it's going to be addressed in some way down the line. If every non-nuclear power is suddenly vulnerable to conventional attacks by any rouge state with nukes, the ensuing equilibrium is pretty clear and is not good for overall stability.

    • p_j_w  4 years ago

      >If every non-nuclear power is suddenly vulnerable to conventional attacks by any rouge state with nukes

      There's nothing sudden about it, this has been the reality for decades now. We here in the US were on the other side of the matter in Iraq and arguably Vietnam. This is an old truth.

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    • mcguire  4 years ago

      Nuclear saber rattling has been the norm for a very long time; it's just that after the fall of the Soviet Union there wasn't much need for it. Things have returned to their more traditional state.

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    • chasd00  4 years ago

      in the 80s it was not unusual for armed Russian strategic bombers to cross into US airspace above Alaska and then be escorted back out by US interceptors. I agree nuclear saber rattling is unsettling but it can get much worse than what we're seeing now.

      /btw, in other discussions i've been too cavalier throwing around the likelihood of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine. I've thought about it much more since those other threads