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Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war
- baremetal 5y agoI read this as why the economist and friends want russia to want war. but maybe im just cynical and jaded?
- skrebbel 5y agoI live under a rock, can you clarify why the Economist wants Russia to want war, and who those friends are?
- numlock86 5y agoTo write paywalled click-bait articles about it.
- User23 5y agoI doubt the Economist much cares. As for the parties unknown who direct the Economist’s editorial staff? I could only speculate. Since such speculations would necessarily include offering some pretty unsavory possibilities, I’ll not share them here.
- drno123 5y agoYou are not alone. The economist articles related to Russia/Ukraine for the past few weeks are pure war mongering.
- aww_dang 5y agoIt is hard not to be skeptical about the drum beats for war. Pick any conflict from Vietnam to Syria/Iraq and you'll find a complicit media parroting false pretenses. Any amount of reckoning (fact checks?) for these past incidents (dangerous misinformation?) would go a long way.
- gfosco 5y agoI don't think you're too cynical, but we can have our own takes. From what I was able to piece together, Russia isn't the one starting this conflict, in action. It's NATO aligned countries trying to get Ukraine to join NATO. Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it. So who's still agitating for war? The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it.
- BobbyJo 5y agoI mean, that's still Russia being the aggressor. Ukraine, as a sovereign nation, can align with who they wish, and be lobbied by anyone and everyone to do so, and Russia doesn't get a say in that.
- hollerith 5y agoAnd if 20 years from now, Mexico and Canada decide to align with China and invite Chinese troops to set up on the border with the US, then the leader of the US should explain to US citizen living near the borders, "Hey, I know this makes us vulnerable, and I don't like it any more than you do, but I cannot ethically do anything about it because no country gets a say in the military alliances of any other country," according to you?
- BobbyJo 5y agoDid you forget Cuba exists and that the US was regarded a the agressor for trying to get the soviets out of there? Or would it have be totally ok with you if we invaded them?
- hollerith 5y agoThe US didn't need to invade: President Kennedy instituted a naval blockade and that plus Kennedy's promise to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange was enough to get the Soviets to agree to remove their missiles from Cuba. That blockade of course was an agressive act against Cuba, and it was the correct course of action IMO because a rule that says that no country will be agressive towards any other country is unworkable because there is no power above the countries that could enforce the rule. (The UN is toothless.) If a country's leaders adhere to an unenforceable rule and insist on other countries doing the same, that will on average lead to more death and less prosperity for the world than if each country's leaders rationally pursues their country's interests IMO. Some courses of action at the country level are more ethical than others, but it is more complicated than you imply it is and any ethical framework has to take into account certain realities.
- stefan_ 5y agoThis seems to be a popular edgy opinion but I think it's useful to occasionally remember who has thousands of soldiers massed on the border.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoHackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.
- oceanplexian 5y agoI mean part of it could be that lots of us have actually been to Russia (I fit in that category) or are Russian. We don’t need to rely on third party sources to tell us how to think. I’ve also been to China and it’s so much worse but the US propaganda machine loves China, in fact we’re watching them trivialize a country that places minorities in concentration camps on primetime TV. Doesn’t seem odd to me at all. The media has lost credibility and our government is morally bankrupt.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoThat would explain cogent arguments based on the real world. Does it explain blatantly false ones that align with Russian propaganda?
- oceanplexian 5y agoWhat about the American propaganda that the government doesn’t spy on its citizens, because if it weren’t for Russia the person who brought that to light would be sitting in a jail cell instead of taking interviews.
- rosndo 5y ago
- unclebucknasty 5y agoRussia annexed Crimea and has been engaged in a proxy war in Donbas for 8 years. The Kremlin has now amassed 100K - 200K troops at Ukraine's border. Yet, the Russian propaganda machine continues to claim it's the West that wants war. Can you explain how the West is the aggressor here?
- tim333 5y agoThere is a sort of aggression in that the West, and most the world's people really, like human rights and democracy and oppose the murderous dictator for life thing. Obvs that threatens Putin and he doesn't want that stuff setting in too much in his neighborhood.
- iqanq 5y agoThe NATO, which shouldn't be expanding eastwards, wants missiles in Ukraine pointing at Putin's face.
- consp 5y ago> The NATO, which shouldn't be expanding eastwards If you neighbor wants to invade you and has done that already at least one in the past decade you might want a stronger ally than nobody. That is up to the country to decide. Though the cold war has shown that neither party wins in a climate of fear.
- throw0101a 5y agoWhy shouldn't it be expanding eastwards? Seems to me that if a bunch of countries want to get together to protect each other, they have every right to do so. Especially when a near-by country has a habit of being an aggressor: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru... And let's not forget Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
- t-3 5y ago
- krzyk 5y agoYou mean after the coup that placed Russia siding president in Ukraine?
- ericb 5y ago> only the US & allied governments are actually actively promoting the idea of going to war. It's incredibly costly to park 150,000 troops and armor in a position to invade. But your issue is with the governments saying "excuse me, why does it look like you're positioning your troops for an invasion?" OK.
- sudosysgen 5y agoDon't overestimate the cost. If the units weren't there, they'd be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers, which can be even more costly. From the perspective of the Russian army, stationing a medium-sized force within their own borders is not going to be that expensive. Also, the corresponding increase in gas prices is going to counteract that perhaps even completely.
- shagmin 5y agoNot sure I follow why they would necessarily be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers if they weren't deployed to the Ukrainian border. Also from what I understand a lot of these Russian troops are actually in Belarus as well.
- rosndo 5y ago
- Bostonian 5y agoI suggest replacing "an idiot" with "misguided".
- rosndo 5y agoWe shouldn’t spare much kindness for trolls like this. The facts are indisputable and known to everyone, Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoIf there's one thing humanity should know as "fact," it's that in war there are very, very few of them. Propaganda is the order of the day, not scientific fact.
- rosndo 5y agoAre you saying that all the publicly accessible satellite footage showing Russian troop movements is fake? Are you saying that the discredited Russian false flag attacks in separatist areas didn’t happen? (A fact anyone can verify by looking at the metadata of those videos) Are you saying that the Russians are lying when they confirm these troop movements? Are you saying they lied when they publicly stated that they’re considering military action in Ukraine? What exactly are you trying to say? These are very real independently verifiable facts known to the whole world.
- VictorPath 5y agoYou are right. Russia is not even dignified with national interests, it is the Ukraine and "Vladimir Putin and his entourage".
- elzbardico 5y agoThis article is pure propaganda war. It is this generation's "WMDs in Iraq" And the industrial-military complex will laugh all its way to the bank while stepping on the innocents corpses
- valyagolev 5y agomy favorite hot take from the economist about this war was that one article that considered if Russia might lose because the roads in Ukraine during spring are just dirty and bad from one of the worst publications to get one’s opinions from this graduated into comedy edit: for some people it was a serious enough proposition to entertain that i had to check and indicate that no, the analysis shows that russia won’t lose because of dirty roads
- chrisseaton 5y agoNot sure why you think this is funny? Ground conditions are a critical factor in how Russia can use their armour.
- valyagolev 5y agoagainst whom exactly? nato? usa? or ukraine? in which of those cases it’s something meaningful? what would it even mean to lose/“be stopped” in each case that it would be impacted by dirty road? american imagination about this conflict surely runs wild
- chrisseaton 5y ago> against whom exactly? nato? usa? or ukraine? Ukraine > in which of those cases it’s something meaningful? what would it even mean to lose/“be stopped” in each case that it would be impacted by dirty road? Armour can get bogged down as the ground defrosts in the spring - that’s what they mean. > american imagination about this conflict surely runs wild I’m British.
- throw0101a 5y agoWell, that's one of the things that did help to do in the Nazis during Barbarossa (amongst many others of course). The Russians even have a name for it: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa
- valyagolev 5y ago
- daniel-cussen 5y agoSo to begin with, fact, Putin is a better chess player than Biden. You might think, oh it's just a board game, computers are better at it. You could say that. Apparently the strategy right now is get right next to the border of Ukraine and do military exercises, then watch as NATO loses its shit with every passing second.
- unclebucknasty 5y agoSo, Russia takes on a war posture. NATO naturally responds rather predictably, then Russia just pulls its troops back? What, exactly, is the strategic advantage there?
- monopoledance 5y agoDestabilizing “the west” and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. Look at the pandemic… Soon there will be toil about defensive measurements and expenses. The economy wont like a chronic war threat either. Putin just has to move Russia’s troops every now and then.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoRussia splits the West, which is already in some chaos. Germany is heavily reliant on Russian gas and has been unenthusiastic about sanctions, never mind stronger action. France is being "diplomatic". The UK is an incoherent mess because of Brexit and a mentally ill prime minister. Also, energy prices. Which happen to benefit both sides. It's exactly the strategy Russian trolls farms use on social media. Find multiple wedge issues, weaponise them - typically with narcissistic gaslighting and DARVO - inflame grudges and bad feelings on both sides, try to destroy the other side's common identity and purpose. Putin will have to declare a victory of some sort, but it's likely to be formal annexation of a fairly small region. He'll also be able to blame poverty in Russia on Western sanctions. The real weapon is the constant psychological and emotional pressure and deliberate confusion.
- ivan_gammel 5y agoThey try to make a point by demonstrating what is NATO expansion to them. Their only goal is to reduce NATO presence, not to expand anywhere. By creating a menace without actual invasion they try to discredit US government which makes failing predictions one after other and shifting public opinion, so that NATO will be forced to negotiate a number of treaties on favorable conditions. After all, NATO did seem to promise non-expansion as recently found archive document shows.
- throw0101a 5y agohttps://archive.fo/QgTXC https://archive.fo/QgTXC
- throw0101a 5y agoSee also Anne Applebaum: > Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail. > These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine. * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra... * https://archive.fo/bmQmO https://archive.fo/bmQmO It would also explain the Russian operations with regards to Brexit and the 2016 US election: the more chaos the West has, the better it is for Russia. See also funding of more extreme political parties in the EU, with a focus on the far-right in recent years: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–European_Union_relations#Russian_political_influence_and_financial_links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–European_Union_relation...
- ComradePhil 5y agoRussia has absolutely nothing to gain by escalating war in Europe. America has nothing to lose. Everyone knows who wants war.
- krzyk 5y agoTell that to Crimea people.
- VictorPath 5y agoThe Russian military was in the Crimea two centuries ago, and has been there ever since. The new aspect in the past decade is western calls for them to be removed. The revival of Ukrainian nationalism in the modern era was actually a major project of Lenin's. The west is picking up and working on Lenin's own project, although in a slightly different form. The Cuban government has for decades asked the US to remove its military presence from Cuba, including the detention center where it kidnaps people from random countries (again, against protest from those countries) and tortures them. Perhaps white upper middle class western liberals can rally to the Cubans cause.
- krzyk 5y agoRussia was only in Sewastopole. Rest of Crimea was Ukrainian, which was confirmed by a treaty signed by Russia.
- ComradePhil 5y agoI have talked to Crimeans. They overwhelmingly wanted to join Russia... as do a huge number of Ukrainains.
- k__ 5y agoI would really like to know if Russia would still do it for ego reasons alone.
- throwaway6734 5y agoWho wants war?
- conradev 5y agoJohn Mearsheimer has a really great video from 6 years ago about Ukraine that I found fascinating: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO, and he thinks it should remain a buffer state between NATO and Russia
- jcranmer 5y ago> he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now, when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so. A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame for the fact that its neighbors are terrified of Russia violating their territorial integrity and want to run as fast as possible from its sphere of influence.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThat's really not true. The US put massive pressure on NATO under Bush Jr for Ukraine to join NATO, but Ukraine eventually faltered. They formalized a position that Ukraine was able to join NATO, and put a lot of pressure on France and Germany so that it would be that way. Eventually, Euromaidan happened and Ukraine tried to cash into those overtures, but the West wasn't ready to back it up.
- rdtsc 5y agoThat’s the Georgia playbook as well. They encouraged Georgia to fight the Russians. Georgians lost territory and lives and the American and Western allies shrugged and said “oh well, that’s unfortunate”.
- rosndo 5y agoYour comment implies that Georgia might have had better ways out of that situation, that’s probably not true.
- ivan_gammel 5y agoThe Economist has traditionally the worst coverage of Russia amongst Western media. To the point where it starts looking like it is something personal for the editors: always the same narrative, facts and opinions that not fit in the picture are conveniently ignored etc. This article has a lot of pure speculations, that oversimplify the internal politics and decision making process in Russia. Yes, there’s a relatively small inner circle of people loyal to Putin and sharing his views. Yes, those views are conservative and nationalist. Are those people committed to a war and occupation of Ukraine? Unless you are reading minds you cannot be sure, and for the same reason we do not believe in the world government, it does not make sense to believe in this war conspiracy, when there are explanations of Russian strategy that do not rely on insanity.
- invalidname 5y agoLiterally everything the west said is happening before our eyes. Russia is mounting a false flag operation trying to find an "excuse" for war. They were supposed to finish the "exercise" and instead they're adding troops. Will you "accept this as facts" when they march through the entire country or will that just be "an extended exercise". I understand it's hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator. Mine is too. It sucks.
- Koshkin 5y ago> hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator That is not hard. What is hard, is to realize that sometimes politics transcends particulars of the power structure and the character of the ruler, when it looks more and more like a nation has to do what it must, given the circumstances (no matter how they got there).
- ivan_gammel 5y agoMy country is Germany, the party I voted for is in the government and I’m pretty happy with our current foreign policy and the person responsible for it. I fully support the ban on shipping military hardware to the zones of conflict and focus on diplomatic effort. That said, there is no evidence that this military buildup will result in anything and all those parrot talks about invasion or false flag operations are based only on mind guessing and wild assumptions of Putin’s insanity. There is more plausible explanation of what is going on. To understand it, it is necessary to look at the Russian military doctrine, its history of diplomatic interactions with NATO and the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Something that most of American and British media are apparently too lazy to do (German media are trying hard to understand what’s really happening and to present a nuanced picture).
- throw3838 5y agoI read crazy theory conspiracy this is about destabilising EU and our energy policy. US can not put sanctions on closest allies directly (NS2), so there has to be war. Just crazy conspiracy theory though...
- bsenftner 5y ago"Elites have hijacked Russia and conflated the country's interests with their own" Um... Replace "Russia" with the name of any nation on earth, and the sentence remains true. As an individual with an Economics graduate degree, The Economist strikes me as such a flimsy propaganda rag, it's sad and pathetic it has any attention at all.
- invalidname 5y agoNonsesnse. That's a false equivalency. Elites have power everywhere. True. But Russia is right now a dictatorship where the elite who kiss the ring of Putin are protected. The others get jailed or worse. There's an inner circle that decides to go to war and can make that decision without congressional approval. They can mount false flag operations (as they are doing right now) and literally attack unprovoked against the interests of the Russian people.
- bsenftner 5y agoSounds just like every nation...
- throwaway4good 5y agoFor some alternative perspective - here is an analysis from Chinese government outlet Global Times: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252149.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252149.shtml US needs Ukraine crisis to harm European economy, and legitimize its military presence ... Chinese analysts said Sunday that keeping the crisis intense will benefit the US in several fields: legitimizing its military presence in Europe by demonizing Russia and poisoning Russia-EU ties, increasing uncertainties and concerns to harm the eurozone economy so there will be more capital flight from the continent to the US and thus easing the US inflation pressure, and using the tension to stir up trouble for China-Russia ties. ...
- purple_ferret 5y agoAbsolutely true. Similarly, US needs China to invade Taiwan and take over the whole South China Sea to justify their presence in the Far East. And who are the CCP to deny such an ambition?
- throwaway4good 5y agoYeah. Drum the war drums and watch Taiwan's key industry flee to safe habour in the US.
- pbronez 5y agoLots of fun creative writing opportunities in authoritarian propaganda offices.
- throwaway4good 5y agoHonestly I think it is a better explanation than Putin and his buddies have taken over everything and they are evil and have tunnel vision.
- krzyk 5y agothey (Putin and friends) a better and way more experienced players than e.g. Biden
- wrnr 5y agoThis article strikes me as rather uninformed > The problem is that the same logic was just as true eight years ago when the fateful decisions were made to annex Crimea and to stir conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Crimea is the location of Russia's Black Sea navy fleet, and the population there is majority Russian speaking and sided with the pro Russian government during the Euromaidan protests. The other day the US envoy to the UN, warned in an official speech that Russia might make the discovery of a mass grave as a casus belli for invading Ukraine, a few hours later Russia Today reported on having found a mass grave of native Russians. This is not counter espionage, it is counter trolling, watch these joke by Putin how these scary KGB people think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oic-ix9bM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oic-ix9bM
- rdtsc 5y agoThe scare of the attack is a great revenue generator for media companies. People in those parts are quite baffled why all of the sudden American media started caring about Ukraine. It’s not bad that they do, but it’s almost like they are goading Putin to attack. Bloomberg even had a headline prepared that the attack already happened. Then they “accidentally” released it, and then of course, apologized. But they still got everyone’s attention. The scare of the attack is also beneficial for the Biden administration. If Putin doesn’t attack, he will claim he saved the word from WWIII. If Putin attacks, he will say, of course he did, we told you so. But will he send American soldiers to defend Ukranians? I am guessing not. Just send few blankets and MREs.
- ptr 5y agoWho cares what Biden will say? If Russia does something as drastic as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what's next? European basic security is threatened. I don't care whether something will make Biden look good or not.
- rdtsc 5y ago> Who cares what Biden will say? Well he happens to be the US president. His constituents and the rest of the world might care.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5y agoThe information war on this is already very hot. Diametrically opposed viewpoints coming from each side. US: The russians are about to invade. Russia: No we aren't. Honestly, as someone on the outside of this I really have no idea what to believe. Is Putin just putting up a show of force but not actually going to pull the trigger, or is this the real deal preps for imminent invasion?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5y agoYeah, looks like it was the real deal.
- aww_dang 5y ago
- invalidname 5y agoThis is a false equivalency. I get into this a lot with Russian immigrants. They're so used to distrusting the government they distrust everything. Sure, our politicians lie. But with the exception of Trump this is at a "reasonable" scale and they're usually held accountable. You can check them up. In the case of dictators lying is the default and if you try to hold them to account you'll breath Polonium pretty soon... It's pretty clear whose lying here.
- aww_dang 5y ago
- invalidname 5y agoHe objectively lied more than other politicians by a huge margin. This is clearly verifiable.
- Koshkin 5y ago
- Day1 5y agoIt looks more and more like this is propaganda from the US—Which is rather unfortunate for my oil holdings.
- ericb 5y agoI see in your other comments you are towing the Russian propaganda line. Your comment here didn't age well.
- unclebucknasty 5y agoIt looks more and more like the western world is acknowledging Russia's prior aggression in the region, and their current aggression that sees them amassing upwards of 200k troops at Ukraine's border. Suggestions otherwise are conspicuously in-step with Russian propaganda.
- coliveira 5y agoThis is what it looks like, especially when the US government is day and night trying to incite a war between Ukraine and Russia. Because Russia is not buying it, they are constantly "reading the mind" of the Russians and saying what they will do, even though neither Russian nor Ukraine are saying they want war. In the end, just follow the money: if Russia enters into a war, the US is the only to benefit, the same way that in WW2 the US was the great beneficiary. It is always nice to incite wars far away from your country, when you're the main seller of weapons.
- nextstep 5y ago53 points from 2 hours ago but already off the front page This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda, but the discussion in the comments here is somewhat decent. It’s too bad HN immediately kills any concrete discussion about world events like this.
- tpoacher 5y agoFrom wikipedia: Bulverism is a term for a rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the Genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The method of Bulverism is to "assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error." The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive. The term Bulverism was coined by C. S. Lewis[1] to poke fun at a very serious error in thinking that, he alleged, recurs often in a variety of religious, political, and philosophical debates. Similar to Antony Flew's "subject/motive shift", Bulverism is a fallacy of irrelevance. One accuses an argument of being wrong on the basis of the arguer's identity or motive, but these are strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument's validity or truth.
- ener 5y agoI like this daily "What's in the Putin's head" guessing in the West media. The man himself stated everything 15 years ago in his Munich speech. The core problem - European security is build at the expense and against Russia. NATO expansion after USSR dissolution(which was voluntary act) is seen as proof of its hostility and having military bases of the hostile military alliance right at your borders is existential threat. It is this simple.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
- tonfreed 5y agoWhy does this feel like projection?
- dang 5y agoIt looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please stop that? It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and we ban such accounts regardless of what they're battling for or against. If you or anyone want further explanation, see these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bimodal%20battle&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- yourapostasy 5y agoI personally think the most concrete outcome of the current situation is that no future nation will ever give up any nuclear weapons they come into possession of without considering what appears to be the shabby precedent set by the Budapest Memorandum. As far as I can tell as a layperson, for all practical purposes NPT is dead, and smaller nations with the means and willpower shall develop their own within 2-3 generations.