7 ms·

Putin’s War Is a Death Blow to Nuclear Nonproliferation

43 points by adventured 5y ago

Finnucane 5y ago
This shouldn't be entirely surprising. The states that have developed nukes have done so not just for defensive purposes--the threat of nuclear retaliation for an attack--but also as a not-so-subtle threat against their enemies. It is surely why Iran would like to join that club. it is also not so surprising that Russia would pull this card out, when it has become clear that in a conventional military sense, Russia would lose in a fight with the full force of NATO against it.
- kbelder 5y ago
  I'm now convinced that Russia would lose a conventional military fight against a quarter of the force of NATO.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Looking at what happened in the past weeks, I don’t think it would need a quarter. https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php says both Spain and Italy have a better army than the Ukraine. If that’s correct, it seems to me those two combined could beat Russia is a conventional war. Of course, that ranking now seems way off for Russia, so it may be way off for other countries, too. Looking at https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-countries-spend-on-defense/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-count..., the USA does about ⅔ of all NATO military spending and (Spain+Italy) about 4%. That doesn’t necessarily make their army 4% of the full the power of NATO, but I don’t see it getting up to 25%. Things might change if the fighting took place in Russia. Its military probably would be more motivated, would have fewer logistics issues, etc.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      On paper, Russia had a better military than Ukraine, but "paper" doesn't account for intangible factors like "ability to plan and execute". Moreover, from my understanding, Russian generals or intelligence officials were kept out of the loop until a week or two before the invasion was launched--they planned for a military exercise. So it's possible that the Russian military is a lot more capable, but that Putin foolishly hamstrung it.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        The main thing it didn't account for is two decades of graft and mismanagement's influence on operational readiness and troop morale.
    - Finnucane 5y ago
      The worrisome thing, of course, is that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine (for some value of 'succeeds' that is not complete failure), then there will be some squirrelly part of Putin's brain that will tell him that he could make that work against Romania or the Baltics, which would trigger a direct NATO response.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        > which would trigger a direct NATO response. In spite of everything that has been said about this: or not. I'm not convinced that NATO is going to actually deliver on its obligations, after all, if we're willing to let a country of 45 million people be invaded and murdered wholesale I have a hard time convincing myself that NATO's obligations will suddenly make everything different if for instance say Estonia (much, much smaller) would get invaded.
        TillE 5y ago
        I've seen this take before, but I don't understand it at all. The whole point of a defensive treaty is to draw a line in the sand. Ukraine is on the other side of that line, unfortunately. This is black and white. Russia would certainly screech threats of nuclear retaliation in response to conventional defenses, but NATO has no choice but to defend all its members. To do anything else is madness, it destroys the treaty entirely.
  - TillE 5y ago
    On current evidence, Russia would easily lose a conventional war against the EU (Germany, France, Italy, etc), which is the scenario that would theoretically arise if they attacked non-NATO Finland.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    And how much to defeat the USA after our failures in afghanistan and iraq?
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
The same conclusion could have been drawn based on the West's actions in the Middle East. Whereby countries that at one point sought out nuclear tech and were persuaded to give it up by the West eventually ended up being attacked by it. It's kind of a weird take on the subject that the issue is that we can't attack a country with nuclear sovereignty and THAT'S the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_and_weapons_of_mass_dest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_dest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  It's one thing when you try and fail to make nukes. Ukraine had them and voluntarily gave them up for security assurances that turned out to be bullshit. This is certainly partly the fault of Ukraine's politicians at the time - they should have seen the "Budapest memorandum" for the toilet paper it was. But it also buries any hopes that current nuclear states might be persuaded to give up nukes in the future. My view on this is that nuclear non-proliferation is a kind of sacred cow that everyone must be seen to support, but everyone understands that nuclear arms can be a stabilizing factor - they prevented numerous wars already, and prevented wars from getting out of control (e.g. India vs Pakistan). I don't know what the best way to maximize peace is, but it's not in any way clear to me that eradication (but especially reduction without eradication) of nuclear weapons is the way to get there. And it really doesn't matter to me how civilians die, in a Nagasaki nuclear explosion or a Tokyo firestorm.
  - tromp 5y ago
    Ukraine had them, but Russia had exclusive control over those missiles [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
lenkite 5y ago
Arms reduction treaties were broken by the US first. The US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019.
- Qw3r7 5y ago
  Perhaps, but this was done in response to Russia's blatant violation and disregard to it first.
- vegai_ 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - _prototype_ 5y ago
    A "Russian Asset" yet Putin invaded Crimea when Obama was president. Also invaded Ukraine when Biden was president. I wonder what the pattern is.
    - stuu99 5y ago
      - vegai_ 5y ago
        Why would there have been Russian troops inside Ukraine's territory, when that's the last thing they wanted in there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - wwweston 5y ago
      While you're wondering, consider the possibility that Russia had more convenient means than military force for achieving its policy goals during the Trump administration. Then while you're specifically considering Crimea, consider which US president simply said "Oh yeah, Crimea is russian": https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-russia-crimea https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-r... (and then "but that's Obama's fault" instead of IDK, Russia's). And then there's a whole host of other weirdly pro-Russian policies: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/03/belarus-election-fraud-trump-lukashenko-putin/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/03/belarus-election-fraud-... https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2019/02/05/russias-new-strategy-in-georgia-creeping-occupation/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2019/02/05/russias-new-s... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-russia/russia-lands-forces-at-former-u-s-air-base-in-northern-syria-idUSKBN1XP0XN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-russia/rus... Not to mention lots of known Trump-Russia connections: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-flynn-comey-russia-timeline-2017-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-flynn-comey-... http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/342509-new-book-devils-bargain-details-trump-lashing-out-at-manafort-days http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/342509-new-book-... http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/ http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-... https://theintercept.com/2017/07/14/just-six-days-after-trump-jr-s-meeting-guccifer-2-0-emailed-me-but-there-was-one-key-difference/ https://theintercept.com/2017/07/14/just-six-days-after-trum... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-co... http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article137881768.html http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/ar... http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.ht...
pydry 5y ago
The death blow came when Khadaffi was brutally murdered in 2011 by NATO allies after promising to give up his nuke program in exchange for non aggression pact. This is what spurred North Korea to finish its nuke program. This is ultimately also what led to Russia seeing NATO encroachment on Ukraine a an offensive threat. It was possibly one of the worst pieces of foreign policy ever executed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Wikipedia suggests he was killed by the Misrata militia, not NATO or any NATO allies. NATO's intervention in Libya was implementing UN Security Council Resolution, in order to stop Gadaffi's slaughter of civilians and other war crimes.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Pretty much agree with this sentiment, but it is techincally correct that Gadaffi's death was partially responsibility of a very loose ally (National Liberation Army) of a couple NATO nations (US, France, and UK). These NATO nations supplied equipment to anti-Gadaffi forces. Of course, the way it was worded was to ensure it was technically correct while sending an entirely different message. The best kind of propoganda. It's worth noting nukes don't necessarily stop a civil war. Gadaffi's murder was one of the most poetic pieces of justice witnessed in the modern era, a blade shoved up his asshole perforating his internal organs as a beautiful piece of red-soaked art representing the fruits of his metaphorical fucking in the ass of protestors who were systematically shot. Of course the idea that Gadaffi was actually a murderous psychopath (one with many domestic enemies) who orchestrated the killing of innocent protestors (who later joined overthrowing domestic militias with only the loosest affiliation to NATO nations) challenges a strongly held world view of some romanticists and is therefore very hard to swallow.
    - justsomehnguy 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
The next paradigm of Nuclear arms is going to be on the defense side. If nation (whether nuclear armed or not) can parry ICBMs with close to 100% certainty, the entire game theory of Nuclear arms falls apart.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Can nations effectively parry ICBMs with anywhere close to 100% certainty? I assume ICBMs aren't created equal, and at a certain point you can presumably just throw more volume at the problem and overwhelm defenses (depends on the economics of defensive systems vs ICBMs).
- jacquesm 5y ago
  But you never get to 100%, so this is not a useful thing to mention. You could get 99%, then just add some more re-entry vehicles on the bus and call it a day, it's like perfect security for websites, you have to get everything they only have to get something. And they always do. Starwars failed for a pretty good reason, the numbers just don't work out to the advantage of the defenders. The best way to defend against nukes is to make sure they don't make it off the launchpad/sub.
- itslennysfault 5y ago
  Yeeeeah, that ship has sailed. Look up hypersonic missiles. China and the US have both tested them already, and there is basically no hopes of a counter measure that I'm aware of.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I was going to mention that. I don't think there is any violation of Physics or Engineering principles that prevents one from developing counter hypersonic missile measures. My guess is that it is already under research (Laser!?). SpaceX's Starlink program has a military component to it and no one can say for sure, but the CTO of Starlink was a 4-star general heading US Space Force until 2021.
- postalrat 5y ago
tiahura 5y ago
The US failed immensely. As soon as the B2 was operational in 97, our policy should have been that we will immediately destroy any site not declared in advance and thoroughly monitored by the IAEA.
Ekaros 5y ago
Nuclear proliferation is absolutely good thing. Just imagine if Iraq or Afghanistan had nukes and capability to deliver them to DC or NYC. And did exactly that in response. World would be much more happy and safe place.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
  So world would be a much safer place if Iraq dropped a nuke in NYC? Next you're gonna tell me that pinning NPM dependencies is a bad thing.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    You don't think that it would not deter further acts of aggressions?
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
      There would obviously be retaliation and a huge number of dead people on both sides. So.. No? Possibly US would use your reasoning to erase Iraq from map, depending on who the current president is.
robomartin 5y ago
I am very surprised by the comments on this thread. If there’s one thing that is clear from Putin’s war is that we need to eliminate all nuclear weapons from this planet. No exceptions. Humanity is going nowhere if we maintain the status quo. Not easy, of course. That does not mean we should not do it.

43 points by adventured 5y ago

This shouldn't be entirely surprising. The states that have developed nukes have done so not just for defensive purposes--the threat of nuclear retaliation for an attack--but also as a not-so-subtle threat against their enemies. It is surely why Iran would like to join that club. it is also not so surprising that Russia would pull this card out, when it has become clear that in a conventional military sense, Russia would lose in a fight with the full force of NATO against it.

kbelder 5y ago
I'm now convinced that Russia would lose a conventional military fight against a quarter of the force of NATO.
- Someone 5y ago
  Looking at what happened in the past weeks, I don’t think it would need a quarter. https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php says both Spain and Italy have a better army than the Ukraine. If that’s correct, it seems to me those two combined could beat Russia is a conventional war. Of course, that ranking now seems way off for Russia, so it may be way off for other countries, too. Looking at https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-countries-spend-on-defense/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-count..., the USA does about ⅔ of all NATO military spending and (Spain+Italy) about 4%. That doesn’t necessarily make their army 4% of the full the power of NATO, but I don’t see it getting up to 25%. Things might change if the fighting took place in Russia. Its military probably would be more motivated, would have fewer logistics issues, etc.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    On paper, Russia had a better military than Ukraine, but "paper" doesn't account for intangible factors like "ability to plan and execute". Moreover, from my understanding, Russian generals or intelligence officials were kept out of the loop until a week or two before the invasion was launched--they planned for a military exercise. So it's possible that the Russian military is a lot more capable, but that Putin foolishly hamstrung it.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      The main thing it didn't account for is two decades of graft and mismanagement's influence on operational readiness and troop morale.
  - Finnucane 5y ago
    The worrisome thing, of course, is that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine (for some value of 'succeeds' that is not complete failure), then there will be some squirrelly part of Putin's brain that will tell him that he could make that work against Romania or the Baltics, which would trigger a direct NATO response.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      > which would trigger a direct NATO response. In spite of everything that has been said about this: or not. I'm not convinced that NATO is going to actually deliver on its obligations, after all, if we're willing to let a country of 45 million people be invaded and murdered wholesale I have a hard time convincing myself that NATO's obligations will suddenly make everything different if for instance say Estonia (much, much smaller) would get invaded.
      - TillE 5y ago
        I've seen this take before, but I don't understand it at all. The whole point of a defensive treaty is to draw a line in the sand. Ukraine is on the other side of that line, unfortunately. This is black and white. Russia would certainly screech threats of nuclear retaliation in response to conventional defenses, but NATO has no choice but to defend all its members. To do anything else is madness, it destroys the treaty entirely.
- TillE 5y ago
  On current evidence, Russia would easily lose a conventional war against the EU (Germany, France, Italy, etc), which is the scenario that would theoretically arise if they attacked non-NATO Finland.
- postalrat 5y ago
  And how much to defeat the USA after our failures in afghanistan and iraq?

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

The same conclusion could have been drawn based on the West's actions in the Middle East. Whereby countries that at one point sought out nuclear tech and were persuaded to give it up by the West eventually ended up being attacked by it. It's kind of a weird take on the subject that the issue is that we can't attack a country with nuclear sovereignty and THAT'S the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_and_weapons_of_mass_dest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_dest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

kspacewalk2 5y ago
It's one thing when you try and fail to make nukes. Ukraine had them and voluntarily gave them up for security assurances that turned out to be bullshit. This is certainly partly the fault of Ukraine's politicians at the time - they should have seen the "Budapest memorandum" for the toilet paper it was. But it also buries any hopes that current nuclear states might be persuaded to give up nukes in the future. My view on this is that nuclear non-proliferation is a kind of sacred cow that everyone must be seen to support, but everyone understands that nuclear arms can be a stabilizing factor - they prevented numerous wars already, and prevented wars from getting out of control (e.g. India vs Pakistan). I don't know what the best way to maximize peace is, but it's not in any way clear to me that eradication (but especially reduction without eradication) of nuclear weapons is the way to get there. And it really doesn't matter to me how civilians die, in a Nagasaki nuclear explosion or a Tokyo firestorm.
- tromp 5y ago
  Ukraine had them, but Russia had exclusive control over those missiles [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago

lenkite 5y ago

Arms reduction treaties were broken by the US first. The US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019.

Qw3r7 5y ago
Perhaps, but this was done in response to Russia's blatant violation and disregard to it first.
vegai_ 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- _prototype_ 5y ago
  A "Russian Asset" yet Putin invaded Crimea when Obama was president. Also invaded Ukraine when Biden was president. I wonder what the pattern is.
  - stuu99 5y ago
    - vegai_ 5y ago
      Why would there have been Russian troops inside Ukraine's territory, when that's the last thing they wanted in there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wwweston 5y ago
    While you're wondering, consider the possibility that Russia had more convenient means than military force for achieving its policy goals during the Trump administration. Then while you're specifically considering Crimea, consider which US president simply said "Oh yeah, Crimea is russian": https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-russia-crimea https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-r... (and then "but that's Obama's fault" instead of IDK, Russia's). And then there's a whole host of other weirdly pro-Russian policies: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/03/belarus-election-fraud-trump-lukashenko-putin/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/03/belarus-election-fraud-... https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2019/02/05/russias-new-strategy-in-georgia-creeping-occupation/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2019/02/05/russias-new-s... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-russia/russia-lands-forces-at-former-u-s-air-base-in-northern-syria-idUSKBN1XP0XN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-russia/rus... Not to mention lots of known Trump-Russia connections: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-flynn-comey-russia-timeline-2017-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-flynn-comey-... http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/342509-new-book-devils-bargain-details-trump-lashing-out-at-manafort-days http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/342509-new-book-... http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/ http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-... https://theintercept.com/2017/07/14/just-six-days-after-trump-jr-s-meeting-guccifer-2-0-emailed-me-but-there-was-one-key-difference/ https://theintercept.com/2017/07/14/just-six-days-after-trum... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-co... http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article137881768.html http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/ar... http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.ht...

pydry 5y ago

The death blow came when Khadaffi was brutally murdered in 2011 by NATO allies after promising to give up his nuke program in exchange for non aggression pact. This is what spurred North Korea to finish its nuke program. This is ultimately also what led to Russia seeing NATO encroachment on Ukraine a an offensive threat. It was possibly one of the worst pieces of foreign policy ever executed.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 5y ago
Wikipedia suggests he was killed by the Misrata militia, not NATO or any NATO allies. NATO's intervention in Libya was implementing UN Security Council Resolution, in order to stop Gadaffi's slaughter of civilians and other war crimes.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Pretty much agree with this sentiment, but it is techincally correct that Gadaffi's death was partially responsibility of a very loose ally (National Liberation Army) of a couple NATO nations (US, France, and UK). These NATO nations supplied equipment to anti-Gadaffi forces. Of course, the way it was worded was to ensure it was technically correct while sending an entirely different message. The best kind of propoganda. It's worth noting nukes don't necessarily stop a civil war. Gadaffi's murder was one of the most poetic pieces of justice witnessed in the modern era, a blade shoved up his asshole perforating his internal organs as a beautiful piece of red-soaked art representing the fruits of his metaphorical fucking in the ass of protestors who were systematically shot. Of course the idea that Gadaffi was actually a murderous psychopath (one with many domestic enemies) who orchestrated the killing of innocent protestors (who later joined overthrowing domestic militias with only the loosest affiliation to NATO nations) challenges a strongly held world view of some romanticists and is therefore very hard to swallow.
  - justsomehnguy 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

The next paradigm of Nuclear arms is going to be on the defense side. If nation (whether nuclear armed or not) can parry ICBMs with close to 100% certainty, the entire game theory of Nuclear arms falls apart.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Can nations effectively parry ICBMs with anywhere close to 100% certainty? I assume ICBMs aren't created equal, and at a certain point you can presumably just throw more volume at the problem and overwhelm defenses (depends on the economics of defensive systems vs ICBMs).
jacquesm 5y ago
But you never get to 100%, so this is not a useful thing to mention. You could get 99%, then just add some more re-entry vehicles on the bus and call it a day, it's like perfect security for websites, you have to get everything they only have to get something. And they always do. Starwars failed for a pretty good reason, the numbers just don't work out to the advantage of the defenders. The best way to defend against nukes is to make sure they don't make it off the launchpad/sub.
itslennysfault 5y ago
Yeeeeah, that ship has sailed. Look up hypersonic missiles. China and the US have both tested them already, and there is basically no hopes of a counter measure that I'm aware of.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I was going to mention that. I don't think there is any violation of Physics or Engineering principles that prevents one from developing counter hypersonic missile measures. My guess is that it is already under research (Laser!?). SpaceX's Starlink program has a military component to it and no one can say for sure, but the CTO of Starlink was a 4-star general heading US Space Force until 2021.
postalrat 5y ago

tiahura 5y ago

The US failed immensely. As soon as the B2 was operational in 97, our policy should have been that we will immediately destroy any site not declared in advance and thoroughly monitored by the IAEA.

Ekaros 5y ago

Nuclear proliferation is absolutely good thing. Just imagine if Iraq or Afghanistan had nukes and capability to deliver them to DC or NYC. And did exactly that in response. World would be much more happy and safe place.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
So world would be a much safer place if Iraq dropped a nuke in NYC? Next you're gonna tell me that pinning NPM dependencies is a bad thing.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  You don't think that it would not deter further acts of aggressions?
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    There would obviously be retaliation and a huge number of dead people on both sides. So.. No? Possibly US would use your reasoning to erase Iraq from map, depending on who the current president is.

robomartin 5y ago

I am very surprised by the comments on this thread. If there’s one thing that is clear from Putin’s war is that we need to eliminate all nuclear weapons from this planet. No exceptions. Humanity is going nowhere if we maintain the status quo. Not easy, of course. That does not mean we should not do it.