3 ms·

Not really. The existence of nuclear weapons makes the game theory of WWII largely irrelevant. People who have continually compared the situation to Hitler’s in

by gfodor 5y ago

Not really. The existence of nuclear weapons makes the game theory of WWII largely irrelevant. People who have continually compared the situation to Hitler’s invasion of Poland are in large part Americans who are unable to draw on other historical events for better comparisons, and are seeking to virtue signal.

watwut 5y ago
That saying does not require the two leaders to be exactly the same.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Did someone say it did? It wasn’t me.
rich_sasha 5y ago
People didn’t oppose Hitler for fear of great amount of destruction and deaths happening to them, as opposed to someone else. It’s not that different.
- gfodor 5y ago
  It’s only similar if you do not think global annihilation being a meaningful risk factor blows up all your priors comparatively. I do.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Up to a point. In that scenario, "I have nukes" becomes a joker you can pull out to achieve anything less bad than a global nuclear war. Peel off a bit of a neighbour? OK, less bad than nuclear war. What about a "minor" NATO country? What about, "pay me money or else"? And so on. So either you accept that (no thank you from me) or you accept that sometimes you must set limits, even if the other side threatens nuclear war. In that respect it's the same, just different scale. Allies could have said "no" to Hitler earlier, at risk of a devastating war, but chose to say "ah, go ahead" for fear of it. And got that war served up to them anyway. The irony is that WWII could possibly be over in a few weeks, if Hitler's ambitions were stemmed earlier. In September 1939, it is unlikely he could fight on two fronts, and against the British and the French - the actual superpowers of the day.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      The nuclear-ICBM powers have largely converged on a Nash equilibrium for these questions, they're not new. And they are informed by nuclear weapons in a way the pre-nuclear era could not be. If nuclear weapons existed before 1939, the entire way the conflict with Hitler would have played out would have been different. Arguably, if the pre-requisites to the Ukraine conflict had analogs then, Hitler would have stopped expanding, on his own. Potentially he even could have been ousted internally if he looked like he was willing to plunge the world into a nuclear conflict, just like the odds of Putin being assassinated or coup'ed seem higher during escalation compared to a timeline where he couldn't wield nuclear weapons. The stasis, at least for now, is one of mutual defense pacts backed up by nuclear weapons leads to very hard boundaries given MAD. Ironically, the pitfall that led to WWI turned out to be a stabilizing force (at least for now) under MAD. Everything outside of those hard deterrence boundaries, if we're being honest, is fair game for proxy wars. Ukraine isn't in the boundaries. People who are arguing that we should start shifting those boundaries (ie, changing the 'rules' by directly engaging despite them being non-NATO) are playing with fire. As soon as the rules are broken, the fundamental premise of deterrence goes out the window, and all bets are off as to where it takes us. This is also why it's incredibly dangerous to admit countries into NATO with disputed, actively fought over territory like Ukraine, since we'd be exposing a new level of risk whereby there's a conflict between conventional rules of escalation running up against nuclear alliance deterrence.
      - rich_sasha 5y ago
        > Arguably, if the pre-requisites to the Ukraine conflict had analogs then, Hitler would have stopped expanding, on his own. I’m not sure. Rationally, Putin shouldn’t have started the war; he was told Russia will get sanctioned to oblivion, which it did and is genuinely hurting Russia, and he should have known his forces aren’t up to scratch. Due to some kind of delusion he pressed ahead. Hitler may have done so too. For example, hoping that the western powers won’t risk MAD over a bit of Central Europe, much as they didn’t care much for Western Czechoslovakia. Of course sanctions aren’t MAD; but then nothing is, and no analogy is very close.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Global annihilation is a much greater risk of failing to check Russian aggression now than it is of checking it; the details may be different, but the same reason not checking Hitler at Poland would have made things worse (and that not doing so at the Sudetenland did make things worse) applies. Sure, the potential cost of getting it wrong is even higher, but the same answer is wrong for the same reasons. “Letting Ukraine do all the (overt, at least) fighting but flooding them with arms and intel will be sufficient to check Russia” is, OTOH, somewhere between Sudetenland and Poland as a response, and it's a very high stakes gamble.

by gfodor 5y ago

watwut 5y ago

That saying does not require the two leaders to be exactly the same.

gfodor 5y ago
Did someone say it did? It wasn’t me.

rich_sasha 5y ago

People didn’t oppose Hitler for fear of great amount of destruction and deaths happening to them, as opposed to someone else. It’s not that different.

gfodor 5y ago
It’s only similar if you do not think global annihilation being a meaningful risk factor blows up all your priors comparatively. I do.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Up to a point. In that scenario, "I have nukes" becomes a joker you can pull out to achieve anything less bad than a global nuclear war. Peel off a bit of a neighbour? OK, less bad than nuclear war. What about a "minor" NATO country? What about, "pay me money or else"? And so on. So either you accept that (no thank you from me) or you accept that sometimes you must set limits, even if the other side threatens nuclear war. In that respect it's the same, just different scale. Allies could have said "no" to Hitler earlier, at risk of a devastating war, but chose to say "ah, go ahead" for fear of it. And got that war served up to them anyway. The irony is that WWII could possibly be over in a few weeks, if Hitler's ambitions were stemmed earlier. In September 1939, it is unlikely he could fight on two fronts, and against the British and the French - the actual superpowers of the day.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The nuclear-ICBM powers have largely converged on a Nash equilibrium for these questions, they're not new. And they are informed by nuclear weapons in a way the pre-nuclear era could not be. If nuclear weapons existed before 1939, the entire way the conflict with Hitler would have played out would have been different. Arguably, if the pre-requisites to the Ukraine conflict had analogs then, Hitler would have stopped expanding, on his own. Potentially he even could have been ousted internally if he looked like he was willing to plunge the world into a nuclear conflict, just like the odds of Putin being assassinated or coup'ed seem higher during escalation compared to a timeline where he couldn't wield nuclear weapons. The stasis, at least for now, is one of mutual defense pacts backed up by nuclear weapons leads to very hard boundaries given MAD. Ironically, the pitfall that led to WWI turned out to be a stabilizing force (at least for now) under MAD. Everything outside of those hard deterrence boundaries, if we're being honest, is fair game for proxy wars. Ukraine isn't in the boundaries. People who are arguing that we should start shifting those boundaries (ie, changing the 'rules' by directly engaging despite them being non-NATO) are playing with fire. As soon as the rules are broken, the fundamental premise of deterrence goes out the window, and all bets are off as to where it takes us. This is also why it's incredibly dangerous to admit countries into NATO with disputed, actively fought over territory like Ukraine, since we'd be exposing a new level of risk whereby there's a conflict between conventional rules of escalation running up against nuclear alliance deterrence.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      > Arguably, if the pre-requisites to the Ukraine conflict had analogs then, Hitler would have stopped expanding, on his own. I’m not sure. Rationally, Putin shouldn’t have started the war; he was told Russia will get sanctioned to oblivion, which it did and is genuinely hurting Russia, and he should have known his forces aren’t up to scratch. Due to some kind of delusion he pressed ahead. Hitler may have done so too. For example, hoping that the western powers won’t risk MAD over a bit of Central Europe, much as they didn’t care much for Western Czechoslovakia. Of course sanctions aren’t MAD; but then nothing is, and no analogy is very close.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Global annihilation is a much greater risk of failing to check Russian aggression now than it is of checking it; the details may be different, but the same reason not checking Hitler at Poland would have made things worse (and that not doing so at the Sudetenland did make things worse) applies. Sure, the potential cost of getting it wrong is even higher, but the same answer is wrong for the same reasons. “Letting Ukraine do all the (overt, at least) fighting but flooding them with arms and intel will be sufficient to check Russia” is, OTOH, somewhere between Sudetenland and Poland as a response, and it's a very high stakes gamble.