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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
by 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> People who are arguing that we should start shifting those boundaries (ie, changing the 'rules' by directly engaging despite them being non-NATO) That's not a rule, and has never been suggested to be a rule until invoked as an excuse for inaction in this particular crisis, and is, in fact, contrary to the public claims and past actions of NATO as a regional security organization with a mutual defense commitment and not a pure mutual defense organization.
- gfodor 5y agoIt has been a rule: the US and USSR went to insane lengths to maintain plausible deniability of direct military-to-military engagement. The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets! The scenario I am arguing against is the one proposed in some circles that nuclear armed NATO members ought to shoot down Russian jets over Ukraine.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets! They spoke in Korean sometimes (but especially under stress, spoke Russian), and flew Soviet jets based in China and nominally assigned to Air Defense, not Frontal Aviation. They weren't maintaining plausible deniability, but a transparent fig leaf. We knew they were Soviet pilots, and they knew we knew they were Soviet pilots. And the Soviet anti-aircraft crews shooting down American jets in Vietnam didn't even have a transparent fig-leaf of not being Soviet troops.
- gfodor 5y agoFair, but why the leaf?
- dragonwriter 5y agoIn the 1950s, when it was bothered with? To provide a face saving way to back down without changing the official narrative in the absence of MAD constraining escalation of geographically-constrained conventional combat. Nuclear arsenals we're tiny at the time of Korea.