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Contrary to a lot of people I know, I think nuclear weapons are largely a good thing and the reason we‘ve had peace in Europe for 80 years. I will stand by my c

• gregwebs 4y ago
  The idea that Ukraine could have defended themselves with nukes comes from not understanding what was going on when the USSR fell apart. The nukes were placed in Ukraine by Russia since Ukraine was a border region of the USSR. Ukraine did not have control of the nukes. Russia probably would have attacked them early on and destroyed the nukes or taken over the country before they could ever weaponize them and find the billions of dollars needed to maintain a nuclear fleet while they were suffering hyperinflation. https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-have-retained-soviet-nuclear-weapons/ https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-... https://www.icanw.org/did_ukraine_give_up_nuclear_weapons https://www.icanw.org/did_ukraine_give_up_nuclear_weapons https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2015.1026091 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2015.1...
  • throwaway821909 4y ago
    This is important to say - but I guess the question still stands, if they had somehow secretly developed nukes in say 2008, would they have been left alone? (and should we let everyone have them for world peace? I don't think I like those chances)
    • chasil 4y ago
      They have several nuclear reactors. How difficult would it be to divert fuel and processed daughter nuclei to create a few weapons?
      • not2b 4y ago
        They could make a dirty bomb, but it would contaminate their own land for hundreds or thousands of years. So not worth it.
      • colechristensen 4y ago
        It is a large scale industrial affair and you don’t just do it without being noticed, likewise weapons are very high precision instruments, moreso when less refined (trying to do things small scale and not being noticed). The answer comes in the form of another question: how many billions would it cost? And ultimately building a nuclear weapon would alienate both sides unless it was being done explicitly with help.
      • rgmerk 4y ago
        Pretty difficult but not impossible. Spent nuclear fuel rods are among the most dangerous and difficult to handle materials available, and ones that have been sitting in a power reactor for years are far more radioactive than ones that spend a day or two in a bomb production reactor. So reprocessing the fuel rods would be a considerable challenge and would require not insubstantial industrial facilities, which would likely be blindingly obvious to superpower intelligence agencies. Then you'd have to fabricate the plutonium into a weapon. Weapons made from reactor-grade plutonium would be a real pain to handle and store because they would be exceedingly radioactive and would require a lot of shielding. But my understanding is that a nation-state with Ukraine's resources would probably be able to manage it if sufficiently determined. But, again, the idea that you'd be able to do it in secret is highly unlikely. And then you'd have to deliver it. The resulting weapon would probably be extremely large, unlike the more sophisticated weapons that established nation-states have, and implausible to mount on a missile. So delivery would probably have to be with an aircraft, and then you've got the question of how likely it would be to get shot down before it reached its target. And finally, you have to consider whether a few small nuclear weapons with not-great delivery systems would be a useful deterrent. It's not hard to imagine Russia's response if a few small nuclear weapons landed on its territory - and whatever else you might say about their military, they have a lot of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Ukraine would be a radioactive crater by the time Putin was finished with it.
    • miguelazo 4y ago
• fredgrott 4y ago
  You remember wrong, it was Not Ukraine that disarmed. It was Russia removing their control of Nukes under their control in Ukraine. Somewhat a big difference.
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    This is not at all what happened, you are making things up. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
• zitterbewegung 4y ago
  Mutually assured destruction only works if you assume all actors are rational. There is an argument that if a irrational actor obtains a nuclear weapon then their use would occur.
  • danenania 4y ago
    Kicking off MAD could also be rational for an actor that faces certain defeat and death/imprisonment.
• chips_n_fries 4y ago
  The reason Europe has had peace for 80 years is that they are the Vassal States of America.
  • swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    The reason Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine have had war in the last twenty years is because Russia wants them to be vassal states
  • vagrantJin 4y ago
    Sad but true. Toothless protectorates. Its disappointing considering Europe's history and seasoned institutions. I would not be surprised if Ursula has to phone Washington everytime she needs to go to the toilet.
    • SamReidHughes 4y ago
      It’s not that sad.
      • vagrantJin 4y ago
        How so?
        • SamReidHughes 4y ago
          80 years of peace.
  • miguelazo 4y ago
• incompatible 4y ago
  It sort of worked a bit, although with the risk of total annihilation if something goes wrong. But now we see Russia invading Ukraine and using the threat of nuclear weapons to reduce NATO countermeasures. The nuclear weapons have made its conventional war possible.
• SanjayMehta 4y ago
  I reluctantly agree, and I'd cite the cases of North Korea and Pakistan.
• nmeagent 4y ago
  > Contrary to a lot of people I know, I think nuclear weapons are largely a good thing and the reason we‘ve had peace in Europe for 80 years. I think the verdict is still out on this. Should we destroy human civilization with nuclear weapons at some point in the future, none of that peace will have been worth it. We've had so many close calls (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls) that we're very lucky that this hasn't happened yet.
  • danenania 4y ago
    I wouldn’t even say the verdict is out. Considering we’ve already had some relatively close calls, I think we can say with statistical certainty that we will destroy civilization on a long enough time scale if we keep the nukes around. If the odds of nuclear war are 1% in a century, we won’t last much more than 10,000 years, and might last a lot fewer.
    • Qem 4y ago
      A presidential term is 4 years. Assuming it holds over 10000 years, that would mean roughly 2500 presidents. In a group of 2500 people, what are the odds of one of them being batshit crazy? That would be a lower bound to overall probability of nuclear annihilation.
      • danenania 4y ago
        It's even worse, as it's not only presidents/leaders that can trigger a war. If you look at the close calls Wikipedia page linked upthread, one of the worst was a Soviet sub that lost radio contact during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2 out of 3 (!) of the officers on the sub approved a nuclear strike on the US fleet. The fate of human civilization relied on the choice of a single mid-level naval officer. Considering the other two officers approved the strike, the final officer being the kind of person who would also approve the strike was probably in the 50/50 realm at best. So basically we won a coinflip on that day for the fate of humanity, and that's far from the only close call we've had.
  • 4y ago
• linuxandrew 4y ago
  Whilst weapons of mass destruction have been a deterrant, I would argue that weapons of targeted destruction are just as useful, if not more so, like drones, missiles, anti-missile defense etc. They are also less bad for humanity if they are used. If the US dismantled substantial stockpiles of nuclear warheads it would be unlikely to impact their global standing.
  • pencilguin 4y ago
    Certain politically important contractors' cash flow would be threatened.
• baybal2 4y ago