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Worth noting that Russia has nuclear weapons, yet elects not to use them against their near peer Ukraine.

WillAdams 2y ago
Worth noting that Ukraine had nuclear weapons and negotiated them away in exchange for a promise that Russia would not use nuclear weapons against them.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  The Bucharest memorandum contained the promises that: - None of the countries (US, UK, and Russia) would threaten Ukraine’s territory - If nuclear weapons were used against them, or they were threatened by nuclear weapons, the other signatories would “Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance” Among other promises. So it seems like they’ve already had their promises violated.
  - epolanski 2y ago
    Didn't china and France sign it too?
    - nradov 2y ago
      China and France didn't formally sign the Budapest Memorandum. They made separate statements generally in support but aren't obligated to take any real action. https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-budapest-memorandum-and-the-russia-ukraine-crisis/ https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-budapest-memorandum-an...
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    I can’t believe I mixed up Budapest and Bucharest :(
- nostrademons 2y ago
  Worth also noting that the nuclear weapons that Ukraine had were useless. All modern (post-1960s) nukes except the UK's are equipped with PALs [1]. Without the launch codes, they are just very expensive hunks of lithium deuteride. The launch codes for Ukraine's nukes remained with the KGB/FSB in Moscow throughout the breakup of the Soviet Union. They had essentially zero negotiating leverage, and as a result got essentially zero out of the negotiation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link
  - lamontcg 2y ago
    "This is the lockpicking lawyer, and what we have here today is the PAL from the reentry vehicle of a Russian R-36M ICBM..."
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Without the launch codes they still had highly enriched weapons grade nuclear material. That’s the tough part. Making it go bang we figured out in the 1940s. We also saw with DVD encryption that physical access to the device makes it tough to fully protect. Nuclear codes are protected significantly by “no one gets to tinker with the device without rapid lead poisoning”.
    - nostrademons 2y ago
      Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. If Iran and North Korea can do it, Ukraine certainly can. Hell, even today, in the midst of a war, they have 8 operational reactors at 3 power plants, plus 2 under construction, one damaged and recently repaired, 6 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in contested territory, and 4 in the decommissioned Chernobyl plant. Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warhead. (I suspect that the PAL is not actually a separate device that can be separated from the warhead, but a series of design choices for how the warhead is constructed that make it unable to fire without the input of a cryptographic code. But then, details on this are very highly classified for obvious reasons, so we'll never know for sure.) The real reason they didn't and don't do this is because they don't want to end up an international pariah state like Iran and North Korea. It's very clear that the U.S. has a vested interest in nuclear non-proliferation; they were the ones who gave the PALs to all our adversaries in the first place, because in the game-theoretic calculus of MAD, a small number of enemies that you can bargain and reason with is better than a large number of nuclear states even if many of those states are on your side. We would not have supported Ukraine if they attempted to retain the nukes in the 1990s, and we wouldn't support them developing nukes now.
cjbgkagh 2y ago
The old ‘Russia will not use nukes because they have not used nukes’ routine so people can feel safer about poking the bear. There is always a first time and I’m very thankful that it hasn’t happed yet. To me a near peer implies that either side has a good chance of losing the war. It’s my opinion that Russia has not yet been at a real risk of losing this war and thus has not yet had a need to use nuclear weapons. I’m aware that the NAFO line is that Ukraine still has this in the bag - but I still don’t see a Ukrainian victory as a likely. I assume this is why the gp post suggested ‘near peer’ implies nukes.
- kspacewalk2 2y ago
  Both the US and the USSR lost major wars during the Cold War without resorting to nuking their opponent when they felt they were "at a real risk of losing a war". In Vietnam and Korea, the Soviet involvement was considerably more than the current Western involvement in countering the Ukraine invasion. Soviet pilots on Soviet planes killed Americans in American planes. Soviet operators of Soviet-made SAM sites shut down American planes as well. The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.
  - bigfudge 2y ago
    I mostly agree, but it does assume rational actors in charge. If the goal of conflict is to cement the position of a dictatorial elite, it’s not clear to me that ‘smaller scale’ nuclear exchanges are ruled out, especially if leaders are isolated, paranoid etc.
    - kspacewalk2 2y ago
      Ever since the US made crystal clear that a nuclear strike against Ukraine will mean the US annihilating all Russian forces in Ukraine by conventional means, such small scale nuclear exchange is in fact ruled out. This will in effect invite Russia to simply swallow such a devastating blow, or else end it all. Russia is in fact ruled by rational actors, so it rationally backed off. Thus in effect proving its rationality and the emptiness of its "but what if we're insane" bluff. They're not insane.
bee_rider 2y ago
Ukraine was not considered to be a near peer to Russia before the war. It seems likely that they thought they’d have a quick win. Possibly, whatever it is they are after, it isn’t worth the pariah status using nuclear weapons would produce. (Or maybe they still think they can get it done conventionally).
- HKH2 2y ago
  America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer? Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    > America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer? I was responding to somebody who said Ukraine was Russian’s near-peer. I didn’t say they should be considered peers now, just that they certainly weren’t when the choice was made to go to war. The Vietnam War was like 50 years ago. Who cares, sure, I don’t have any investment in whether or not the US and Vietnam were peers decades before I was born. Vietnam certainly has an impressive record. > Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective. They also seem to be trying to get entrenched in Crimea, and IIRC brought up the idea of some promise that Ukraine wouldn’t ever going NATO, although don’t remember if that was a serious proposal or what.
    - HKH2 2y ago
      > I didn’t say they should be considered peers now You implied it. > The Vietnam War was like 50 years ago. Who cares, sure, I don’t have any investment in whether or not the US and Vietnam were peers decades before I was born. Vietnam certainly has an impressive record. America clearly wasn't using anywhere near all of the power it had. Neither is Russia now.
Spooky23 2y ago
Given the decay of Russia and their forces, it’s questionable whether they would work.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Even if 99% are non-functional it’s a significant threat.
- epolanski 2y ago
  No I don't think it is. They have detonated more than 800 nukes in their history, ballistic ones from subs since 60 years ago, and have almost 2k warheads deployed. Don't confuse the fact that they tend to start and conduct wars poorly, until cornered, with complete ineptitude.
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    Right, but when is the last time they detonated one? What is the current status of their stockpile and the infrastructure required to launch it and strike a target thousands of miles away? Nuclear missiles have a lot of stuff that degrades over time. The plutonium. The conventional chemical explosives. The electronics. Were their nukes even designed to be serviced 25, 50 years in the future? Russia went through quite a bit of economic difficulty in the waning years of communism and in the years after communism. The state of their other big expensive military toys (their navy, etc) and even their ability to equip their infantry on a personal level seems to be pretty far from ideal. I'm not telling you that Russia doesn't have functional nukes, and it's certainly not a bluff that other nations can afford to call, but I think it's a very legitimate question.
    - swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
      Safe to say they probably got more than one functional nuke, which is more than enough for concern.
  - malfist 2y ago
    Sure, they might be inept now, but wait until they're desperate!
HKH2 2y ago
Who are America's near peers then? Afghanistan? Vietnam?

Worth noting that Ukraine had nuclear weapons and negotiated them away in exchange for a promise that Russia would not use nuclear weapons against them.

bee_rider 2y ago
The Bucharest memorandum contained the promises that: - None of the countries (US, UK, and Russia) would threaten Ukraine’s territory - If nuclear weapons were used against them, or they were threatened by nuclear weapons, the other signatories would “Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance” Among other promises. So it seems like they’ve already had their promises violated.
- epolanski 2y ago
  Didn't china and France sign it too?
  - nradov 2y ago
    China and France didn't formally sign the Budapest Memorandum. They made separate statements generally in support but aren't obligated to take any real action. https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-budapest-memorandum-and-the-russia-ukraine-crisis/ https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-budapest-memorandum-an...
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I can’t believe I mixed up Budapest and Bucharest :(
nostrademons 2y ago
Worth also noting that the nuclear weapons that Ukraine had were useless. All modern (post-1960s) nukes except the UK's are equipped with PALs [1]. Without the launch codes, they are just very expensive hunks of lithium deuteride. The launch codes for Ukraine's nukes remained with the KGB/FSB in Moscow throughout the breakup of the Soviet Union. They had essentially zero negotiating leverage, and as a result got essentially zero out of the negotiation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link
- lamontcg 2y ago
  "This is the lockpicking lawyer, and what we have here today is the PAL from the reentry vehicle of a Russian R-36M ICBM..."
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Without the launch codes they still had highly enriched weapons grade nuclear material. That’s the tough part. Making it go bang we figured out in the 1940s. We also saw with DVD encryption that physical access to the device makes it tough to fully protect. Nuclear codes are protected significantly by “no one gets to tinker with the device without rapid lead poisoning”.
  - nostrademons 2y ago
    Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. If Iran and North Korea can do it, Ukraine certainly can. Hell, even today, in the midst of a war, they have 8 operational reactors at 3 power plants, plus 2 under construction, one damaged and recently repaired, 6 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in contested territory, and 4 in the decommissioned Chernobyl plant. Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warhead. (I suspect that the PAL is not actually a separate device that can be separated from the warhead, but a series of design choices for how the warhead is constructed that make it unable to fire without the input of a cryptographic code. But then, details on this are very highly classified for obvious reasons, so we'll never know for sure.) The real reason they didn't and don't do this is because they don't want to end up an international pariah state like Iran and North Korea. It's very clear that the U.S. has a vested interest in nuclear non-proliferation; they were the ones who gave the PALs to all our adversaries in the first place, because in the game-theoretic calculus of MAD, a small number of enemies that you can bargain and reason with is better than a large number of nuclear states even if many of those states are on your side. We would not have supported Ukraine if they attempted to retain the nukes in the 1990s, and we wouldn't support them developing nukes now.

cjbgkagh 2y ago

The old ‘Russia will not use nukes because they have not used nukes’ routine so people can feel safer about poking the bear. There is always a first time and I’m very thankful that it hasn’t happed yet. To me a near peer implies that either side has a good chance of losing the war. It’s my opinion that Russia has not yet been at a real risk of losing this war and thus has not yet had a need to use nuclear weapons. I’m aware that the NAFO line is that Ukraine still has this in the bag - but I still don’t see a Ukrainian victory as a likely. I assume this is why the gp post suggested ‘near peer’ implies nukes.

kspacewalk2 2y ago
Both the US and the USSR lost major wars during the Cold War without resorting to nuking their opponent when they felt they were "at a real risk of losing a war". In Vietnam and Korea, the Soviet involvement was considerably more than the current Western involvement in countering the Ukraine invasion. Soviet pilots on Soviet planes killed Americans in American planes. Soviet operators of Soviet-made SAM sites shut down American planes as well. The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.
- bigfudge 2y ago
  I mostly agree, but it does assume rational actors in charge. If the goal of conflict is to cement the position of a dictatorial elite, it’s not clear to me that ‘smaller scale’ nuclear exchanges are ruled out, especially if leaders are isolated, paranoid etc.
  - kspacewalk2 2y ago
    Ever since the US made crystal clear that a nuclear strike against Ukraine will mean the US annihilating all Russian forces in Ukraine by conventional means, such small scale nuclear exchange is in fact ruled out. This will in effect invite Russia to simply swallow such a devastating blow, or else end it all. Russia is in fact ruled by rational actors, so it rationally backed off. Thus in effect proving its rationality and the emptiness of its "but what if we're insane" bluff. They're not insane.

bee_rider 2y ago

Ukraine was not considered to be a near peer to Russia before the war. It seems likely that they thought they’d have a quick win. Possibly, whatever it is they are after, it isn’t worth the pariah status using nuclear weapons would produce. (Or maybe they still think they can get it done conventionally).

HKH2 2y ago
America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer? Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  > America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer? I was responding to somebody who said Ukraine was Russian’s near-peer. I didn’t say they should be considered peers now, just that they certainly weren’t when the choice was made to go to war. The Vietnam War was like 50 years ago. Who cares, sure, I don’t have any investment in whether or not the US and Vietnam were peers decades before I was born. Vietnam certainly has an impressive record. > Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective. They also seem to be trying to get entrenched in Crimea, and IIRC brought up the idea of some promise that Ukraine wouldn’t ever going NATO, although don’t remember if that was a serious proposal or what.
  - HKH2 2y ago
    > I didn’t say they should be considered peers now You implied it. > The Vietnam War was like 50 years ago. Who cares, sure, I don’t have any investment in whether or not the US and Vietnam were peers decades before I was born. Vietnam certainly has an impressive record. America clearly wasn't using anywhere near all of the power it had. Neither is Russia now.

Spooky23 2y ago

Given the decay of Russia and their forces, it’s questionable whether they would work.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Even if 99% are non-functional it’s a significant threat.
epolanski 2y ago
No I don't think it is. They have detonated more than 800 nukes in their history, ballistic ones from subs since 60 years ago, and have almost 2k warheads deployed. Don't confuse the fact that they tend to start and conduct wars poorly, until cornered, with complete ineptitude.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  Right, but when is the last time they detonated one? What is the current status of their stockpile and the infrastructure required to launch it and strike a target thousands of miles away? Nuclear missiles have a lot of stuff that degrades over time. The plutonium. The conventional chemical explosives. The electronics. Were their nukes even designed to be serviced 25, 50 years in the future? Russia went through quite a bit of economic difficulty in the waning years of communism and in the years after communism. The state of their other big expensive military toys (their navy, etc) and even their ability to equip their infantry on a personal level seems to be pretty far from ideal. I'm not telling you that Russia doesn't have functional nukes, and it's certainly not a bluff that other nations can afford to call, but I think it's a very legitimate question.
  - swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
    Safe to say they probably got more than one functional nuke, which is more than enough for concern.
- malfist 2y ago
  Sure, they might be inept now, but wait until they're desperate!

HKH2 2y ago

Who are America's near peers then? Afghanistan? Vietnam?