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> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promis

> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself. THEY STILL DO!!!! This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

matthewdgreen 2y ago
The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
- monero-xmr 2y ago
  Hong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death. And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    That notion didn't stop Russia from scorching Ukraine, can't see why it would stop China.
    - tim333 2y ago
      The issue Russia does have with Ukraine is it has to keep it's ships and planes away from Ukrainian areas or they get shot down. That'd be a problem for invading Taiwan.
      - cma 2y ago
        There have been wargames where it has been simulated with China using its entire commercial fishing fleet as the amphibious assault force. It wouldn't be easily stoppable.
        aardvarkr 2y ago
        Why and how would a fishing fleet be unstoppable? Why is that better than actual landing vehicles?
        nradov 2y ago
        It's not better. But if China is willing to take enormous losses, then they can push a lot of troops across the Taiwan Strait in requisitioned civilian boats. Essentially the maritime equivalent of a human wave assault.
        tim333 2y ago
        I'm guessing Taiwan would only have so many anti-ship missiles so if you have more ships than that you wouldn't be able to get them all.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Russia isn’t as smart as China.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
  - teractiveodular 2y ago
    That would absolutely happen if China invaded Taiwan and the US stood by twiddling its fingers. Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.
  - naniwaduni 2y ago
    National attitudes have a remarkable ability to shift in response to neighbors getting invaded, as we learned a couple of years ago.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    Japan could of course do it in secret, like others have.
    - zaik 2y ago
      In a complete disregard for the rule of law? Which other democratic countries with anti-nuclear constitution had a secret nuclear program?
      - tehjoker 2y ago
        Israel, though I don't think they have it in their constitution (they don't have a constitution).
      - jltsiren 2y ago
        Japan, among many other countries, subscribes to the idea that the milder law prevails. If an action was illegal but it was made legal after the fact, then it was legal. Similarly, an unconstitutional action can be made constitutional after the fact. Constitutions are not supposed to be absolute constraints. They are not supposed to prevent a country from doing what is reasonable or necessary, as long as people are willing to accept that it was reasonable and necessary.
- whatsupdog 2y ago
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  - mopsi 2y ago
    Blatantly untrue. Russia got all it wanted: Ukraine seeked NATO membership in 2008, Russia threw a temper tantrum, the US, France and Germany bailed out of the invitation, and Russia invaded Ukraine a few years later without having to risk with getting hit with NATO nukes in retaliation.
  - TOMDM 2y ago
    The only ones normalising war are the ones carrying water for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with rampant conspiracism fed by a healthy dose of Russian propoganda. Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block. NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.
- jaco6 2y ago
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- lamontcg 2y ago
  > North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep. They also need to be able to hit a location accurately. And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it. Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
  - openasocket 2y ago
    North Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties. The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.
    - matthewdgreen 2y ago
      Jesus, I hadn't realized they had come so far. Apparently NK gained the ability to hit the entire continental US with Hwasong 15. The latest iterations are suspected of being designed to contain MRVs or MIRVs, which would completely overwhelm US missile defenses. It is insane that we let them go down this road.
      - mensetmanusman 2y ago
        Even they know that if one launched from their end they would all cease to exist within minutes.
        matthewdgreen 2y ago
        This is a deterrent until Kim Jong Un loses his marbles or receives a terminal diagnosis, or until some military commander makes a serious mistake. Now multiply this same risk times fifty or sixty and you’ll see why the major project of the 20th century was limiting the number of countries with nukes.
- elzbardico 2y ago
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  - aardvarkr 2y ago
    Huh? What did the current administration do to force Russia to invade a sovereign nation? How did this administration topple Assad? Laughable that you think it’s ISIS running the show. How did the current administration convince Hamas to launch a war against Israel? Gtfo with your “liberal Pearl clutching” lmao you’re a joke
    - elzbardico 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - defrost 2y ago
        > Everyone who is not drunk on Propaganda > people like you are unable of critical thinking. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        DonHopkins 2y ago
        >...Minsky agreements... He must be a manfunctioning AI bot. ;)
    - gnkyfrg 2y ago
      [dead]
- option 2y ago
  The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO. This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
- boredatoms 2y ago
  If the US goes untrustworthy, every non-poor country on earth will have to start a program
- Ekaros 2y ago
  On other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Failure where everyone does not have nuclear weapons looks very different from failure where everyone does. A scenario where everyone has nuclear weapons can only ever fail one time, because after that humanity will not survive to try anything else to "see if it prevents more wars". It depends on how you define success I guess. The very fact that we're alive to have the option of giving everyone nukes just to see what happens means we've already found a measure of success. If everyone has nukes and they use them it means no more humans, which means no more wars, which I guess can also be seen as a success. World peace at last.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII. WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it. WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes. Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.
- barnabyjones 2y ago
  The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  > WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it. The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.
  - dullcrisp 2y ago
    So you’re saying that if we want to avoid World War 3 we have to get rid of nationalism in Serbia?
    - akdor1154 2y ago
      Having met a few Serbian nationalists that's actually not a bad idea.
    - baq 2y ago
      This is… not a bad question at all. Serbia is punching above its weight in the current political situation in Europe thanks to being close to Putin and participating in the Chinese new Silk Road and the Serbian Orthodox Church is an amazing hate machine, rivaling their Russian counterparts easily. While it wouldn’t stop ww3 it would remove one of the hot spots.
ls612 2y ago
MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.
- killjoywashere 2y ago
  If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.
  - teractiveodular 2y ago
    Yes? North Korea's own nuclear capability is very limited, and China doesn't care enough about North Korea to use its own arsenal and risk nuclear annihilation. I still wouldn't want to be in Seoul or Tokyo if that happens though, and yes, there's a non-zero risk somebody somewhere gets trigger happy and things spiral out of control.
    - killjoywashere 2y ago
      The Yalu River separates China and North Korea. General MacArthur sent US troops across the Yalu, which is what caused the Chinese to enter the Korean War, and led to most of the US casualties. Truman fired MacArthur for disobeying his order to stay on the Korean side of the Yalu. That was before the Chinese had nuclear weapons. The Korean peninsula has been under an armistice and not at peace for 70 years in large part because MacArthur invaded China in I would characterize as a Cabinet war mentality. Go to the MacArthur museum in Norfolk, Virginia. MacArthur was from an extraordinarily wealthy family and clearly saw himself as an aristocrat with warrant to act unilaterally while deployed far afield. If the US sent its own troops to invade China today, do you think we be here to talk about it tomorrow? That would be no Cabinet war.
      - 2y ago
Gvaskas 2y ago
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- Retric 2y ago
  The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history. O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history. I would argue the West was at its peak in the mid to late 20th century when we were so awesome we conquered the god damn Moon, made transcontinental, transoceanic and even space travel quick and mundane, invented the microprocessor, and then finally invented a communication system that connected the entire world. Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline. The world becomes more tumultuous every year, the East is clearly catching up and has in some aspects already surpassed the West, the Middle East is a bigger tinderbox than humanity has ever known, and liberal values like free speech and equal opportunity have become decisively unpopular. A paradigm shift is coming, probably this century within most of our lifetimes, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell that.
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      That's an artifact of the prevalence of modernism at that time rather than an objective truth. The "vibe", as it were, was that things were getting better and better until the gaps of modernism sowed the seeds for its own destruction. Pointing them out led to the rise of post-modernism which felt like a fall, sure, but I'm not convinced it actually was any more than modernism was an actual rise.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Air travel has really only become commonplace fairly recently. Decade over decade growth has pushed the domain of the wealthiest, then well off, down to just about anyone. > space travel quick and mundane Space travel was rare and extremely expensive until very recently when we’ve made huge strides. And this isn’t just a singular SpaceX thing the from ion engines to basics like solar panels things have been steadily improving. IMO the Apollo program was less impressive than many recent missions like DART. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te... You want to push new boundaries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia. But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same. > Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline. Again we’re better off economically, militarily, and technologically in 2025 than 2000, 1980, 1960 let alone any point before then. The diseases of the rich have become commonplace and we view that as a failure rather than the underlying progress that it is.
option 2y ago
you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die. The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.
- waveBidder 2y ago
  You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
  - option 2y ago
    What do you do when those lines are crossed? Like they have been repeatedly.
  - aardvarkr 2y ago
    What do you think maintains those no-go lines? The threat of recklessly gambling mass death if those lines are crossed
  - jaapz 2y ago
    There is a wikipedia page with a list of NATO "red lines" crossed by putin, look it up It's a catch-22 anyway. NATO still really wants to de-escalate, but by allowing Putin to cross these red lines they show weakness to a person who values strength. However if they react violently to a crossed red line, they might trigger EU-wide or worldwide war (not necessarily nuclear). I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of NATO leaders right now
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos. Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause. The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.
- tipiirai 2y ago
  Well said. I can strongly feel this happening in Finland, which became a racist country in one year.
  - Abekkus 2y ago
    Fomenting nativist rage was exactly why Russia created the migrant crisis by destabilizing Syria. Im guessing you have a biased corporate media environment like America, too?
    - jusssi 2y ago
      Probably true for social media bubbles. For traditional media, not really. E.g. the largest newspaper gets regular accusations of taking sides (in their comments section), but the complaints seem to come from all sides equally. Except for the nationalist party, but over 80% of us probably thinks they have earned the critique they get.
Over2Chars 2y ago
The virulent anti-nationalists are, themselves, often a very pro-war faction.
- vlz 2y ago
  Can you give an example? Honestly don’t know who this is supposed to be.
  - Over2Chars 2y ago
    Virulent anti-nationalists are generally marxist leninist communists. The rhetoric of the anti-nationalists is generally implicitly or explicitly "internationalist". In early Communist organization names they often used the word "international" and I think they even have a toe tappin' song by that name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4 And if you doubt the second part "are often pro-war" this is the doctrine of divide and conquer, civil war (called "class war") in which the target of their anti-nationalist colonialism is provoked into disorder before the "forces of liberation" can swoop in and expand the mother country. This has been endlessly documented in many places. Probably one of the better ones is George Orwell's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
ashoeafoot 2y ago
The whole idea that regional nuclear exchange can be avoided is bonkers. The very machine designed to keep humans progressive and peacefull ,to keep the hothouse of "peacefulness delusion " alive at full blast is the very same driving up the stakes of it happen sooner then later. Thats peters dilemma. Thats why we have to crash the trolly before it can pick up more speed after clicking mineffortmaxreward. we had 15 years of prep.
fsckboy 2y ago
you have it all backward >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. >Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use. The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any. running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.
- hommelix 2y ago
  > you have it all backward > > >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII > > who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. > There are other people than the citizens oft USA in HN. Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.
strogonoff 2y ago
When top officials and other generally influential people transparently behave like self-centered sociopaths or psychopaths, it is difficult to see them too worried about survival and prosperity of citizens. Themselves those people are not going to have trouble surviving a nuclear winter (a thought experiment is needed to determine whether they will even suffer from it all that much on a personal level, compared to ordinary people many of whom would just perish). Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries. In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.
snakeyjake 2y ago
> Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. My assessment is that it isn't. The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military. I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights: 1. A string of ballistic missile test failures. 2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years. 3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies. 4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed. 5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network. I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus". Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies. So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles. Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness. Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment. Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad. Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons. But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever". MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes. Russia is almost certainly incapable of MAD.

matthewdgreen 2y ago

The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.

monero-xmr 2y ago
Hong Kong was very different than Taiwan would be. Taiwan will be a bloodbath as an armed, diehard anti-communist population fights to the death. And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  That notion didn't stop Russia from scorching Ukraine, can't see why it would stop China.
  - tim333 2y ago
    The issue Russia does have with Ukraine is it has to keep it's ships and planes away from Ukrainian areas or they get shot down. That'd be a problem for invading Taiwan.
    - cma 2y ago
      There have been wargames where it has been simulated with China using its entire commercial fishing fleet as the amphibious assault force. It wouldn't be easily stoppable.
      - aardvarkr 2y ago
        Why and how would a fishing fleet be unstoppable? Why is that better than actual landing vehicles?
        nradov 2y ago
        It's not better. But if China is willing to take enormous losses, then they can push a lot of troops across the Taiwan Strait in requisitioned civilian boats. Essentially the maritime equivalent of a human wave assault.
        tim333 2y ago
        I'm guessing Taiwan would only have so many anti-ship missiles so if you have more ships than that you wouldn't be able to get them all.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Russia isn’t as smart as China.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  That would absolutely happen if China invaded Taiwan and the US stood by twiddling its fingers. Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.
- naniwaduni 2y ago
  National attitudes have a remarkable ability to shift in response to neighbors getting invaded, as we learned a couple of years ago.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Japan could of course do it in secret, like others have.
  - zaik 2y ago
    In a complete disregard for the rule of law? Which other democratic countries with anti-nuclear constitution had a secret nuclear program?
    - tehjoker 2y ago
      Israel, though I don't think they have it in their constitution (they don't have a constitution).
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      Japan, among many other countries, subscribes to the idea that the milder law prevails. If an action was illegal but it was made legal after the fact, then it was legal. Similarly, an unconstitutional action can be made constitutional after the fact. Constitutions are not supposed to be absolute constraints. They are not supposed to prevent a country from doing what is reasonable or necessary, as long as people are willing to accept that it was reasonable and necessary.
whatsupdog 2y ago
[flagged]
- mopsi 2y ago
  Blatantly untrue. Russia got all it wanted: Ukraine seeked NATO membership in 2008, Russia threw a temper tantrum, the US, France and Germany bailed out of the invitation, and Russia invaded Ukraine a few years later without having to risk with getting hit with NATO nukes in retaliation.
- TOMDM 2y ago
  The only ones normalising war are the ones carrying water for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with rampant conspiracism fed by a healthy dose of Russian propoganda. Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block. NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.
jaco6 2y ago
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lamontcg 2y ago
> North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep. They also need to be able to hit a location accurately. And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it. Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
- openasocket 2y ago
  North Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties. The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    Jesus, I hadn't realized they had come so far. Apparently NK gained the ability to hit the entire continental US with Hwasong 15. The latest iterations are suspected of being designed to contain MRVs or MIRVs, which would completely overwhelm US missile defenses. It is insane that we let them go down this road.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Even they know that if one launched from their end they would all cease to exist within minutes.
      - matthewdgreen 2y ago
        This is a deterrent until Kim Jong Un loses his marbles or receives a terminal diagnosis, or until some military commander makes a serious mistake. Now multiply this same risk times fifty or sixty and you’ll see why the major project of the 20th century was limiting the number of countries with nukes.
elzbardico 2y ago
[flagged]
- aardvarkr 2y ago
  Huh? What did the current administration do to force Russia to invade a sovereign nation? How did this administration topple Assad? Laughable that you think it’s ISIS running the show. How did the current administration convince Hamas to launch a war against Israel? Gtfo with your “liberal Pearl clutching” lmao you’re a joke
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - defrost 2y ago
      > Everyone who is not drunk on Propaganda > people like you are unable of critical thinking. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - DonHopkins 2y ago
        >...Minsky agreements... He must be a manfunctioning AI bot. ;)
  - gnkyfrg 2y ago
    [dead]
option 2y ago
The Ukraine lesson is simple - you are not independent if you don’t have nuclear weapons. If you want to be safe you should either have nuclear weapons or be in NATO. This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
boredatoms 2y ago
If the US goes untrustworthy, every non-poor country on earth will have to start a program
Ekaros 2y ago
On other hand world where everyone does not have nuclear weapon has been absolutely proven to be utter total failure. We should try one with everyone having nuclear weapons to see if it prevents more wars. Maybe fear of death in the aggressor nations would prevent their evils.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Failure where everyone does not have nuclear weapons looks very different from failure where everyone does. A scenario where everyone has nuclear weapons can only ever fail one time, because after that humanity will not survive to try anything else to "see if it prevents more wars". It depends on how you define success I guess. The very fact that we're alive to have the option of giving everyone nukes just to see what happens means we've already found a measure of success. If everyone has nukes and they use them it means no more humans, which means no more wars, which I guess can also be seen as a success. World peace at last.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII. WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it. WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes. Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.

barnabyjones 2y ago
The nationalist spirit is founded on imperial ambitions, and the pieces were in place for WWI partly due to empires and pretenders who would claim the title of "empire" both increasingly desperate to cement their legitimacy through power projection.
BurningFrog 2y ago
> WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it. The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.
- dullcrisp 2y ago
  So you’re saying that if we want to avoid World War 3 we have to get rid of nationalism in Serbia?
  - akdor1154 2y ago
    Having met a few Serbian nationalists that's actually not a bad idea.
  - baq 2y ago
    This is… not a bad question at all. Serbia is punching above its weight in the current political situation in Europe thanks to being close to Putin and participating in the Chinese new Silk Road and the Serbian Orthodox Church is an amazing hate machine, rivaling their Russian counterparts easily. While it wouldn’t stop ww3 it would remove one of the hot spots.

ls612 2y ago

MAD precludes total wars of national survival ala WW2. It does not at all preclude the sorts of cabinet wars that were fought between the European powers for centuries before Napoleon.

killjoywashere 2y ago
If we crossed the Yalu River today, do you think we'd be alive tomorrow to talk about it? Nuclear deterrence, as part of the taboo, prevents any nation from violating the sovereignty of a nuclear power. The only exception I know of is the Yom Kippur War, and if there is ever a person who never received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize, it's Golda Meir.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Yes? North Korea's own nuclear capability is very limited, and China doesn't care enough about North Korea to use its own arsenal and risk nuclear annihilation. I still wouldn't want to be in Seoul or Tokyo if that happens though, and yes, there's a non-zero risk somebody somewhere gets trigger happy and things spiral out of control.
  - killjoywashere 2y ago
    The Yalu River separates China and North Korea. General MacArthur sent US troops across the Yalu, which is what caused the Chinese to enter the Korean War, and led to most of the US casualties. Truman fired MacArthur for disobeying his order to stay on the Korean side of the Yalu. That was before the Chinese had nuclear weapons. The Korean peninsula has been under an armistice and not at peace for 70 years in large part because MacArthur invaded China in I would characterize as a Cabinet war mentality. Go to the MacArthur museum in Norfolk, Virginia. MacArthur was from an extraordinarily wealthy family and clearly saw himself as an aristocrat with warrant to act unilaterally while deployed far afield. If the US sent its own troops to invade China today, do you think we be here to talk about it tomorrow? That would be no Cabinet war.
    - 2y ago

Gvaskas 2y ago

[flagged]

Retric 2y ago
The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history. O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >The west is the strongest it’s ever been in its entire history. I would argue the West was at its peak in the mid to late 20th century when we were so awesome we conquered the god damn Moon, made transcontinental, transoceanic and even space travel quick and mundane, invented the microprocessor, and then finally invented a communication system that connected the entire world. Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline. The world becomes more tumultuous every year, the East is clearly catching up and has in some aspects already surpassed the West, the Middle East is a bigger tinderbox than humanity has ever known, and liberal values like free speech and equal opportunity have become decisively unpopular. A paradigm shift is coming, probably this century within most of our lifetimes, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell that.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    That's an artifact of the prevalence of modernism at that time rather than an objective truth. The "vibe", as it were, was that things were getting better and better until the gaps of modernism sowed the seeds for its own destruction. Pointing them out led to the rise of post-modernism which felt like a fall, sure, but I'm not convinced it actually was any more than modernism was an actual rise.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Air travel has really only become commonplace fairly recently. Decade over decade growth has pushed the domain of the wealthiest, then well off, down to just about anyone. > space travel quick and mundane Space travel was rare and extremely expensive until very recently when we’ve made huge strides. And this isn’t just a singular SpaceX thing the from ion engines to basics like solar panels things have been steadily improving. IMO the Apollo program was less impressive than many recent missions like DART. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te... You want to push new boundaries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia. But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same. > Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline. Again we’re better off economically, militarily, and technologically in 2025 than 2000, 1980, 1960 let alone any point before then. The diseases of the rich have become commonplace and we view that as a failure rather than the underlying progress that it is.

option 2y ago

you can’t have de-escalation from just one side. When one side has embraced facism, invades neighbors and does hybrid attacks against you the only path that does not lead to MAD is when you are so overwhelmingly stronger that they have no choice but back up or die. The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.

waveBidder 2y ago
You don't oppose someone recklessly gambling mass death by recklessly gambling mass death yourself, you just call their bluffs and maintain clear no-go lines.
- option 2y ago
  What do you do when those lines are crossed? Like they have been repeatedly.
- aardvarkr 2y ago
  What do you think maintains those no-go lines? The threat of recklessly gambling mass death if those lines are crossed
- jaapz 2y ago
  There is a wikipedia page with a list of NATO "red lines" crossed by putin, look it up It's a catch-22 anyway. NATO still really wants to de-escalate, but by allowing Putin to cross these red lines they show weakness to a person who values strength. However if they react violently to a crossed red line, they might trigger EU-wide or worldwide war (not necessarily nuclear). I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of NATO leaders right now

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

Nationalists are not motivated by reason. Just telling them they're going to start a nuclear war isn't a deterrent. Loyalty, sacrifice, obedience, ethnicity, borders, tradition, etc are their primary motivators today. If they have to end the world with nukes to protect "their" nation, then by golly, that's what they'll do. Self-preservation isn't as important as preservation of the ethos. Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause. The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.

tipiirai 2y ago
Well said. I can strongly feel this happening in Finland, which became a racist country in one year.
- Abekkus 2y ago
  Fomenting nativist rage was exactly why Russia created the migrant crisis by destabilizing Syria. Im guessing you have a biased corporate media environment like America, too?
  - jusssi 2y ago
    Probably true for social media bubbles. For traditional media, not really. E.g. the largest newspaper gets regular accusations of taking sides (in their comments section), but the complaints seem to come from all sides equally. Except for the nationalist party, but over 80% of us probably thinks they have earned the critique they get.

Over2Chars 2y ago

The virulent anti-nationalists are, themselves, often a very pro-war faction.

vlz 2y ago
Can you give an example? Honestly don’t know who this is supposed to be.
- Over2Chars 2y ago
  Virulent anti-nationalists are generally marxist leninist communists. The rhetoric of the anti-nationalists is generally implicitly or explicitly "internationalist". In early Communist organization names they often used the word "international" and I think they even have a toe tappin' song by that name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4 And if you doubt the second part "are often pro-war" this is the doctrine of divide and conquer, civil war (called "class war") in which the target of their anti-nationalist colonialism is provoked into disorder before the "forces of liberation" can swoop in and expand the mother country. This has been endlessly documented in many places. Probably one of the better ones is George Orwell's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

ashoeafoot 2y ago

The whole idea that regional nuclear exchange can be avoided is bonkers. The very machine designed to keep humans progressive and peacefull ,to keep the hothouse of "peacefulness delusion " alive at full blast is the very same driving up the stakes of it happen sooner then later. Thats peters dilemma. Thats why we have to crash the trolly before it can pick up more speed after clicking mineffortmaxreward. we had 15 years of prep.

fsckboy 2y ago

you have it all backward >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. >Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use. The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any. running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.

hommelix 2y ago
> you have it all backward > > >we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII > > who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan. > There are other people than the citizens oft USA in HN. Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.

strogonoff 2y ago

When top officials and other generally influential people transparently behave like self-centered sociopaths or psychopaths, it is difficult to see them too worried about survival and prosperity of citizens. Themselves those people are not going to have trouble surviving a nuclear winter (a thought experiment is needed to determine whether they will even suffer from it all that much on a personal level, compared to ordinary people many of whom would just perish). Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries. In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.

snakeyjake 2y ago

> Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. My assessment is that it isn't. The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military. I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights: 1. A string of ballistic missile test failures. 2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years. 3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies. 4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed. 5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network. I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus". Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies. So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles. Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness. Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment. Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad. Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons. But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever". MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes. Russia is almost certainly incapable of MAD.