3 ms·

Not only will they not stop, this has massively increased their incentive to successfully create a nuclear program. In the opposite direction but with the same

Not only will they not stop, this has massively increased their incentive to successfully create a nuclear program. In the opposite direction but with the same outcome, the just-barely-enough aid that Ukraine has received after being invaded by Russia, has demonstrated that it's foolish for countries to give up their own nuclear weapons, on the understanding that a friendly superpower will protect them. This has been a very bad decade of events for incentivizing nuclear non-proliferation. I hate it!

GMoromisato 1y ago
That is certainly the conventional wisdom. But is it right? Imagine that Iran already had 10 nuclear bombs and the US bombed the production sites with B2s. What would Iran do? They can't drop a nuke on the US, and even if they could, that would just ensure their destruction. Of course, one could argue that Iran is not rational and that it would nuke NYC even if it meant being destroyed as a country. But if we're assuming that they are irrational, then that's all the more reason to get rid of their weapons, even if it meant taking casualties. And note that the same calculation applies with Iran vs. Israel. If Israel attacks Iran conventionally, Iran cannot escalate to nuclear without also getting destroyed (since Israel has a larger arsenal). Moreover, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, actually demonstrates the uselessness of nuclear weapons. Yes, NATO and the US were initially deterred because of fears of Russian escalation, but we've continued to cross "red-lines" in arming Ukraine without escalation (tanks, F16, missile attacks on Russian soil, etc.). I'm pretty confident that Europe at least will continue to support Ukraine with ever more powerful weapons without fear of Russia's nuclear threats.
- sanderjd 1y ago
  You don't have to speculate like this. We can just look at how North Korea is treated, now that they do have nuclear capability. From the Iranian (or Ukrainian) perspective, the conclusion can only be "better than us". In your hypothetical, we're sending B2s to drop bombs on their production sites. In the reality, we would not do that, for the same reasons that we are not sending B2s to drop bombs on North Korea's production sites.
  - GMoromisato 1y ago
    Maybe. It certainly would not surprise me if you're right--that's why it's the conventional wisdom. But these kind of events--Israel defanging Hezbollah, US destroying nuclear sites--should change our priors. And it might change priors in Iran too. Until we actually sent B-2s in, Iran didn't know whether we ever would. They might have held out hope that we were bluffing--that we would never risk a $2 billion plane (not to mention a crew) on bombing a site that only sets back the program a couple of years. Now that the US has done it, what's to stop us from doing it again later? Why bother spending so much effort on a program that gets blown up every few years? Maybe they'll just try to hide it better, but can they really rely on not having intelligence leaks, given the massive intelligence failures of the past few months? And North Korea is not a great example. Even if it's true that their nuclear program has deterred us, they bought it at an enormous cost: North Korea is completely isolated. Iran would like to get rid of the current sanctions and start integrating into the rest of the world. Even if the regime doesn't care about its people, it still wants aircraft parts and oil revenue. The US and Israel would be fine if Iran continued to slowly rebuild its nuclear program, as long as it remained under sanctions. They can just wait five years and bomb again. But is that really a victory for Iran? My point is that these events might cause Iran to re-evaluate the cost/benefits of their current strategy. They might decide that rushing to build a nuclear bomb is not worth the very large costs.
    - sanderjd 1y ago
      First of all, I disagree with your characterization of what the conventional wisdom is. I don't think most people are thinking about this at all. Most people will come down on rah rah America or boo war is bad, not "it's bad that specifically only countries that don't have nuclear weapons get attacked, because of the bad incentives". But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right, and you're doing 5d chess to avoid looking it in the face.
      - GMoromisato 1y ago
        > First of all, I disagree with your characterization of what the conventional wisdom is. Okay, you could be right about that. I don't know. > But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right That's really the crux of the disagreement: I don't see it as being clearly right. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's biased reasoning on my part (wouldn't be the first time). But I don't think it is obvious how the Iranian regime is going to react. I don't think any one person inside Iran knows how the regime is going to react yet (maybe not even the Khamenei). It sounds like you think it's obvious how things will play out. That's cool, but that's where we disagree.
- 827a 1y ago
  Yeah; I also tend to feel that nukes are vastly overstated in their sovereign defensive capability. Definitely non-zero, they help, but at the end of the day having strong normative political and especially economic ties is vastly more powerful. Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not. Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected. Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex. Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west. North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way. Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.
  - chasd00 1y ago
    > North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Attacking North Korea means millions of starving brainwashed uneducated refugees flooding into China. China will make any deal to avoid that nightmare, that (and Seoul’s destruction) is why no one bothers with North Korea.
827a 1y ago
I genuinely do not understand where this take is coming from. The incentives for having a nuclear program have not changed. Ukraine did not have nukes. Crimea, as a part of Ukraine. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam. Libya. None of these countries had nukes. They paid for it. What happened today isn't only not a "massive" change to the status quo, as you seem to think it is. Its so much less significant than what happened to the rest of those countries I just listed. Yet, you used the word "massive". Why? I have no idea. Iran did not learn any new lessons yesterday. Nothing they didn't already know. The US does not want them to have nukes. We've done everything short of boots on the ground to stop them from having them. They should still want them. They're correct, in the defense of their territorial sovereignty, to want them. But, we'll keep stopping them. That's how it was in the 2000s, the 2010s, its how it is the 2020s, and it's how it will be in the 2030s and 2040s. They keep trying, we keep stopping them. The incentives haven't changed. Nothing has changed. Yet you doomers keep thinking this is the end of the world or its WW3. It isn't. If anything has changed: Iran just learned that something which took them a decade of development, cost hundreds of lives, and billions of dollars, was stopped by a couple planes from a country half a world away at basically no cost to us, without barely a thought or care. Fox News was tracking these B2s on ADSB a day before they hit Iran; it didn't matter. That's how ahead the US is. The asymmetry here should scare the shit out of them, and the world; that they will never have a conventional nuclear program because they're so unbelievably outmatched and outgunned that if our President has one bad nights sleep he could just wipe out half their country, half of any country, with no congressional authorization, no checks, no balances, just launch a plane and they're dead. Maybe this pushes them to non-conventional means of obtaining nukes; but it shouldn't significantly change their desire for wanting one in the first place. They've always wanted nukes.
- jonp888 1y ago
  Analysed logically the aim of your post was a positive message that pushes back against "doomers", yet somehow it left me more depressed about the utter futility and meaningless of existence than any other comment I've read so far.
  - sanderjd 1y ago

GMoromisato 1y ago

That is certainly the conventional wisdom. But is it right? Imagine that Iran already had 10 nuclear bombs and the US bombed the production sites with B2s. What would Iran do? They can't drop a nuke on the US, and even if they could, that would just ensure their destruction. Of course, one could argue that Iran is not rational and that it would nuke NYC even if it meant being destroyed as a country. But if we're assuming that they are irrational, then that's all the more reason to get rid of their weapons, even if it meant taking casualties. And note that the same calculation applies with Iran vs. Israel. If Israel attacks Iran conventionally, Iran cannot escalate to nuclear without also getting destroyed (since Israel has a larger arsenal). Moreover, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, actually demonstrates the uselessness of nuclear weapons. Yes, NATO and the US were initially deterred because of fears of Russian escalation, but we've continued to cross "red-lines" in arming Ukraine without escalation (tanks, F16, missile attacks on Russian soil, etc.). I'm pretty confident that Europe at least will continue to support Ukraine with ever more powerful weapons without fear of Russia's nuclear threats.

sanderjd 1y ago
You don't have to speculate like this. We can just look at how North Korea is treated, now that they do have nuclear capability. From the Iranian (or Ukrainian) perspective, the conclusion can only be "better than us". In your hypothetical, we're sending B2s to drop bombs on their production sites. In the reality, we would not do that, for the same reasons that we are not sending B2s to drop bombs on North Korea's production sites.
- GMoromisato 1y ago
  Maybe. It certainly would not surprise me if you're right--that's why it's the conventional wisdom. But these kind of events--Israel defanging Hezbollah, US destroying nuclear sites--should change our priors. And it might change priors in Iran too. Until we actually sent B-2s in, Iran didn't know whether we ever would. They might have held out hope that we were bluffing--that we would never risk a $2 billion plane (not to mention a crew) on bombing a site that only sets back the program a couple of years. Now that the US has done it, what's to stop us from doing it again later? Why bother spending so much effort on a program that gets blown up every few years? Maybe they'll just try to hide it better, but can they really rely on not having intelligence leaks, given the massive intelligence failures of the past few months? And North Korea is not a great example. Even if it's true that their nuclear program has deterred us, they bought it at an enormous cost: North Korea is completely isolated. Iran would like to get rid of the current sanctions and start integrating into the rest of the world. Even if the regime doesn't care about its people, it still wants aircraft parts and oil revenue. The US and Israel would be fine if Iran continued to slowly rebuild its nuclear program, as long as it remained under sanctions. They can just wait five years and bomb again. But is that really a victory for Iran? My point is that these events might cause Iran to re-evaluate the cost/benefits of their current strategy. They might decide that rushing to build a nuclear bomb is not worth the very large costs.
  - sanderjd 1y ago
    First of all, I disagree with your characterization of what the conventional wisdom is. I don't think most people are thinking about this at all. Most people will come down on rah rah America or boo war is bad, not "it's bad that specifically only countries that don't have nuclear weapons get attacked, because of the bad incentives". But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right, and you're doing 5d chess to avoid looking it in the face.
    - GMoromisato 1y ago
      > First of all, I disagree with your characterization of what the conventional wisdom is. Okay, you could be right about that. I don't know. > But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right That's really the crux of the disagreement: I don't see it as being clearly right. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's biased reasoning on my part (wouldn't be the first time). But I don't think it is obvious how the Iranian regime is going to react. I don't think any one person inside Iran knows how the regime is going to react yet (maybe not even the Khamenei). It sounds like you think it's obvious how things will play out. That's cool, but that's where we disagree.
827a 1y ago
Yeah; I also tend to feel that nukes are vastly overstated in their sovereign defensive capability. Definitely non-zero, they help, but at the end of the day having strong normative political and especially economic ties is vastly more powerful. Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not. Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected. Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex. Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west. North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way. Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.
- chasd00 1y ago
  > North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Attacking North Korea means millions of starving brainwashed uneducated refugees flooding into China. China will make any deal to avoid that nightmare, that (and Seoul’s destruction) is why no one bothers with North Korea.

827a 1y ago

I genuinely do not understand where this take is coming from. The incentives for having a nuclear program have not changed. Ukraine did not have nukes. Crimea, as a part of Ukraine. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam. Libya. None of these countries had nukes. They paid for it. What happened today isn't only not a "massive" change to the status quo, as you seem to think it is. Its so much less significant than what happened to the rest of those countries I just listed. Yet, you used the word "massive". Why? I have no idea. Iran did not learn any new lessons yesterday. Nothing they didn't already know. The US does not want them to have nukes. We've done everything short of boots on the ground to stop them from having them. They should still want them. They're correct, in the defense of their territorial sovereignty, to want them. But, we'll keep stopping them. That's how it was in the 2000s, the 2010s, its how it is the 2020s, and it's how it will be in the 2030s and 2040s. They keep trying, we keep stopping them. The incentives haven't changed. Nothing has changed. Yet you doomers keep thinking this is the end of the world or its WW3. It isn't. If anything has changed: Iran just learned that something which took them a decade of development, cost hundreds of lives, and billions of dollars, was stopped by a couple planes from a country half a world away at basically no cost to us, without barely a thought or care. Fox News was tracking these B2s on ADSB a day before they hit Iran; it didn't matter. That's how ahead the US is. The asymmetry here should scare the shit out of them, and the world; that they will never have a conventional nuclear program because they're so unbelievably outmatched and outgunned that if our President has one bad nights sleep he could just wipe out half their country, half of any country, with no congressional authorization, no checks, no balances, just launch a plane and they're dead. Maybe this pushes them to non-conventional means of obtaining nukes; but it shouldn't significantly change their desire for wanting one in the first place. They've always wanted nukes.

jonp888 1y ago
Analysed logically the aim of your post was a positive message that pushes back against "doomers", yet somehow it left me more depressed about the utter futility and meaningless of existence than any other comment I've read so far.
- sanderjd 1y ago