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I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation, and that this event will add pressure to proliferate.

by delichon 10mo ago

bawolff 10mo ago
From bgp hijacking? Almost certainly not. It would probably rule out the type of decapitation strike the US did, but bgp hijacking is way way below on the escalation ladder.
- JasonADrury 10mo ago
  Nuclear capability wouldn't necessarily rule out this kind of a decapitation strike, it's just that it's very hard to imagine this kind of an operation actually being successful in any nuclear-capable country. The US couldn't just fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Most likely every single one of those helicopters would end up being shot down.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
    >It's extremely difficult to believe that the US could fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Would your answer change if China were somehow guaranteed to not intervene? Because I'm not sure the obstacle here is North Korean defenses, so much as Chinese intervention. Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      >Would your answer change if China were somehow guaranteed to not intervene? Because I'm not sure the obstacle here is North Korean defenses, so much as Chinese intervention. No. The obstacle isn't Chinese intervention, the obstacle is that such an operation would have to be significantly larger and it would take longer. There would be much more air defense assets to suppress, and some of them would be impossible to effectively defeat. A helicopter assault on either of those cities would in the most optimistic scenario take hours of preparatory bombing, which would give a plenty of time for nuclear retaliation by North Korea. Both countries would also certainly have better safeguarding mechanisms for their heads of state, during that bombing they would be evacuated and now you'd probably be looking at the very least at a weeks-long operation. Assassination is a different thing, but I would suspect that for purely psychological reasons a rapid kidnapping operation like this would be far less likely to invite anything more than symbolic retaliation than a single targeted missile strike. This kind of operation would be far more confusing for the enemy than a simple assassination, and the window during which for example nuclear retaliation might make sense tends to be rather small. >Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did. Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one. They'd have shot down every single helicopter. You don't even need fancy missiles, a bunch of .50cal machine guns will do the trick.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
        >A helicopter assault on either of those cities would in the most optimistic scenario take hours of preparatory bombing, which would give a plenty of time for nuclear retaliation b I have serious doubts they can manage anything more than a fizzle yield, but also only give them a one-in-three chance of a successful ballistic launch. It may be the case that they don't even have the preparatory work done, in which case hours isn't enough to launch, they'd need days/weeks. In any event, we're talking about one or two missiles only, and the Navy's ability to shoot those down in the midcourse/terminal phase is sufficient for such a small salvo. If North Korea wanted to nuke us, they'd be better off handing the warhead off to some terrorist group to truck it across the Mexican border. Supposing their stuff is even small enough to smuggle. >Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one. But it doesn't have a China willing to rush in with 1 million PLA infantry. Which is really North Korea's only saving grace. Even if we got Kim out before they could mobilize, they'd be strutting and posturing for weeks, and there are any number of places they could fuck things up in retaliation. Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, they might even stir shit up with India. They could, one supposes, send a few divisions to Russia on loan, and enter into the Ukraine fray. And no clever strategy is going to counter that stuff. Some of this stuff they're already considering and only hesitant... a North Korea operation might goad them into working up the courage to try it.
        philipkglass 10mo ago
        I have serious doubts they can manage anything more than a fizzle yield Why is that? Of the 6 North Korean nuclear tests, only the first one was so low-yield that it might have been a fizzle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_...
        NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
        >Why is that? One, nobody exactly allows independent observers so we only really get seismo readings from those tests. And they don't make alot of sense. Yields should've been higher for plutonium cores, it's not lightweight stuff. And I wouldn't put it past them to have somehow pulled a fast one to fool foreign intelligence agencies (though stockpiling thousands of tons of high explosives fake a successful nuclear test seems beyond farcical). Just seems wrong.
  - nradov 10mo ago
    Nuclear capability by itself isn't a complete deterrent. It has been widely reported that the US military has made contingency plans for a decapitation strike and seizure or destruction of nuclear weapons in Pakistan in case the situation turns really bad there. Real deterrence requires a credible second-strike capability on survivable platforms such as submarines.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      For nuclear deterrence to work in situations like this, it'd also be preferable to have sufficient conventional capabilities that your leadership isn't decapitated before you even notice it's happening. If the attacker is also nuclear-capable, there's little incentive for second person in the chain of command to kill themselves. Similarly, if a head of state is killed by poison or other similar means, you could hardly expect nuclear retaliation when their successor later discovers what happened.
      - Ray20 10mo ago
        I think nuclear deterrence works even in such situations. The retaliatory system is structured in such a way that after decapitation, the decision to use or not use a nuclear weapon is made not by the "number two" or the "successor" but by a person specifically authorized to do so, about whom the successors and number two may know nothing.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        It might, it might not. Of course, you could for example also implant a trigger with a dead man's switch inside your head of state which they could use to launch a strike at any point. An important part of deterrence is broadcasting that you've done this though. It all works much better if your enemies approximately understand your processes
    - deleted 10mo ago
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    - erklik 10mo ago
  - tick_tock_tick 10mo ago
    Honestly from what we learned in the earlier attacks on Iran the USA probably could take a quick trip over to Tehran and grab the Ayatollah.
    - clanky 10mo ago
      It's odd that Iran was able to continue launching waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel after they had supposedly lost so much control over their skies that it would have been possible to hover a Chinook over Tehran for 5 minutes.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      I think clanky covered this pretty well, but dropping bombs from high altitude stealth bombers and fighter jets is very very far from actually delivering and extracting soldiers from a location. The US could probably bomb even Beijing, it doesn't really tell you anything that they were able to bomb Iran also.
  - resumenext 10mo ago
    Maybe Pakistan, or Israel.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      Well yes, the US could certainly easily kidnap leaders of friendly countries. It'd also presumably be very unlikely to result in a nuclear response from either.
  - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
    Didn't we just do something like that in Iran? Not helicopters, but we still secured the airspace just the same.
    - JasonADrury 10mo ago
      Securing airspace for fancy stealth bombers is rather different from securing airspace for helicopters you can shoot down with just about anything.
      - bawolff 10mo ago
        If you mean during the israel-iran war, israel was allegedly using non-stealth planes once the airspace was secure. Still probably quite a bit different then helicopter inserted decapitation strike.
        JasonADrury 10mo ago
        I think the non-stealth planes used by Israel were unmanned drones
      - deleted 10mo ago
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erxam 10mo ago
Indeed. The DPRK was right from the start. They always were. For the longest time I thought they'd gone too far, but now we're the clowns putting on a show.
- conception 10mo ago
  I think have thousands of artillery shells aimed at Seoul is the larger deterrent.
  - wood_spirit 10mo ago
    The nukes are to deter the US. They have been steadily increasing their missile range to first reach regional bases like Guam and now the all the way to the continental USA, and are now even launching a nuclear powered and nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html
    - roncesvalles 10mo ago
      The nukes are a bargaining chip (disarmament). Basically, if your country has the human and tech capital to develop a nuke, you probably should because it's free money. I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
      - wood_spirit 10mo ago
        The nukes have many roles perhaps but I think the fully developed weapons are for retaliatory strike. They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them
lingrush4 10mo ago
If having nuclear weapons did anything at all to prevent cyber attacks, the US would not be getting constantly victimized by cyber attacks.
- ceejayoz 10mo ago
  I think "this kind of operation" refers to the entire "we bombed your capital and stole your President" thing, not just the cyber component of it. It seems extraordinarily unlikely we'd have attempted such a thing if Venezuela had nukes.
  - bawolff 10mo ago
    Probably, but there is also some speculation usa had help on the inside, so it probably depends on the nature and pervasiveness of that help.
    - ceejayoz 10mo ago
      I agree with that speculation, but if you keep your launch chain of command short enough (as the US does), nukes can also be a deterrent to a palace coup; doubly so for a foreign-backed one.
    - monocasa 10mo ago
      There's still a lot of information coming out, a lot of it conflicting, so that's hard to say. And frankly, the Venezuelan military is absolutely tiny and has been facing the same economic issues as the rest of the country. They have 24 F-16s, but rumor is none of them work anymore, maybe some SU-30s, but those would be shot down pretty much as soon as they were scrambled. There was pretty heavy bombing before hand to knock out AA. And they bombed Chavez's tomb, which is quite a dick move of there wasn't any AA there; blowing up a graveyard for shits and giggles on an op is some shit even cartels have a little bit more respect than to do. IDK, the whole thing seems like equally could have been mostly what it says on the tin, with no more than the normal intelligence HUMINT/SIGINT/*INT cloak and dagger crap to have the right intelligence.
adolph 10mo ago
Counterpoint is that Ukraine, Qaddafi, and Assad already demonstrated the significance of maintaining certain capabilities. Vzla didn't have those capabilities before, much less publicly depreciate them.
- spacebanana7 10mo ago
  Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.
  - _boffin_ 10mo ago
    I have a few questions about that: 1. Did Ukraine control the nukes, or did Russia? 2. Could Ukraine keep them working on its own? 3. If nukes stop invasions, why do nuclear countries still get attacked?
    - paulryanrogers 10mo ago
      Has any nuclear state had their leader kidnapped? Or seen significant incursions?
      - deleted 10mo ago
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      - JohnBooty 10mo ago
        Most non-nuclear heads of state have never had their leader kidnapped, either.
    - monocasa 10mo ago
      1) It's complex. Formally, Moscow controlled the launch codes. However Ukraine designed and built the ICBMs, and are near the top of nations with the highest nuclear physicist per capita ratio. On top of that the Soviet nuclear lockout systems are rumored to be much simpler than the American ones. Whereas the American system is rumored to be something like the decryption key for the detonation timings (without which you have at best a dirty bomb), the Soviet lockout mechanism is rumored to just be a lockout device with a 'is locked' signal going to the physics package. If that's all true, taking control of those nukes from a technical perspective would be on the order of hotwiring a 1950s automobile. Taking physical control would have been more complex, but everything was both more complex and in some ways a lot simpler as the wall fell. It would have ultimately been a negotiation. 2) See above. 3) Which military nuclear power has been attacked by the kind of adversary that you can throw a nuke at? Yes, it doesn't remove all threats, but no solution does. Removing a class of threat (and arguably the most powerful class of threat in concrete terms) is extremely valuable.
gradus_ad 10mo ago
That's like arguing against the police arresting criminals because it will incentivize them to acquire weapons. The only consistent action for the US to take, given they - and much of the world - do not consider Maduro the legitimate President of Venezuela, was to remove him from power.
- deleted 10mo ago
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- rising-sky 10mo ago
  Terrible take in the 2nd premise of your argument. Is Venezuela a sovereign nation or a colony? Can similar logic be applied against Russia or even the US?
  - gradus_ad 10mo ago
    Of course it can, and it is. Such logic is behind the argument in favor of arresting Putin. Many have argued that should happen if he were to step on their nations' soil. The reason no one thinks seriously about going into Russia and enforcing open arrest warrants is that they fear the consequences, though maybe in light of Russia's revealed impotence that fear is unjustified.
  - lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
    The sovereignty of Venezuela is not the right argument here, because practical sovereignty is not absolute and there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture. The man was an awful tyrant. However, just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an operation like this. Operations like this can risk civil war and all sorts of horrible fallout that also need to be considered. There must be a realistic plan following the removal of the tyrannical leader. As always, justice must be upheld always. And of course there are the procedural and legal aspects that Trump totally ignored.
    - 10mo ago
adventured 10mo ago
Nuclear deterrent is absurd. You have to assume everyone is willing to die over every single thing short of obliteration. So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. Please, explain that laughable premise. Everyone in Venezuela dies for Maduro? Go on, explain it, I'll wait. Back in reality: Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela shakes its fists at the sky, threatens nuclear hell fire. Nothing happens. Why? The remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro.
- Hnrobert42 10mo ago
  Your tone is unnecessarily condescending and confrontational, but your point is reasonable with respect to Venezuela and Maduro. With Iran, North Korea, or Ukraine, the calculus is different.
- 15155 10mo ago
  > remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro Now do this same exercise for Taiwan.
- dist-epoch 10mo ago
  There is something in between 0 nuclear weapons used and all nuclear weapons used.
- benjiro 10mo ago
  > So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. US attacks, Maduro threatens to launch nuke(s) ... then what? Do you call bluff? Maduro was capture in a militair base (as he did a Saddam, switching sleeping locations), he almost made it into a safe room. What if he had nukes and made it to the safe room. You know the expression "Cornered rat"... For all he knew, the US was there to kill him. The US killed his 30 Cuban bodyguards so high change Maduro thought its his end. > "Cornered rat" refers to the idiom that even weak individuals become desperate and dangerous when given no escape, often applied to intense political or military pressure. The scenario that you called, that nobody wants to die for Maduro, is you gambling that nobody want to die for him or not follow the chain of command! Do you want to risk it? No matter how many precaution you take, are you really sure that not one or more nukes go to Texas or Miami? This is why Nukes are so powerful, even in the hands of weaker countries. It gives a weaker country a weapon that may inflict untold dead to the more powerful country (let alone the political impact). Its a weapon that influences decision making, even in the most powerful countries.
roncesvalles 10mo ago
>I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation Why would it? 1. "Nuclear capability" is not binary. The available delivery mechanisms and the defensive capabilities of your adversary matter a lot. 2. MAD constrains both sides. It's unlikely that an unpopular Head of State getting kidnapped would warrant a nuclear first strike especially against a country like (Trump's) America, which would not hesitate to glass your whole country in response. 3. It's extremely risky to "try" a nuke, because even if it's shot down, does it mean your enemy treats it as a nuclear strike and responds as if it had landed? That's a very different equation from conventional missiles. E.g. Iran sends barrages of missiles because they expect most of them to be shot down. It's probably not calculating a scenario where all of them land and Israel now wants like-for-like revenge.
- monocasa 10mo ago
  > an unpopular Head of State Heads of state are generally pretty good at delegating the C&C of their nukes to people they are pretty popular with. That's orthogonal to popularity polls of the populace.
  - sarchertech 10mo ago
    Yeah but those people read the popularity polls as well. If you kill or capture the leader, there isn’t much upside in retaliation against a massively more powerful enemy. The best move is to cozy up to whomever is in power next.
    - monocasa 10mo ago
      You pick people for that job that aren't that concerned with the popularity polls, and who's main value add is a willingness to turn the key when told to. Either directly or because they were previously told to follow the process.
      - sarchertech 10mo ago
        There’s no process to pick people that will reliably follow through with a suicide pact. You could automate the process or compartmentalize it enough so that no one knows they are essentially committing suicide. But in that case you are removing human reason from the loop and your system will be too sensitive. Essentially you have an automated deadman’s switch. Either you tune it to be too sensitive and the thing goes off because you went out of contact for a few hours—likely resulting in your own death. Or you tune it to be not sensitive enough and your attacker takes advantage of the delay to take control of or destroy the system.
moralestapia 10mo ago
Cool, but outside the scope of the TFA. Try, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348.
deleted 10mo ago
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esseph 10mo ago
You still have to be willing to use the nukes. The threat has to be real or it doesn't work as a deterrent. I think this is a situation where even if Venezuela had nukes, this still would have happened.
- deleted 10mo ago
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- mr_toad 10mo ago
  The choice is basically: a. Don’t use nukes, everyone moves one rung up the ladder. b. Use nukes. Ladder is destroyed, everyone dies horribly. Using nukes only makes sense if everyone is going to die horribly anyway. It’s an empty threat otherwise.
  - esseph 10mo ago
    Not exactly true. Our systems are designed around ICBM detection. A tactical/suitecase nuke like the old US Army Green Light teams wouldn't trigger that. In fact, it would likely take awhile to trace. The "limited nuclear war" concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams
trhway 10mo ago
the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money (at least couple hundreds of millions), and after completing the time will end up with his money in Russia/Belarussia. We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. Using nukes isn't just a matter of pressing a button, it involves a lot of people and processes - thus any significant opposition inside the force or just widespread sabotage will make it unusable.
- JohnBooty 10mo ago
  It strikes me as completely possible that the exit was negotiated. The fact that they knew his exact location and "luckily" nabbed him right before he went into some kind of panic room / bunker is certainly... something. But it seems equally likely to me that he was sold out by somebody in the VZ government/military. And that the paltry military resistance was because they saw direct confrontation with the US as suicidal.
  - trhway 10mo ago
    I think it is kind of both - the exit was ultimately negotiated because most of the VZ government/military either sold him or at least abandoned him and showed no interest in any further support of him.
- johnsmith1840 10mo ago
  80 of their guys died? Not just venuzuelans. If it was negotiated then maduro negotiated his own closest security forces to be killed as a cover. Not impossible but certainly in the tinfoil hat range of possibilities.
- Ray20 10mo ago
  > the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money It sounds stupid. Maduro has no way to enforce the deal, and the US has no incentive to fulfill this deal. > We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. To use it, no resistance is matter. One person must do their job to launch a nuclear weapon. That's all. > it involves a lot of people and processes It doesn't matter. Nuclear deterrence exercises are conducted regularly. And their peculiarity is that no one except the person with the red button knows whether it's an exercise or whether the missiles will actually be launched this time. So when the order to launch comes, many people will be performing a large number of complex processes which will result in the use of nuclear weapons. Because they regularly receive such orders and carry out these processes.
bandrami 10mo ago
The reporting suggests there was some kind of deal struck between the US and elements of the VZ administration, and even nuclear capability doesn't prevent that
deleted 10mo ago
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energy123 10mo ago
It will increase the desire for nukes, but also increase the hesitation to seek them now that credibility and capability (particularly what modern intelligence is capable of) are demonstrated. Hard to say how this nets off.

I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation, and that this event will add pressure to proliferate.

bawolff 10mo ago

From bgp hijacking? Almost certainly not. It would probably rule out the type of decapitation strike the US did, but bgp hijacking is way way below on the escalation ladder.

JasonADrury 10mo ago
Nuclear capability wouldn't necessarily rule out this kind of a decapitation strike, it's just that it's very hard to imagine this kind of an operation actually being successful in any nuclear-capable country. The US couldn't just fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Most likely every single one of those helicopters would end up being shot down.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
  >It's extremely difficult to believe that the US could fly a bunch of helicopters to Pyongyang or Tehran and do the same within 30 minutes. Would your answer change if China were somehow guaranteed to not intervene? Because I'm not sure the obstacle here is North Korean defenses, so much as Chinese intervention. Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    >Would your answer change if China were somehow guaranteed to not intervene? Because I'm not sure the obstacle here is North Korean defenses, so much as Chinese intervention. No. The obstacle isn't Chinese intervention, the obstacle is that such an operation would have to be significantly larger and it would take longer. There would be much more air defense assets to suppress, and some of them would be impossible to effectively defeat. A helicopter assault on either of those cities would in the most optimistic scenario take hours of preparatory bombing, which would give a plenty of time for nuclear retaliation by North Korea. Both countries would also certainly have better safeguarding mechanisms for their heads of state, during that bombing they would be evacuated and now you'd probably be looking at the very least at a weeks-long operation. Assassination is a different thing, but I would suspect that for purely psychological reasons a rapid kidnapping operation like this would be far less likely to invite anything more than symbolic retaliation than a single targeted missile strike. This kind of operation would be far more confusing for the enemy than a simple assassination, and the window during which for example nuclear retaliation might make sense tends to be rather small. >Tehran? I think it'd go more or less like Caracas did. Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one. They'd have shot down every single helicopter. You don't even need fancy missiles, a bunch of .50cal machine guns will do the trick.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
      >A helicopter assault on either of those cities would in the most optimistic scenario take hours of preparatory bombing, which would give a plenty of time for nuclear retaliation b I have serious doubts they can manage anything more than a fizzle yield, but also only give them a one-in-three chance of a successful ballistic launch. It may be the case that they don't even have the preparatory work done, in which case hours isn't enough to launch, they'd need days/weeks. In any event, we're talking about one or two missiles only, and the Navy's ability to shoot those down in the midcourse/terminal phase is sufficient for such a small salvo. If North Korea wanted to nuke us, they'd be better off handing the warhead off to some terrorist group to truck it across the Mexican border. Supposing their stuff is even small enough to smuggle. >Tehran doesn't have a fancy air defense network, but it does have one. But it doesn't have a China willing to rush in with 1 million PLA infantry. Which is really North Korea's only saving grace. Even if we got Kim out before they could mobilize, they'd be strutting and posturing for weeks, and there are any number of places they could fuck things up in retaliation. Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, they might even stir shit up with India. They could, one supposes, send a few divisions to Russia on loan, and enter into the Ukraine fray. And no clever strategy is going to counter that stuff. Some of this stuff they're already considering and only hesitant... a North Korea operation might goad them into working up the courage to try it.
      - philipkglass 10mo ago
        I have serious doubts they can manage anything more than a fizzle yield Why is that? Of the 6 North Korean nuclear tests, only the first one was so low-yield that it might have been a fizzle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_...
        NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
        >Why is that? One, nobody exactly allows independent observers so we only really get seismo readings from those tests. And they don't make alot of sense. Yields should've been higher for plutonium cores, it's not lightweight stuff. And I wouldn't put it past them to have somehow pulled a fast one to fool foreign intelligence agencies (though stockpiling thousands of tons of high explosives fake a successful nuclear test seems beyond farcical). Just seems wrong.
- nradov 10mo ago
  Nuclear capability by itself isn't a complete deterrent. It has been widely reported that the US military has made contingency plans for a decapitation strike and seizure or destruction of nuclear weapons in Pakistan in case the situation turns really bad there. Real deterrence requires a credible second-strike capability on survivable platforms such as submarines.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    For nuclear deterrence to work in situations like this, it'd also be preferable to have sufficient conventional capabilities that your leadership isn't decapitated before you even notice it's happening. If the attacker is also nuclear-capable, there's little incentive for second person in the chain of command to kill themselves. Similarly, if a head of state is killed by poison or other similar means, you could hardly expect nuclear retaliation when their successor later discovers what happened.
    - Ray20 10mo ago
      I think nuclear deterrence works even in such situations. The retaliatory system is structured in such a way that after decapitation, the decision to use or not use a nuclear weapon is made not by the "number two" or the "successor" but by a person specifically authorized to do so, about whom the successors and number two may know nothing.
      - JasonADrury 10mo ago
        It might, it might not. Of course, you could for example also implant a trigger with a dead man's switch inside your head of state which they could use to launch a strike at any point. An important part of deterrence is broadcasting that you've done this though. It all works much better if your enemies approximately understand your processes
  - deleted 10mo ago
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  - erklik 10mo ago
- tick_tock_tick 10mo ago
  Honestly from what we learned in the earlier attacks on Iran the USA probably could take a quick trip over to Tehran and grab the Ayatollah.
  - clanky 10mo ago
    It's odd that Iran was able to continue launching waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel after they had supposedly lost so much control over their skies that it would have been possible to hover a Chinook over Tehran for 5 minutes.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    I think clanky covered this pretty well, but dropping bombs from high altitude stealth bombers and fighter jets is very very far from actually delivering and extracting soldiers from a location. The US could probably bomb even Beijing, it doesn't really tell you anything that they were able to bomb Iran also.
- resumenext 10mo ago
  Maybe Pakistan, or Israel.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    Well yes, the US could certainly easily kidnap leaders of friendly countries. It'd also presumably be very unlikely to result in a nuclear response from either.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  Didn't we just do something like that in Iran? Not helicopters, but we still secured the airspace just the same.
  - JasonADrury 10mo ago
    Securing airspace for fancy stealth bombers is rather different from securing airspace for helicopters you can shoot down with just about anything.
    - bawolff 10mo ago
      If you mean during the israel-iran war, israel was allegedly using non-stealth planes once the airspace was secure. Still probably quite a bit different then helicopter inserted decapitation strike.
      - JasonADrury 10mo ago
        I think the non-stealth planes used by Israel were unmanned drones
    - deleted 10mo ago
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erxam 10mo ago

Indeed. The DPRK was right from the start. They always were. For the longest time I thought they'd gone too far, but now we're the clowns putting on a show.

conception 10mo ago
I think have thousands of artillery shells aimed at Seoul is the larger deterrent.
- wood_spirit 10mo ago
  The nukes are to deter the US. They have been steadily increasing their missile range to first reach regional bases like Guam and now the all the way to the continental USA, and are now even launching a nuclear powered and nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html https://www.hisutton.com/DPRK-SSN-Update.html
  - roncesvalles 10mo ago
    The nukes are a bargaining chip (disarmament). Basically, if your country has the human and tech capital to develop a nuke, you probably should because it's free money. I don't believe that NK's nukes deter the US from doing anything. Would NK nuke Guam and risk getting carpet-bombed with nukes for endless days and nights until even the ants are dead? Artillery on Seoul doesn't matter. The US would just ask SK to evacuate it. The US doesn't do anything about the DPRK because it's not economically relevant (i.e. it doesn't have the world's largest oil reserves etc). In an ironic way, their economy being closed-off and mostly unintegrated with the Western world maintains the peace.
    - wood_spirit 10mo ago
      The nukes have many roles perhaps but I think the fully developed weapons are for retaliatory strike. They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them

lingrush4 10mo ago

If having nuclear weapons did anything at all to prevent cyber attacks, the US would not be getting constantly victimized by cyber attacks.

ceejayoz 10mo ago
I think "this kind of operation" refers to the entire "we bombed your capital and stole your President" thing, not just the cyber component of it. It seems extraordinarily unlikely we'd have attempted such a thing if Venezuela had nukes.
- bawolff 10mo ago
  Probably, but there is also some speculation usa had help on the inside, so it probably depends on the nature and pervasiveness of that help.
  - ceejayoz 10mo ago
    I agree with that speculation, but if you keep your launch chain of command short enough (as the US does), nukes can also be a deterrent to a palace coup; doubly so for a foreign-backed one.
  - monocasa 10mo ago
    There's still a lot of information coming out, a lot of it conflicting, so that's hard to say. And frankly, the Venezuelan military is absolutely tiny and has been facing the same economic issues as the rest of the country. They have 24 F-16s, but rumor is none of them work anymore, maybe some SU-30s, but those would be shot down pretty much as soon as they were scrambled. There was pretty heavy bombing before hand to knock out AA. And they bombed Chavez's tomb, which is quite a dick move of there wasn't any AA there; blowing up a graveyard for shits and giggles on an op is some shit even cartels have a little bit more respect than to do. IDK, the whole thing seems like equally could have been mostly what it says on the tin, with no more than the normal intelligence HUMINT/SIGINT/*INT cloak and dagger crap to have the right intelligence.

adolph 10mo ago

Counterpoint is that Ukraine, Qaddafi, and Assad already demonstrated the significance of maintaining certain capabilities. Vzla didn't have those capabilities before, much less publicly depreciate them.

spacebanana7 10mo ago
Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.
- _boffin_ 10mo ago
  I have a few questions about that: 1. Did Ukraine control the nukes, or did Russia? 2. Could Ukraine keep them working on its own? 3. If nukes stop invasions, why do nuclear countries still get attacked?
  - paulryanrogers 10mo ago
    Has any nuclear state had their leader kidnapped? Or seen significant incursions?
    - deleted 10mo ago
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    - JohnBooty 10mo ago
      Most non-nuclear heads of state have never had their leader kidnapped, either.
  - monocasa 10mo ago
    1) It's complex. Formally, Moscow controlled the launch codes. However Ukraine designed and built the ICBMs, and are near the top of nations with the highest nuclear physicist per capita ratio. On top of that the Soviet nuclear lockout systems are rumored to be much simpler than the American ones. Whereas the American system is rumored to be something like the decryption key for the detonation timings (without which you have at best a dirty bomb), the Soviet lockout mechanism is rumored to just be a lockout device with a 'is locked' signal going to the physics package. If that's all true, taking control of those nukes from a technical perspective would be on the order of hotwiring a 1950s automobile. Taking physical control would have been more complex, but everything was both more complex and in some ways a lot simpler as the wall fell. It would have ultimately been a negotiation. 2) See above. 3) Which military nuclear power has been attacked by the kind of adversary that you can throw a nuke at? Yes, it doesn't remove all threats, but no solution does. Removing a class of threat (and arguably the most powerful class of threat in concrete terms) is extremely valuable.

gradus_ad 10mo ago

That's like arguing against the police arresting criminals because it will incentivize them to acquire weapons. The only consistent action for the US to take, given they - and much of the world - do not consider Maduro the legitimate President of Venezuela, was to remove him from power.

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rising-sky 10mo ago
Terrible take in the 2nd premise of your argument. Is Venezuela a sovereign nation or a colony? Can similar logic be applied against Russia or even the US?
- gradus_ad 10mo ago
  Of course it can, and it is. Such logic is behind the argument in favor of arresting Putin. Many have argued that should happen if he were to step on their nations' soil. The reason no one thinks seriously about going into Russia and enforcing open arrest warrants is that they fear the consequences, though maybe in light of Russia's revealed impotence that fear is unjustified.
- lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
  The sovereignty of Venezuela is not the right argument here, because practical sovereignty is not absolute and there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture. The man was an awful tyrant. However, just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an operation like this. Operations like this can risk civil war and all sorts of horrible fallout that also need to be considered. There must be a realistic plan following the removal of the tyrannical leader. As always, justice must be upheld always. And of course there are the procedural and legal aspects that Trump totally ignored.
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adventured 10mo ago

Nuclear deterrent is absurd. You have to assume everyone is willing to die over every single thing short of obliteration. So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. Please, explain that laughable premise. Everyone in Venezuela dies for Maduro? Go on, explain it, I'll wait. Back in reality: Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela shakes its fists at the sky, threatens nuclear hell fire. Nothing happens. Why? The remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro.

Hnrobert42 10mo ago
Your tone is unnecessarily condescending and confrontational, but your point is reasonable with respect to Venezuela and Maduro. With Iran, North Korea, or Ukraine, the calculus is different.
15155 10mo ago
> remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro Now do this same exercise for Taiwan.
dist-epoch 10mo ago
There is something in between 0 nuclear weapons used and all nuclear weapons used.
benjiro 10mo ago
> So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. US attacks, Maduro threatens to launch nuke(s) ... then what? Do you call bluff? Maduro was capture in a militair base (as he did a Saddam, switching sleeping locations), he almost made it into a safe room. What if he had nukes and made it to the safe room. You know the expression "Cornered rat"... For all he knew, the US was there to kill him. The US killed his 30 Cuban bodyguards so high change Maduro thought its his end. > "Cornered rat" refers to the idiom that even weak individuals become desperate and dangerous when given no escape, often applied to intense political or military pressure. The scenario that you called, that nobody wants to die for Maduro, is you gambling that nobody want to die for him or not follow the chain of command! Do you want to risk it? No matter how many precaution you take, are you really sure that not one or more nukes go to Texas or Miami? This is why Nukes are so powerful, even in the hands of weaker countries. It gives a weaker country a weapon that may inflict untold dead to the more powerful country (let alone the political impact). Its a weapon that influences decision making, even in the most powerful countries.

roncesvalles 10mo ago

>I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation Why would it? 1. "Nuclear capability" is not binary. The available delivery mechanisms and the defensive capabilities of your adversary matter a lot. 2. MAD constrains both sides. It's unlikely that an unpopular Head of State getting kidnapped would warrant a nuclear first strike especially against a country like (Trump's) America, which would not hesitate to glass your whole country in response. 3. It's extremely risky to "try" a nuke, because even if it's shot down, does it mean your enemy treats it as a nuclear strike and responds as if it had landed? That's a very different equation from conventional missiles. E.g. Iran sends barrages of missiles because they expect most of them to be shot down. It's probably not calculating a scenario where all of them land and Israel now wants like-for-like revenge.

monocasa 10mo ago
> an unpopular Head of State Heads of state are generally pretty good at delegating the C&C of their nukes to people they are pretty popular with. That's orthogonal to popularity polls of the populace.
- sarchertech 10mo ago
  Yeah but those people read the popularity polls as well. If you kill or capture the leader, there isn’t much upside in retaliation against a massively more powerful enemy. The best move is to cozy up to whomever is in power next.
  - monocasa 10mo ago
    You pick people for that job that aren't that concerned with the popularity polls, and who's main value add is a willingness to turn the key when told to. Either directly or because they were previously told to follow the process.
    - sarchertech 10mo ago
      There’s no process to pick people that will reliably follow through with a suicide pact. You could automate the process or compartmentalize it enough so that no one knows they are essentially committing suicide. But in that case you are removing human reason from the loop and your system will be too sensitive. Essentially you have an automated deadman’s switch. Either you tune it to be too sensitive and the thing goes off because you went out of contact for a few hours—likely resulting in your own death. Or you tune it to be not sensitive enough and your attacker takes advantage of the delay to take control of or destroy the system.

moralestapia 10mo ago

Cool, but outside the scope of the TFA. Try, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348.

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esseph 10mo ago

You still have to be willing to use the nukes. The threat has to be real or it doesn't work as a deterrent. I think this is a situation where even if Venezuela had nukes, this still would have happened.

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mr_toad 10mo ago
The choice is basically: a. Don’t use nukes, everyone moves one rung up the ladder. b. Use nukes. Ladder is destroyed, everyone dies horribly. Using nukes only makes sense if everyone is going to die horribly anyway. It’s an empty threat otherwise.
- esseph 10mo ago
  Not exactly true. Our systems are designed around ICBM detection. A tactical/suitecase nuke like the old US Army Green Light teams wouldn't trigger that. In fact, it would likely take awhile to trace. The "limited nuclear war" concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams

trhway 10mo ago

the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money (at least couple hundreds of millions), and after completing the time will end up with his money in Russia/Belarussia. We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. Using nukes isn't just a matter of pressing a button, it involves a lot of people and processes - thus any significant opposition inside the force or just widespread sabotage will make it unusable.

JohnBooty 10mo ago
It strikes me as completely possible that the exit was negotiated. The fact that they knew his exact location and "luckily" nabbed him right before he went into some kind of panic room / bunker is certainly... something. But it seems equally likely to me that he was sold out by somebody in the VZ government/military. And that the paltry military resistance was because they saw direct confrontation with the US as suicidal.
- trhway 10mo ago
  I think it is kind of both - the exit was ultimately negotiated because most of the VZ government/military either sold him or at least abandoned him and showed no interest in any further support of him.
johnsmith1840 10mo ago
80 of their guys died? Not just venuzuelans. If it was negotiated then maduro negotiated his own closest security forces to be killed as a cover. Not impossible but certainly in the tinfoil hat range of possibilities.
Ray20 10mo ago
> the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money It sounds stupid. Maduro has no way to enforce the deal, and the US has no incentive to fulfill this deal. > We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. To use it, no resistance is matter. One person must do their job to launch a nuclear weapon. That's all. > it involves a lot of people and processes It doesn't matter. Nuclear deterrence exercises are conducted regularly. And their peculiarity is that no one except the person with the red button knows whether it's an exercise or whether the missiles will actually be launched this time. So when the order to launch comes, many people will be performing a large number of complex processes which will result in the use of nuclear weapons. Because they regularly receive such orders and carry out these processes.

bandrami 10mo ago

The reporting suggests there was some kind of deal struck between the US and elements of the VZ administration, and even nuclear capability doesn't prevent that

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energy123 10mo ago

It will increase the desire for nukes, but also increase the hesitation to seek them now that credibility and capability (particularly what modern intelligence is capable of) are demonstrated. Hard to say how this nets off.