4 ms·

Counterpoint is that Ukraine, Qaddafi, and Assad already demonstrated the significance of maintaining certain capabilities. Vzla didn't have those capabilities

by adolph 9mo 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 9mo ago
Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.
- _boffin_ 9mo 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 9mo ago
    Has any nuclear state had their leader kidnapped? Or seen significant incursions?
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - JohnBooty 9mo ago
      Most non-nuclear heads of state have never had their leader kidnapped, either.
  - monocasa 9mo 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.
    - justsomehnguy 9mo ago
      > However Ukraine designed and built the ICBMs Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right? > See above Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
      - monocasa 9mo ago
        > Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right? The previous owner was the USSR, who ceased to exist, and who Ukraine was a part of. > Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them. Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally that Russia mostly scuttled on their way out of Sevastopal, in addition to stuff like a 70% completed nuclear powered carrier that even Russia couldn't maintain the sister to, and didn't fit in any naval doctrine that made sense for Ukraine?
        justsomehnguy 9mo ago
        > The previous owner was the USSR Not quite. > and who Ukraine was a part of Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"? > Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
        monocasa 9mo ago
        > Not quite. Actually, exactly. We're specifically talking about the arsenal of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. A force not reorganized until much later to be under the Russian Federation, and the relevant 1990 Budapest Memorandum occurred before the 1991 creation of the CIS. Rather than a vague "not quite", would you care to elaborate? > Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"? I think a divorce settlement is actually a pretty good model actually. Those other states rankly didn't have the means to keep them, but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss. However, as I described above, Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them. > That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia. I'm dyslexic and accidentally a word while editing. Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
- aoeusnth1 9mo ago
  Alternatively, we might have entered either a limited or a worst-case nuclear war scenario. Russia may have just continually pushed the envelope until it became clear there wasn't a bright red line, and eventually someone would push the button.
  - delfinom 9mo ago
    The psychopaths in charge of Russia still like living comfortably.
- alex43578 9mo ago
  Even setting aside that Ukraine never had the technical means or infrastructure to operate/maintain those weapons, I don't think they would have dissuaded Russia or actually been used. Russia could turn them into a wasteland in response and 6 million people (including hundreds of thousands of men of military age) weren't even willing to stay in Ukraine, much less fight for the country. If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch.
  - stefan_ 9mo ago
    The idea that a nation state could not make use of the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its territory is just absurd. It's sillier than the people that think disk encryption will spare them the crowbar to the face. Beyond the whole chauvinistic idea that it was "Russians" that built them in the first place.
  - monocasa 9mo ago
    You don't think that Ukraine, the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes? And the point of nukes isn't to launch them. By then you've already lost, you're just making good on your offer to make the other shmuck lose too.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes? They don't even need that. They just needed ambiguity. Ukraine absolutely fucked up giving up its nukes, that's abundantly clear with the benefit of hindsight.
  - Ray20 9mo ago
    > If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch. Do you understand that nuclear weapons don't work like that, and leaders with nuclear buttons give orders to launch nuclear weapons every few months? And only they know they're using a training launch code; everyone else finds that out when the missiles does not fly off at the end of the launch sequence.
- adventured 9mo ago
  Why not? Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly. That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion. Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war. The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded. All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? Obviously not what the masses would have chosen (just look at what they did choose to do while living under Russian occupation - how many gave up their lives to fight back?). It's fundamentally why nuclear weapons as deterrant is largely fraudulent. They're solely viable as a last option against total oblivion at the hands of an enemy: it entails everyone dies, which means there has to be a good enough reason for everyone to die to justify use.
  - silversmith 9mo ago
    > All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? As someone from a country that used to be under russia n boot - the fireball is preferable.
  - delfinom 9mo ago
    >The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded. Well, Russian occupation usually means your town slowly undergoes mass extermination and genocide.... so yes? nuclear fireball is potentially preferred
  - jonplackett 9mo ago
    This isn’t how nukes would get used. They wouldn’t just fire them at cities to start with. It would most likely be something tactical, but perhaps end up escalating to insanity anyway
    - 9mo ago
- sroussey 9mo ago
  Russia promised not to invade if Ukraine gave up the nukes.
  - monocasa 9mo ago
    To be the devil's advocate, I don't think Russia foresaw a situation that had Ukraine looking to join NATO right after NATO had been used offensively for the first time ever to put its thumb on the scale of a civil war that didn't involve NATO countries.
    - Zagitta 9mo ago
      s/devil/putin/
      - marcosdumay 9mo ago
        Not much of a change, TBF.
      - monocasa 9mo ago
        Sure, but I think these discussions are more enlightening when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system rather than just whatever propaganda is locally convenient.
        Ray20 9mo ago
        > when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system But they are not. We can thus look at the people who make decisions, but not at the countries themselves. So, it’s most likely not about joining NATO, but about European integration and economic growth.
        monocasa 9mo ago
        They absolutely are.
    - 9mo ago
- resumenext 9mo ago
  Zelensky is far too concerned with the human costs of war to use nukes, even if he could. He doesn’t have a napoleon complex.
  - Levitz 9mo ago
    Human costs of war is precisely the reason to use nukes.

by adolph 9mo ago

spacebanana7 9mo ago

Ukraine wouldn’t have been invaded if they hadn’t given up their nuclear weapons.

_boffin_ 9mo 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 9mo ago
  Has any nuclear state had their leader kidnapped? Or seen significant incursions?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnBooty 9mo ago
    Most non-nuclear heads of state have never had their leader kidnapped, either.
- monocasa 9mo 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.
  - justsomehnguy 9mo ago
    > However Ukraine designed and built the ICBMs Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right? > See above Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
    - monocasa 9mo ago
      > Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right? The previous owner was the USSR, who ceased to exist, and who Ukraine was a part of. > Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them. Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally that Russia mostly scuttled on their way out of Sevastopal, in addition to stuff like a 70% completed nuclear powered carrier that even Russia couldn't maintain the sister to, and didn't fit in any naval doctrine that made sense for Ukraine?
      - justsomehnguy 9mo ago
        > The previous owner was the USSR Not quite. > and who Ukraine was a part of Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"? > Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
        monocasa 9mo ago
        > Not quite. Actually, exactly. We're specifically talking about the arsenal of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. A force not reorganized until much later to be under the Russian Federation, and the relevant 1990 Budapest Memorandum occurred before the 1991 creation of the CIS. Rather than a vague "not quite", would you care to elaborate? > Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"? I think a divorce settlement is actually a pretty good model actually. Those other states rankly didn't have the means to keep them, but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss. However, as I described above, Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them. > That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia. I'm dyslexic and accidentally a word while editing. Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
aoeusnth1 9mo ago
Alternatively, we might have entered either a limited or a worst-case nuclear war scenario. Russia may have just continually pushed the envelope until it became clear there wasn't a bright red line, and eventually someone would push the button.
- delfinom 9mo ago
  The psychopaths in charge of Russia still like living comfortably.
alex43578 9mo ago
Even setting aside that Ukraine never had the technical means or infrastructure to operate/maintain those weapons, I don't think they would have dissuaded Russia or actually been used. Russia could turn them into a wasteland in response and 6 million people (including hundreds of thousands of men of military age) weren't even willing to stay in Ukraine, much less fight for the country. If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch.
- stefan_ 9mo ago
  The idea that a nation state could not make use of the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its territory is just absurd. It's sillier than the people that think disk encryption will spare them the crowbar to the face. Beyond the whole chauvinistic idea that it was "Russians" that built them in the first place.
- monocasa 9mo ago
  You don't think that Ukraine, the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes? And the point of nukes isn't to launch them. By then you've already lost, you're just making good on your offer to make the other shmuck lose too.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes? They don't even need that. They just needed ambiguity. Ukraine absolutely fucked up giving up its nukes, that's abundantly clear with the benefit of hindsight.
- Ray20 9mo ago
  > If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch. Do you understand that nuclear weapons don't work like that, and leaders with nuclear buttons give orders to launch nuclear weapons every few months? And only they know they're using a training launch code; everyone else finds that out when the missiles does not fly off at the end of the launch sequence.
adventured 9mo ago
Why not? Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly. That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion. Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war. The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded. All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? Obviously not what the masses would have chosen (just look at what they did choose to do while living under Russian occupation - how many gave up their lives to fight back?). It's fundamentally why nuclear weapons as deterrant is largely fraudulent. They're solely viable as a last option against total oblivion at the hands of an enemy: it entails everyone dies, which means there has to be a good enough reason for everyone to die to justify use.
- silversmith 9mo ago
  > All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? As someone from a country that used to be under russia n boot - the fireball is preferable.
- delfinom 9mo ago
  >The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded. Well, Russian occupation usually means your town slowly undergoes mass extermination and genocide.... so yes? nuclear fireball is potentially preferred
- jonplackett 9mo ago
  This isn’t how nukes would get used. They wouldn’t just fire them at cities to start with. It would most likely be something tactical, but perhaps end up escalating to insanity anyway
  - 9mo ago
sroussey 9mo ago
Russia promised not to invade if Ukraine gave up the nukes.
- monocasa 9mo ago
  To be the devil's advocate, I don't think Russia foresaw a situation that had Ukraine looking to join NATO right after NATO had been used offensively for the first time ever to put its thumb on the scale of a civil war that didn't involve NATO countries.
  - Zagitta 9mo ago
    s/devil/putin/
    - marcosdumay 9mo ago
      Not much of a change, TBF.
    - monocasa 9mo ago
      Sure, but I think these discussions are more enlightening when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system rather than just whatever propaganda is locally convenient.
      - Ray20 9mo ago
        > when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system But they are not. We can thus look at the people who make decisions, but not at the countries themselves. So, it’s most likely not about joining NATO, but about European integration and economic growth.
        monocasa 9mo ago
        They absolutely are.
  - 9mo ago
resumenext 9mo ago
Zelensky is far too concerned with the human costs of war to use nukes, even if he could. He doesn’t have a napoleon complex.
- Levitz 9mo ago
  Human costs of war is precisely the reason to use nukes.