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Tactical battlefield nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?

4 points by thesaintlives ↗ HN
Question - If USA and allies continue to supply sophisticated weapons systems into Ukraine that makes winning very hard for Russia are the use of tactical battlefield weapons inevitable? What do you think...

9 comments

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LarsAlereon
I think that Putin will use a tactical nuke if he believes that the West doesn't have the resolve to respond in kind and will back down instead. The best defense is demonstrating that resolve and unity so Putin believes that using a nuke will result in a proportionate response. The biggest risk is showing weakness, a lack of unity, and/or a belief that Putin wouldn't actually do it.

In short, he will do it if he thinks he can get away with it, so we need to be extremely clear that he will not get away with it, and prepared to follow through if the worst happens.

kozak
As a Ukrainian, I agree.
zo1
As a non Ukrainian on the other side of the world, I disagree. I don't expect either America or Russia or Ukraine to be mature around the use of nukes at this point to do this "game". Hot heads, egos and emotion all around.
heneryville
Agreed. Is anyone aware of any explicit statements by NATO about how they would respond to a tactical nuke? Has this been clearly stated?

I've wondered what a proportionate response would be though. Sevastapol? From the NATO perspective it would make sense since they consider it occupied territory, but from the Russian perspective that would be an escalation.

Perhaps within occupied eastern Ukraine? I doubt Ukrainians would see two nukes on their territory as an improvement. I've got no idea what a proportionate response would be.

Someone
Ukraine isn’t in NATO and NATO is a defense alliance, so it wouldn’t automatically be a NATO issue if Russia used a tactical nuke there.

Also (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_50068.htm) “The fundamental purpose of NATO’s nuclear forces is for deterrence”. AFAIK, they don’t have any idea about responses to nuclear attacks on NATO, let alone on ones on non-NATO countries.

LarsAlereon
While not a NATO issue, in the "Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances" Ukraine agreed to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for a guarantee of UN Security Council assistance if they were threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons. Russia specifically signed this agreement promising not to threaten or attack Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
PaulHoule
Putin risks getting a knife in his back if he does.

It makes no sense because Russia faces no existential threat from Ukraine.

If it happens it ends the current "non-proliferation" regime for nuclear weapons which might be a good thing because development of Gen 4 nuclear reactors was put on pause when Pakistan and India tested weapons in the 1970s. Specifically, Ukraine had nuclear weapons when it split from the Soviet Union and gave them up in exchange for security guarantees.

than3
It really doesn't matter what the citizenry thinks as the Nazi propaganda person said at Nuremburg. In the case of this happening, most of us will be dead if it ever comes down to this.

From a historical look, strong parallels can be made for role reversal of the geopolitics of this event in our history

https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

A missile is a missile and when its within range of a nation's capital its not unexpected that any nation will be forced take action. Not that they've said this as far as I've seen.

Its worse, because you have the idiots who are coordinating the media being blatantly stupid. Everyone should be legitimately concerned and the media should not be mouthing off on TV blatant propaganda that makes it harder to de-escalate.

As far as it is publicly known, no one has a real idea which individual member/euro-state conditions might kick off NATO provisions (each one is different from what I've heard) and one wrong move can drag everyone into a conflict where there is the real possibility that no one survives.

Chaos is profitable and distracting, so of course you'll get dumb opportunists potentially making things worse gambling at the risk of all of our lives.

You know what they say about those that ignore the lessons of the past.