I think your understanding of the geopolitical game state here is way off. The reality is that nuclear war is less likely in now that it was during the cold war. We aren't in isolated echo chambers fearing an ideology we don't understand, the only reason anyone wants nukes is to prevent other people from nuking them. The world is running on capitalism, there isn't the same ideological drive to conflict. We're in a metastable equilibrium. Ukraine blowing up ammo depots in Russia is far further away from catalyzing WW3 than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Vasily Arkhipov etc etc.
> Instead it’s “l-l-l-l-let’s play chicken!” (Bob Barker voice)
Unfortunately, if Putin decides this is a game he wants to play, then this is a game we cannot choose not to play. We can choose not to play it now, but we will have to play it later. That's a lesson Chamberlain and the whole world learned in 1938/39.
Seems that a lot of people prefer the approach of "surrender absolutely everything to Putin preemptively". Granted America is at basically zero risk of a Russian invasion, but letting Putin roams free means that Ukraine would only be the first step. I don't really know what Putin's Europe once he gets it all would look like but I don't expect human rights to be a part of it.
The people advocating the "approach of surrender absolutely everything to Putin preemptively" and "people saying helping Ukraine should be avoided" are very different - and are both still pretty strong interpretations. Instead of looking at cartoonish arguments people have - what's the best argument you've come across for not supplying Ukraine with weapons? Have you heard any that seem reasonable at all to you? Which is the most reasonable?
Because it's what the aggressor has been saying all along:
"That is why it is so important to achieve all the goals of the special military operation. To push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if they are the borders of Poland," said Medvedev.
It's a random utterance written in a personal telegram channel by a man with little real power. Using it as a basis for such a far reaching conclusion about Putin's intent to conquer all of Europe is quite strange to put it politely.
That's merely a tactic for making threats with plausible deniability. Message gets transmitted, but in a way that shifts authorship away from its true source. Trump uses "people are saying" in this manner, Putin has an actual lackey in flesh doing the talking.
The grandparent was mistaken about an intent to conquer "all" of Europe - but similar threats have been made against Poland and the Baltics (as Putin's appetite for direct annexation seems to be limited to territories of the former Russian Empire).
Communicating through sockpuppets like Medvedev is exactly how a gaslighter par excellence like Putin operates. And Medvedev isn't just any Kremlin flacky, but was Putin's nominal successor at one point. To pretend to not be aware that his messaging on the subject is ultimately Putin's is quite strange, to put it politely.
>Communicating through sockpuppets like Medvedev is exactly how a gaslighter par excellence like Putin operates.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Putin's Munich speech in 2007 was as direct as it gets.
Anyway, your suggestion that Putin telegraphs his true intent (to occupy Poland and Baltics) through sockpuppet doesn't make any sense -- why would anyone do that? Medvedev playing bad cop routine -- that I can imagine, but what you are suggesting is quite strange, to put it politely.
> Surely if one side is a Russian asset it would be less likely we go to war with them?
Difficult to estimate because the situation is de-stabilising--the assurances of MAD no longer hold if one side thinks it can prevent the other from launching.
Why would Russia attack the US if the US was under their thumb? It makes no sense. MAD prevents countries who are opposed to each from attacking each other. The reason the US and the UK don't go to war is not because of MAD.
Not sure it has to make sense. It just has to convince people long enough for people who are driving for war to get their war. Hardly any of it seems to make any sense at all.
Well, Trump fired a bunch of diplomats, and never hired replacements (or replaced them with donors with no relevant experience), which hollowed out US foreign policy.
The Biden administration largely turned the lights back on in the parts of the government you are asking about, I think. They tried, at least. The GOP tried to block re-hiring foreign policy experts towards the beginning of his administration.
Every admin gets to set up their State Dept. Biden could have done whatever he wanted with regard to stationing diplomats.
Moreover, The Russia and China embassies were not affected And importantly there were not active conflicts, saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now. I mean, who gives a rat's arse about the ambassador to Paraguay.
Just the other week, the admin told the USN to prep for war against China in '27.
We assassinated an Iranian major general [1]! We were occupying Afghanistan, supporting Riyadh in its war on the Houthis and ramping up troops deployed in Syria and Iraq [2].
> saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now
The Trump administration wasn't instigating China [3]?
Thank you for actually advocating for the most rational and realistic response to this situation. While one cannot expect peace from this, it is better to be in open communication than to be left to create images of what they think they are up against.
Facts are russia is corrupt and bankrupt, they havent serviced/maintained nuke arsenal since forever. They cant even make new ICBMs anymore, their fifth try blew up on launch pad https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/23/russia-sarma... just like four previous attempts.
Out of 6,000 units, even 1% of theirs working would be devastating (you know they have MIRVs), not to mention what launching ours would do. This is a stupid thought.
It's a consequence of social media, where people believe if they make a statement that gets enough up arrow clicks, physical reality changes to match their desired outcome. Most of the time it's of little consequence, especially when the people posting and voting have little actual connection to the subject matter, but things are quite different when the outcome involves nuclear detonations.
> Facts are russia is corrupt and bankrupt, they havent serviced/maintained nuke arsenal since forever. They cant even make new ICBMs anymore, their fifth try blew up on launch pad https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/23/russia-sarma... just like four previous attempts.
Yep ^ it's unlilkely they have very few in a launch-able state.
Although, they don't have a detonate a nuke to make parts of the world unlivable. They have plenty of radioactive material; simply detonating a salted conventional bomb would be pretty nasty.
While there are many that argue against this point and I am sympathetic to them, Mutually Assured Destruction is a very powerful deterrent.
One of the reasons why many treaties came a long after WW2 was because for the first time ever, we had weapons on a scale that could truly cause civilization ending events. There is talk about strategic strike capabilities and from the little bits that trickle out from within, it is considered a potential path forward. But it is a path forward that is both political and literal suicide.
A scenario played out in the book 'Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America' by John Michael Greer makes a decent point. Say the US decides to strategically strike an opponent. They manage to take out 199 of 200 potential retaliatory strikes - a great success in terms of the ratio. But that one missile that gets through detonates over San Fransisco becoming the single most deadly event in US history. It just isn't seen as a viable path forward.
Luckily those in power are there because of those below them, you cannot be too loose of a cannon at the top but even that doesn't put ones mind at ease as you just do not know on what could happen. Maybe the lunatics to get control of it all. Strange things can happen.
“Are there any checks in place to keep the US President from starting a nuclear war?”
What’s amazing about this question, really, is how seriously it misunderstands the logic of the US command and control system. It gets it exactly backwards.
The entire point of the US command and control system is to guarantee that the President and only the President is capable of authorizing nuclear war whenever he needs to. It is about enabling the President’s power, not checking or restricting him.
> entire point of the US command and control system is to guarantee that the President and only the President is capable of authorizing nuclear war whenever he needs to
This may be necessary to ensure the deterrent is credible. But for first strike use, authorisation should require at the very least Congressional approval. (Not the whole Congress, obviously, but maybe the Senate Select and House Permanent Select Committees.) Ideally, all three branches of government.
Ah, should - imagine a world in which "should" carried sway.
Meanwhile: Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-72 - Nuclear Operations (2020)
POSITIVE CONTROL
The President may direct the use of nuclear weapons through an execute order via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the combatant commanders and, ultimately, to the forces in the field exercising direct control of the weapons.
For anybody in the chain that might question that, or want Congressional approval consider the fate of Harold Hering, the Major who was kicked out of the Air Force for asking a “dangerous question” while training to be a Missile Launch Officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Hering had asked, in essence, how could he, in his Minuteman missile bunker, know that an order to launch he received from the President had been a legal, considered, and sane one?
The answer is, you don't, you just jump as high as you can.
( even if the guy telling you to jump is also telling you they're eating cats and dogs in Ohio )
> anybody in the chain that might question that, or want Congressional approval consider the fate of Harold Hering, the Major who was kicked out of the Air Force for asking a “dangerous question” while training to be a Missile Launch Officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base
I mean, yes. Hering was in the chain of command. The nuclear chain of command. About the last thing you want in that chain is even a notion of a whiff of a perception that when the President says launch the missiles don't launch.
It's completely different for e.g. the Congress to ask these questions. They don't because this isn't an issue Americans have cared about for a while.
If the President orders a launch, the military launches ... that's it.
Congress can ask questions about that later, if they're still about - but they don't have a place in the chain between POTUS deciding to launch and the launch.
Ordering a strike before any missiles have landed on US soil has been possible the entire time (ie ordering what would be an effective First Strike) and deemed neccessary as carrying out such orders after missiles have landed has been considered as likley too little to late - predicated on having accurate justification (knowledge of incoming missiles) etc.
History has been littered with false alarmns that should have (but didn't) trigger a launch - that remains at the judgement of the serving POTUS who might be a combat veteran or a reality TV show host.
> If the President orders a launch, the military launches ... that's it
Sure. That doesn't mean every launch must be legal or undeliberateable.
> they don't have a place in the chain between POTUS deciding to launch and the launch
Why not?
The Constitution "vests in the Congress the power to declare war" [1]. It has largely delegated that power to the President. But the spirit of the War Powers Clause recognises that war is a major political decision with national consequences. So is a nuclear first strike.
> Ordering a strike before any missiles have landed on US soil has been possible the entire time (ie ordering what would be an effective First Strike)
Not what first strike means [2]. (You're describing launch on warning, which is firmly in the retaliatory column [3].)
"Why not?" as a philosphical question is a bit esoteric for me.
"Why not?" in the straight forward sense is easier- they simply do not appear a prerequisite for ordering a nuclear strike in the linked Nuclear Operations (2020) procedures.
> The Constitution "vests in the Congress the power to declare war"
Sure - but that's been bypassed a good many times to date hasn't it? Congress can declare war - but they don't appear to be neccessary for war to be declared, it seems a sitting POTUS can do that with an executive order.
In any case what is specifically being discussed here is that order to launch a nuclear strike, not an order to "start a war" and all that entails (spinning up additional arms production, etc.).
> Not what first strike means [2]. (You're describing launch on warning,
The full quote included predicated on having accurate justification [ such as ] (knowledge of incoming missiles) etc. meaning a POTUS can hand wave or invent any number of reasons in addition to being fooled by false alarms and issue an order to launch missiles.
More importantly .. none of that really matters, these operation procedures were written with the expectation that time would be critical and that the POTUS would be a rational judge of the appropriate actions and thus vested with the power to simply issue an order sans any pesky chain of required justification when the clock was supposedly ticking.
Once the order is issued it requires someone to bell the cat and actually mutiny to stop the ordered launch .. questioning whether the order was justified isn't on the cards.
I did originally link to a long form three part look into all these scenarios for a reason, there's much reference there to expert commentary on the ins and outs of the US chain of command for nuclear launch.
> "Why not?" in the straight forward sense is easier- they simply do not appear a prerequisite for ordering a nuclear strike in the linked Nuclear Operations (2020) procedures
Nobody argued the Congress needs to be consulted for a nuclear strike today. This entire conversation is around a proposal which, by definition, isn't present reality.
> that's been bypassed a good many times to date hasn't it
What are you thinking of? The modern trend has been the Congress giving the President broad war powers [1].
> what is specifically being discussed here is that order to launch a nuclear strike, not an order to "start a war"
There is no situation where a nuclear first strike doesn't start a war. It would very likely end the era of America being the master of alliances and trigger a global rebalancing against Washington.
> meaning a POTUS can hand wave or invent any number of reasons in addition to being fooled by false alarms and issue an order to launch missiles
Sure. And any President since the founding of the republic has had the capacity to break any number of laws restricting their power. (Many times, they have.) That doesn't make those laws or the Constitution worthless.
Between the President and the silos are a number of people. The current rules mean there is no legitimate reason for anyone in that chain to question a first strike order. That changes if you have a procedure the President is blowing off. (It's also better than SecDef making it up as they go [2].)
I'm not particularly concerned about a U.S. President blowing an aneurysm and nuking Canada. I am concerned about Russia and Pakistan. Having a procedure for first use here lets us push for multi-party first-use authorisation elsewhere.
> Many countries can credibly claim to have a "No First Strike" policy; the US is not one of them
Many as in two: China and India [1]. And "credibly" is doing a lot of work there. If America began a strategic bombing campaign of China's military, economic and population centers with conventional weapons fired off aircraft carriers, I find it ridiculous to imagine China would refuse to ever nuke a CVN.
Sorry, I wasn't sufficiently clear: even countries which currently are not nuclear-capable may become so in the future, and all of them will easily have a more credible NFU policy than the country which used Fat Man and Little Boy.
I think too much of US global security commitments that is underpinned by nuclear umbrella where non-nuclear partners are not going to feel assured about US strategic deterrence if posture shifts away from POTUS can smash red button in heat of the moment to maybe US will eventually retaliate with nuclear... after say warsaw has already been nuked... if there needs to be a committee to debate whether it's worth the risk to trade moscow for new york (which they may not). The lack of oversight is the point, therefore consistent "clarity" that POTUS, even if deranged, doesn't need to consult others. Because US partners _need_ to be assured that US nukes can be in the air in minutes to deter themselves from being nuked, and only way to ensure that perception is to remove all red tape when delegating nuclear authority. There can't be any official/public rhetoric to doubt US is capable of prompt retaliation, even if adversaries do not find posture credible (just like some don't find NFU credible).
Hence the quibbing over verbiage on public facing US nuclear operations manual in other reply chain also largely doesn't matter - formal US nuclear operations documentation itself is ultimately philosophical/propaganda/strategic - we can pretend they actually define US nuclear authority - but IMO their primary purpose is inform adversary nuclear deterrence game theory. Ultimately we don't know what actual US nuclear operations procedure is/will be - there may very well be none-public nuclear operations that is much less flippant than one man decides to end the world, maybe adversary specific ones based on correlation of forces.
> Nuclear war between US and Russia is less likely with Trump
Incredibly difficult to estimate this, in large part because the probabilities are so small.
What we can say is neither Russia nor America wants MAD. So the way an exchange would happen would be due to a fuckup. And not any old fuckup, e.g. Ukraine hit Moscow with an American missile or whatever. But a nuclear fuckup, e.g. Moscow thinks it's detected multiple missile launches and can't get the President on the phone.
Trump wants a peace deal in ukraine that could involve land concessions. Kamala would likely continue the policy of continuous, slow escalation. The most recent escalation is Ukraine shooting long range weapon into Russia, what's next?
Ending a conflict won't affect the probabilities compared to escalating it? De-escalation through escalation will end up in the the history books as the dumbest things western politicians believed in 2024
> Ending a conflict won't affect the probabilities compared to escalating it?
If affects it. We just can't universally say which way.
Appeasement is the classic example of escalatory de-escalation. But a better one is the Cold War: America or the USSR entering or withdrawing from a particular theatre, e.g. Vietnam or Afghanistan, was on average orthogonal to risk of nuclear war.
Whether a peace deal enhances or damages the peace is context dependent and can swing either way.
> De-escalation through escalation will end up in the the history books as the dumbest things western politicians believed in 2024
What a strange comment to make in the context of nuclear strategy. Should the U.S. unilaterally dismantle its nuclear deterrent?
> Trump wants a peace deal in ukraine that could involve land concessions.
This would only be temporary until Putin decides what to invade next. He has his country weapons production running at full swing, why stop when he knows he can get what he wants. Granted having all of Europe fully under Putin's control would probably reduce the risk of MAD since the crazy guy got all his wishes. I just hope I won't have to live in such a Europe.
>This would only be temporary until Putin decides what to invade next. He has his country weapons production running at full swing, why stop when he knows he can get what he wants. Granted having all of Europe fully under Putin's control
This is irrational fearmongering. Let's assume NATO falls apart and it's every country for itself. It will take years for Russia to reconstitute its combat power to sufficient degree to conduct another large-scale mechanized invasion of anything bigger than the Baltic states. Speaking of the Baltics, I'm really not concerned about them, combined pop of ~6 million and GDP of ~$650B...they are roughly the size and impact of Hong Kong, and should not drive policy-making that risks continents of hundreds of millions when the West didn't raise a finger to protect HK from the PRC's authoritarian crackdown.
But let's look at the big nation-states that could be in Russia's sights: they aren't sitting still and are ALSO re-arming with everything from US hardware to South Korean tanks and artillery[0]. Now consider demographics. Poland and Romania have a combined population of ~60 million. Their capital cities have metro areas of ~2 million+, much like Kyiv and Kharkhiv, which Russia hasn't been able to take by force of arms. How would Russia control them if they resisted? What sort of sustained insurgency would the populations (who as I understand it are overwhelmingly anti-Russian) be capable of inflicting? What sort of cost-benefit analysis do you really think Putin is doing that would result in some dystopian return to Russian domination of Eastern Europe? In other words, what does he, and perhaps more importantly, the rest of Russia's siloviki, stand to gain that makes waging an open war and/or counter-insurgency against ~60 million Poles and Romanians worthwhile? If you think Putin is just trying to paint the map like a Hearts of Iron player.....that perspective is simply not in touch with reality.
> I just hope I won't have to live in such a Europe.
You already lived through a period of Putin-dominated Europe, when he had Europe's most important economy in his back pocket: 2000-20013. [1] Russia was printing money selling petrochemicals to German industry. The oligarchs were fat, happy, and spent a bunch of their cash buying European vacation homes and sports teams. The biggest person rocking the boat was Georgia's Mikhael Sakhashvili[2], who Putin simply slapped down as a warning to the US, then went back to printing money (assisted by greasing the wheels with Gerhard Schroder's help)[3]. Second-biggest person rocking the boat was George Bush's administration, which refused to ratify the START II treaty[4], then unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty[5], then insisted on putting ABMs in Russia's near-abroad[6]. And yet....life in Europe got along just fine.
The comment above yours is simply misinformed. Clearly Putin isn't going to try to take all of Europe. Even though you aren't misquoting the commenter, you're basically attacking a straw man here (in that this is not a scenario anyone is seriously considering).
However Putin has objectively threatened Poland and the Baltics (via numerous statements), and if he is appeased (or otherwise allowed to succeed) in Ukraine, there's a much more realistic possibility that he may make a move on those countries. He may not seek to entirely conquer Poland, for example, but it's not unrealistic to expect that he may attempt some form of "border correction", per his sockpuppet Medvedev's recent statements in this regard.[0]. Not for any rational reason, of course. He didn't have a rational reason to invade Ukraine either. He did to make a point, and because he thought he could get away with it.
So getting down to brass tacks here -- should Poland and the Baltics be defended, in your view? Or should they be thrown under the bus, because (at least in regard to the latter) you've decided that you're "really not concerned about them"?
You already lived through a period of Putin-dominated Europe,
A Europe in which Putin enjoys a substantial "soft power" leverage via cheap gas is very different from a Europe in which Putin is allowed to sever off large chunks of countries (if not entire countries), and his people are allowed to murder, rape and deport/kidnap at will.
There's no comparison at all between the "domination" he enjoyed in the previous era, and what he's trying to pull off now.
Trump wants a peace deal in ukraine that could involve land concessions.
Do you think rewarding the aggressor with large-scale land concessions (the only kind they have indicated they will accept), along with other concessions they will certainly demand (a lifting of sanctions, no need to pay financial restitution for the immense suffering and damage they have caused; and certainly no prosecution for war crimes) -- can provide a viable foundation for "peace"?
>Incredibly difficult to estimate this, in large part because the probabilities are so small.
The UN chief has been stating that the risk of nuclear warfare is at the highest point in decades. Not because of the risk of a 'fuckup', but due to geopolitical tensions. Historically the risk has been highest during periods of geopolitical tension.
> UN chief has been stating that the risk of nuclear warfare is at the highest point in decades
Would love to see how they're calculating this.
I'd agree we're at post-Cold War high in terms of risk of nuclear war. But that's because we have more nuclear states than before [1]. I'm sceptical we're worse off than the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing and former Communist officials were busy staging coups and whatnot. I'm also sceptical that Russia and America are at greater risk of nuclear war than during e.g. the collapse of Yugoslavia or the Syrian civil war.
> Historically the risk has been highest during periods of geopolitical tension
Sure. Though it's difficult to argue anything about nuclear use historically given they've only been used in one campaign, the Cold War was a strategic nuclear stalemate, and the post-Cold War era doesn't particularly sustain your hypothesis. (Pyongyang and Pakistan being particularly-potent wildcards.)
For the sake of argument, however, let's assume you're right. Are you claiming Donald Trump wasn't a source of geopolitical tension? The Trump who continued our occupation of Afghanistan, boosted troops in Iraq and Syria, offed an Iranian major general and seriously weighed leaving NATO? All while launching a multi-pronged salvo at China?
This isn't a Trump v Biden or Harris thing. It's just the reality of a superpower expressing its geopolitical interests.
Strong disagree. Trump has proven to be unreliable and unpredictable. He’s drunk on his own real or perceived power like a typical cult leader, and cannot be relied on to act rationally. Not unlike Putin.
People are missing the tree for the forest. If the “concerned” folks are to be believed, after more than a decade of corruption fighting Xi has missiles filled with water rather than rocket fuel. How do you think the Soviet hand-me-downs are going?
The problem isn’t Putin or Xi committing global suicide, it’s they’re not paying attention to the details: Sgt. Boris or Liu driving off with thermonuclear warheads and selling them.
> problem isn’t Putin or Xi committing global suicide, it’s they’re not paying attention to the details
The problem with Putin or Xi is that they're dictators. Dictatorships trade the immortality of the state for the mortality of a man.
The de-stabilising moments will come in the moments (a) before they are removed from power, by death or another's gunpoint, and are no longer weighing the interests of the world or even their country but their personal surival and (b) immediately after, when both succession and the chain of command are ambiguous. (In the latter respect, the CCP is at least an institution.)
We've been discovering our stockpiles of arms to be less functional than hoped. And that's with stuff that was tested and could be used as part of storage.
The nukes were never meant to be used, the chances of them malfunctioning are somewhat higher.
That's before you subtract the hype of "nukes are the ultimate weapon" from any calculations. Hiroshima is still an active, populated city. People assume nukes are "finger of God" erasers, but they're really rather inefficient explosives with simple physics.
You can’t compare kiloton with megaton weapons. This is insincere.
Moreover what strikes me is we have so many people handwringing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wondering if it was morally right… but the same kind of people are cavalier about having thousands of weapons tens of times more energetic getting launched.
A 5 megaton bomb will collapse buildings in a 6-7km radius and then set the entire city on fire. China could level Albuquerque with a single Dong-Feng 5. Especially if they use their 12 1MT warhead MIRV configuration.
Fusion weapons are in a whole new ballgame compared to 15kt Hiroshima weapon. While nuclear weapons tend to scale logarithmically with regards to damage, it hardly matters when the weapons are 300x more energetic. That doesn't even take into account the much higher levels of fallout from U-238 tampered high yield weapons.
> bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet
This makes some assumptions about how nuclear weapons would be targeted and detonated, assumptions which may not be correct.
Countervalue vs counterthreat targeting has been a back-and-forth for a long time in nuclear strategy discussions. The Nature paper relies on an assumption that there would be significant countervalue targeting—i.e. targeting cities and population centers rather than strictly military targets. This may not be a correct assumption about how U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are targeted.
Second, the way that nuclear weapons are detonated has implications for the amount of burning and ash. Detonating weapons at ground level would limit the radius of destruction and increase the longer lasting fires burning the cities and projecting ash upwards into the atmosphere. But this isn't how nuclear weapons detonation has been modeled, pretty much since the Manhattan Project, because scientists realized that the shock of the detonation would destroy a greater radius if the nuclear weapon has detonated in the air above the target. This increases the radius of destruction, but decreases the long-lasting fires and ash projection upwards. Obviously it's not eliminated, but there is a significant difference depending on the manner in which the nuclear weapons are detonated. Both the U.S. and USSR have understood this.
While an all-out nuclear exchange that employs countervalue targeting against cities and detonates nuclear weapons at the ground level could result in what the Nature article models, that is an unlikely scenario given what we know about U.S. and Russian thinking/targeting/strategy. More likely is 1) not a full exchange, 2) counterthreat targeting, 3) detonation above targets. This will still result in ash, and fires, and destruction, but will be substantially different in overall outcomes.
Even a limited exchange will release sufficient ash to kill billions of people through starvation. There was a previous model of a limited exchange between Pakistan and India I think the estimate was two billion dead.
Some of the people here trying to make light of a potential US/Russia nuclear war under the logic that most of Russia's bombs probably don't work or that previously nuked cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now perfectly livable, thriving cities miss the forest for the trees in a very big way.
Even if only 1 or 2% of Russia's presumed arsenal of several thousand was functional enough to get through, and even if only half of those weren't knocked out before making their targeted impacts, you'd still be talking about at least dozens of nuclear bombs exploding on the western side of the world. Most of these would strike places inhabited by millions of people and enormously important amounts of critical infrastructure.
Add to that the arguably larger number of bombs working enough to be successfully launched by the U.S and its nuclear-armed allies in retaliation against Russia (and a greater percentage of them reaching their targets, because after seeing its military "perform" in Ukraine, I simply don't believe that Russia's anti-missile measures would be particularly effective).
With all of this combined you'd still be seeing an absolutely catastrophic global situation of human, social, political, economic and climatological destabilization. At least tens of millions would die immediately and at least tens of millions more would die in the months of war, further mutual attacks, radiation, regional nuclear fallout effects and global economic (think food distribution in particular) effects that would follow.
In no time at all, we'd be facing a whole new geopolitical and devastated economic landscape in which more people have died than in all the wars of history combined.
Even if this were not the utter Armageddon of a full blown nuclear war of thousands of raining missiles, it would still devastate the peace and better human trends of the planet as we know them today. Ultimately, it would then also be a humanitarian tragedy on a scale never before seen in modern world history.
That's nothing to disregard, and it's almost certainly something that would brutally damage the lives of every single person commenting here in some deeply personal, hard way, at the least.
The idea of a worldwide nuclear war is just about as scary as potential futures get. The people you see everywhere online making light of it are the most frightened and they're making light as a coping mechanism. If you want to see a cope echo chamber in action, go check out subreddits like r/worldnews, where literally every comment is another unoriginal redditor trying their best to talk about it like it's nothing or even funny. It's understandable, if a bit annoying. Deep down, they all know the seriousness of the situation, even if they lack the self awareness to act like it.
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[ 29.0 ms ] story [ 2380 ms ] threadIt ain’t pre winter of ‘92 no more with “the day after” looming in people’s minds. Instead it’s “l-l-l-l-let’s play chicken!” (Bob Barker voice)
Curtis LeMay was 60 years too early.
Unfortunately, if Putin decides this is a game he wants to play, then this is a game we cannot choose not to play. We can choose not to play it now, but we will have to play it later. That's a lesson Chamberlain and the whole world learned in 1938/39.
If your primary military targets are innocent people then you should expect them to receive aid.
Communicating through sockpuppets like Medvedev is exactly how a gaslighter par excellence like Putin operates. And Medvedev isn't just any Kremlin flacky, but was Putin's nominal successor at one point. To pretend to not be aware that his messaging on the subject is ultimately Putin's is quite strange, to put it politely.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Putin's Munich speech in 2007 was as direct as it gets.
Anyway, your suggestion that Putin telegraphs his true intent (to occupy Poland and Baltics) through sockpuppet doesn't make any sense -- why would anyone do that? Medvedev playing bad cop routine -- that I can imagine, but what you are suggesting is quite strange, to put it politely.
Sorry, kiddo, you are just boring, bye.
Difficult to estimate because the situation is de-stabilising--the assurances of MAD no longer hold if one side thinks it can prevent the other from launching.
The Biden administration largely turned the lights back on in the parts of the government you are asking about, I think. They tried, at least. The GOP tried to block re-hiring foreign policy experts towards the beginning of his administration.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/trump-us-amb...
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/13/1055575802/lack-of-american-a...
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903199848/under-trump-more-bi...
Moreover, The Russia and China embassies were not affected And importantly there were not active conflicts, saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now. I mean, who gives a rat's arse about the ambassador to Paraguay.
Just the other week, the admin told the USN to prep for war against China in '27.
We assassinated an Iranian major general [1]! We were occupying Afghanistan, supporting Riyadh in its war on the Houthis and ramping up troops deployed in Syria and Iraq [2].
> saber rattling and serious instigations as we have now
The Trump administration wasn't instigating China [3]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/01/566798632/...
[3] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...
Facts are russia is corrupt and bankrupt, they havent serviced/maintained nuke arsenal since forever. They cant even make new ICBMs anymore, their fifth try blew up on launch pad https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/23/russia-sarma... just like four previous attempts.
It's a consequence of social media, where people believe if they make a statement that gets enough up arrow clicks, physical reality changes to match their desired outcome. Most of the time it's of little consequence, especially when the people posting and voting have little actual connection to the subject matter, but things are quite different when the outcome involves nuclear detonations.
Meh.
> Facts are russia is corrupt and bankrupt, they havent serviced/maintained nuke arsenal since forever. They cant even make new ICBMs anymore, their fifth try blew up on launch pad https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/23/russia-sarma... just like four previous attempts.
Yep ^ it's unlilkely they have very few in a launch-able state.
Although, they don't have a detonate a nuke to make parts of the world unlivable. They have plenty of radioactive material; simply detonating a salted conventional bomb would be pretty nasty.
Try 3,000 instead of 6,000 [1].
[1] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-who-h...
One of the reasons why many treaties came a long after WW2 was because for the first time ever, we had weapons on a scale that could truly cause civilization ending events. There is talk about strategic strike capabilities and from the little bits that trickle out from within, it is considered a potential path forward. But it is a path forward that is both political and literal suicide.
A scenario played out in the book 'Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America' by John Michael Greer makes a decent point. Say the US decides to strategically strike an opponent. They manage to take out 199 of 200 potential retaliatory strikes - a great success in terms of the ratio. But that one missile that gets through detonates over San Fransisco becoming the single most deadly event in US history. It just isn't seen as a viable path forward.
Luckily those in power are there because of those below them, you cannot be too loose of a cannon at the top but even that doesn't put ones mind at ease as you just do not know on what could happen. Maybe the lunatics to get control of it all. Strange things can happen.
Meanwhile, in reality:
In a three part detailed longform:The President and the Bomb (2016) https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president-and...
Part II https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/12/23/the-president-and...
Part III https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2017/04/10/president-bomb-ii...
This may be necessary to ensure the deterrent is credible. But for first strike use, authorisation should require at the very least Congressional approval. (Not the whole Congress, obviously, but maybe the Senate Select and House Permanent Select Committees.) Ideally, all three branches of government.
Ah, should - imagine a world in which "should" carried sway.
Meanwhile: Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-72 - Nuclear Operations (2020)
Page 21 of 29: https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Doctrine-Publications/AFDP-3-72-...For anybody in the chain that might question that, or want Congressional approval consider the fate of Harold Hering, the Major who was kicked out of the Air Force for asking a “dangerous question” while training to be a Missile Launch Officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Hering had asked, in essence, how could he, in his Minuteman missile bunker, know that an order to launch he received from the President had been a legal, considered, and sane one?
The answer is, you don't, you just jump as high as you can.
( even if the guy telling you to jump is also telling you they're eating cats and dogs in Ohio )
I mean, yes. Hering was in the chain of command. The nuclear chain of command. About the last thing you want in that chain is even a notion of a whiff of a perception that when the President says launch the missiles don't launch.
It's completely different for e.g. the Congress to ask these questions. They don't because this isn't an issue Americans have cared about for a while.
Congress can ask questions about that later, if they're still about - but they don't have a place in the chain between POTUS deciding to launch and the launch.
Ordering a strike before any missiles have landed on US soil has been possible the entire time (ie ordering what would be an effective First Strike) and deemed neccessary as carrying out such orders after missiles have landed has been considered as likley too little to late - predicated on having accurate justification (knowledge of incoming missiles) etc.
History has been littered with false alarmns that should have (but didn't) trigger a launch - that remains at the judgement of the serving POTUS who might be a combat veteran or a reality TV show host.
Sure. That doesn't mean every launch must be legal or undeliberateable.
> they don't have a place in the chain between POTUS deciding to launch and the launch
Why not?
The Constitution "vests in the Congress the power to declare war" [1]. It has largely delegated that power to the President. But the spirit of the War Powers Clause recognises that war is a major political decision with national consequences. So is a nuclear first strike.
> Ordering a strike before any missiles have landed on US soil has been possible the entire time (ie ordering what would be an effective First Strike)
Not what first strike means [2]. (You're describing launch on warning, which is firmly in the retaliatory column [3].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Clause
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike_(nuclear_strategy...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_on_warning
"Why not?" as a philosphical question is a bit esoteric for me.
"Why not?" in the straight forward sense is easier- they simply do not appear a prerequisite for ordering a nuclear strike in the linked Nuclear Operations (2020) procedures.
> The Constitution "vests in the Congress the power to declare war"
Sure - but that's been bypassed a good many times to date hasn't it? Congress can declare war - but they don't appear to be neccessary for war to be declared, it seems a sitting POTUS can do that with an executive order.
In any case what is specifically being discussed here is that order to launch a nuclear strike, not an order to "start a war" and all that entails (spinning up additional arms production, etc.).
> Not what first strike means [2]. (You're describing launch on warning,
The full quote included predicated on having accurate justification [ such as ] (knowledge of incoming missiles) etc. meaning a POTUS can hand wave or invent any number of reasons in addition to being fooled by false alarms and issue an order to launch missiles.
More importantly .. none of that really matters, these operation procedures were written with the expectation that time would be critical and that the POTUS would be a rational judge of the appropriate actions and thus vested with the power to simply issue an order sans any pesky chain of required justification when the clock was supposedly ticking.
Once the order is issued it requires someone to bell the cat and actually mutiny to stop the ordered launch .. questioning whether the order was justified isn't on the cards.
I did originally link to a long form three part look into all these scenarios for a reason, there's much reference there to expert commentary on the ins and outs of the US chain of command for nuclear launch.
Nobody argued the Congress needs to be consulted for a nuclear strike today. This entire conversation is around a proposal which, by definition, isn't present reality.
> that's been bypassed a good many times to date hasn't it
What are you thinking of? The modern trend has been the Congress giving the President broad war powers [1].
> what is specifically being discussed here is that order to launch a nuclear strike, not an order to "start a war"
There is no situation where a nuclear first strike doesn't start a war. It would very likely end the era of America being the master of alliances and trigger a global rebalancing against Washington.
> meaning a POTUS can hand wave or invent any number of reasons in addition to being fooled by false alarms and issue an order to launch missiles
Sure. And any President since the founding of the republic has had the capacity to break any number of laws restricting their power. (Many times, they have.) That doesn't make those laws or the Constitution worthless.
Between the President and the silos are a number of people. The current rules mean there is no legitimate reason for anyone in that chain to question a first strike order. That changes if you have a procedure the President is blowing off. (It's also better than SecDef making it up as they go [2].)
I'm not particularly concerned about a U.S. President blowing an aneurysm and nuking Canada. I am concerned about Russia and Pakistan. Having a procedure for first use here lets us push for multi-party first-use authorisation elsewhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/milley-acted-prevent-t...
Many as in two: China and India [1]. And "credibly" is doing a lot of work there. If America began a strategic bombing campaign of China's military, economic and population centers with conventional weapons fired off aircraft carriers, I find it ridiculous to imagine China would refuse to ever nuke a CVN.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#Countries_against...
Hence the quibbing over verbiage on public facing US nuclear operations manual in other reply chain also largely doesn't matter - formal US nuclear operations documentation itself is ultimately philosophical/propaganda/strategic - we can pretend they actually define US nuclear authority - but IMO their primary purpose is inform adversary nuclear deterrence game theory. Ultimately we don't know what actual US nuclear operations procedure is/will be - there may very well be none-public nuclear operations that is much less flippant than one man decides to end the world, maybe adversary specific ones based on correlation of forces.
And with Putin on one side and possibly (hopefully not) Trump on the other, that makes two loose cannons. Comforting thought.
Incredibly difficult to estimate this, in large part because the probabilities are so small.
What we can say is neither Russia nor America wants MAD. So the way an exchange would happen would be due to a fuckup. And not any old fuckup, e.g. Ukraine hit Moscow with an American missile or whatever. But a nuclear fuckup, e.g. Moscow thinks it's detected multiple missile launches and can't get the President on the phone.
Ending a conflict won't affect the probabilities compared to escalating it? De-escalation through escalation will end up in the the history books as the dumbest things western politicians believed in 2024
If affects it. We just can't universally say which way.
Appeasement is the classic example of escalatory de-escalation. But a better one is the Cold War: America or the USSR entering or withdrawing from a particular theatre, e.g. Vietnam or Afghanistan, was on average orthogonal to risk of nuclear war.
Whether a peace deal enhances or damages the peace is context dependent and can swing either way.
> De-escalation through escalation will end up in the the history books as the dumbest things western politicians believed in 2024
What a strange comment to make in the context of nuclear strategy. Should the U.S. unilaterally dismantle its nuclear deterrent?
This would only be temporary until Putin decides what to invade next. He has his country weapons production running at full swing, why stop when he knows he can get what he wants. Granted having all of Europe fully under Putin's control would probably reduce the risk of MAD since the crazy guy got all his wishes. I just hope I won't have to live in such a Europe.
This is irrational fearmongering. Let's assume NATO falls apart and it's every country for itself. It will take years for Russia to reconstitute its combat power to sufficient degree to conduct another large-scale mechanized invasion of anything bigger than the Baltic states. Speaking of the Baltics, I'm really not concerned about them, combined pop of ~6 million and GDP of ~$650B...they are roughly the size and impact of Hong Kong, and should not drive policy-making that risks continents of hundreds of millions when the West didn't raise a finger to protect HK from the PRC's authoritarian crackdown.
But let's look at the big nation-states that could be in Russia's sights: they aren't sitting still and are ALSO re-arming with everything from US hardware to South Korean tanks and artillery[0]. Now consider demographics. Poland and Romania have a combined population of ~60 million. Their capital cities have metro areas of ~2 million+, much like Kyiv and Kharkhiv, which Russia hasn't been able to take by force of arms. How would Russia control them if they resisted? What sort of sustained insurgency would the populations (who as I understand it are overwhelmingly anti-Russian) be capable of inflicting? What sort of cost-benefit analysis do you really think Putin is doing that would result in some dystopian return to Russian domination of Eastern Europe? In other words, what does he, and perhaps more importantly, the rest of Russia's siloviki, stand to gain that makes waging an open war and/or counter-insurgency against ~60 million Poles and Romanians worthwhile? If you think Putin is just trying to paint the map like a Hearts of Iron player.....that perspective is simply not in touch with reality.
> I just hope I won't have to live in such a Europe.
You already lived through a period of Putin-dominated Europe, when he had Europe's most important economy in his back pocket: 2000-20013. [1] Russia was printing money selling petrochemicals to German industry. The oligarchs were fat, happy, and spent a bunch of their cash buying European vacation homes and sports teams. The biggest person rocking the boat was Georgia's Mikhael Sakhashvili[2], who Putin simply slapped down as a warning to the US, then went back to printing money (assisted by greasing the wheels with Gerhard Schroder's help)[3]. Second-biggest person rocking the boat was George Bush's administration, which refused to ratify the START II treaty[4], then unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty[5], then insisted on putting ABMs in Russia's near-abroad[6]. And yet....life in Europe got along just fine.
[0] https://ipdefenseforum.com/2024/05/poland-south-korea-defens...
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/vladimir-putin-is-forbes-...
[2]https://www.reuters.com/article/world/georgia-started-war-wi...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-ger...
[4] aguaviva ↗ This is irrational fearmongering
The comment above yours is simply misinformed. Clearly Putin isn't going to try to take all of Europe. Even though you aren't misquoting the commenter, you're basically attacking a straw man here (in that this is not a scenario anyone is seriously considering).
However Putin has objectively threatened Poland and the Baltics (via numerous statements), and if he is appeased (or otherwise allowed to succeed) in Ukraine, there's a much more realistic possibility that he may make a move on those countries. He may not seek to entirely conquer Poland, for example, but it's not unrealistic to expect that he may attempt some form of "border correction", per his sockpuppet Medvedev's recent statements in this regard.[0]. Not for any rational reason, of course. He didn't have a rational reason to invade Ukraine either. He did to make a point, and because he thought he could get away with it.
So getting down to brass tacks here -- should Poland and the Baltics be defended, in your view? Or should they be thrown under the bus, because (at least in regard to the latter) you've decided that you're "really not concerned about them"?
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646070
And one last thing:
You already lived through a period of Putin-dominated Europe,
A Europe in which Putin enjoys a substantial "soft power" leverage via cheap gas is very different from a Europe in which Putin is allowed to sever off large chunks of countries (if not entire countries), and his people are allowed to murder, rape and deport/kidnap at will.
There's no comparison at all between the "domination" he enjoyed in the previous era, and what he's trying to pull off now.
Do you think rewarding the aggressor with large-scale land concessions (the only kind they have indicated they will accept), along with other concessions they will certainly demand (a lifting of sanctions, no need to pay financial restitution for the immense suffering and damage they have caused; and certainly no prosecution for war crimes) -- can provide a viable foundation for "peace"?
The UN chief has been stating that the risk of nuclear warfare is at the highest point in decades. Not because of the risk of a 'fuckup', but due to geopolitical tensions. Historically the risk has been highest during periods of geopolitical tension.
Would love to see how they're calculating this.
I'd agree we're at post-Cold War high in terms of risk of nuclear war. But that's because we have more nuclear states than before [1]. I'm sceptical we're worse off than the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing and former Communist officials were busy staging coups and whatnot. I'm also sceptical that Russia and America are at greater risk of nuclear war than during e.g. the collapse of Yugoslavia or the Syrian civil war.
> Historically the risk has been highest during periods of geopolitical tension
Sure. Though it's difficult to argue anything about nuclear use historically given they've only been used in one campaign, the Cold War was a strategic nuclear stalemate, and the post-Cold War era doesn't particularly sustain your hypothesis. (Pyongyang and Pakistan being particularly-potent wildcards.)
For the sake of argument, however, let's assume you're right. Are you claiming Donald Trump wasn't a source of geopolitical tension? The Trump who continued our occupation of Afghanistan, boosted troops in Iraq and Syria, offed an Iranian major general and seriously weighed leaving NATO? All while launching a multi-pronged salvo at China?
This isn't a Trump v Biden or Harris thing. It's just the reality of a superpower expressing its geopolitical interests.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...
you might be kind of close, but it’s probably more like…
“if i can’t forcibly take over any country i want for my own, ill nuke you.”
…is not a rational policy for the future of world geopolitics and certainly is more nuanced than a sarcastic “at least soandso wont win”
The problem isn’t Putin or Xi committing global suicide, it’s they’re not paying attention to the details: Sgt. Boris or Liu driving off with thermonuclear warheads and selling them.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/gregory-kulacki/xi-jinpings-thoughts...
The problem with Putin or Xi is that they're dictators. Dictatorships trade the immortality of the state for the mortality of a man.
The de-stabilising moments will come in the moments (a) before they are removed from power, by death or another's gunpoint, and are no longer weighing the interests of the world or even their country but their personal surival and (b) immediately after, when both succession and the chain of command are ambiguous. (In the latter respect, the CCP is at least an institution.)
We've been discovering our stockpiles of arms to be less functional than hoped. And that's with stuff that was tested and could be used as part of storage.
The nukes were never meant to be used, the chances of them malfunctioning are somewhat higher.
That's before you subtract the hype of "nukes are the ultimate weapon" from any calculations. Hiroshima is still an active, populated city. People assume nukes are "finger of God" erasers, but they're really rather inefficient explosives with simple physics.
Moreover what strikes me is we have so many people handwringing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wondering if it was morally right… but the same kind of people are cavalier about having thousands of weapons tens of times more energetic getting launched.
It’s mindboggling.
Fusion weapons are in a whole new ballgame compared to 15kt Hiroshima weapon. While nuclear weapons tend to scale logarithmically with regards to damage, it hardly matters when the weapons are 300x more energetic. That doesn't even take into account the much higher levels of fallout from U-238 tampered high yield weapons.
This makes some assumptions about how nuclear weapons would be targeted and detonated, assumptions which may not be correct.
Countervalue vs counterthreat targeting has been a back-and-forth for a long time in nuclear strategy discussions. The Nature paper relies on an assumption that there would be significant countervalue targeting—i.e. targeting cities and population centers rather than strictly military targets. This may not be a correct assumption about how U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are targeted.
Second, the way that nuclear weapons are detonated has implications for the amount of burning and ash. Detonating weapons at ground level would limit the radius of destruction and increase the longer lasting fires burning the cities and projecting ash upwards into the atmosphere. But this isn't how nuclear weapons detonation has been modeled, pretty much since the Manhattan Project, because scientists realized that the shock of the detonation would destroy a greater radius if the nuclear weapon has detonated in the air above the target. This increases the radius of destruction, but decreases the long-lasting fires and ash projection upwards. Obviously it's not eliminated, but there is a significant difference depending on the manner in which the nuclear weapons are detonated. Both the U.S. and USSR have understood this.
While an all-out nuclear exchange that employs countervalue targeting against cities and detonates nuclear weapons at the ground level could result in what the Nature article models, that is an unlikely scenario given what we know about U.S. and Russian thinking/targeting/strategy. More likely is 1) not a full exchange, 2) counterthreat targeting, 3) detonation above targets. This will still result in ash, and fires, and destruction, but will be substantially different in overall outcomes.
Even if only 1 or 2% of Russia's presumed arsenal of several thousand was functional enough to get through, and even if only half of those weren't knocked out before making their targeted impacts, you'd still be talking about at least dozens of nuclear bombs exploding on the western side of the world. Most of these would strike places inhabited by millions of people and enormously important amounts of critical infrastructure.
Add to that the arguably larger number of bombs working enough to be successfully launched by the U.S and its nuclear-armed allies in retaliation against Russia (and a greater percentage of them reaching their targets, because after seeing its military "perform" in Ukraine, I simply don't believe that Russia's anti-missile measures would be particularly effective).
With all of this combined you'd still be seeing an absolutely catastrophic global situation of human, social, political, economic and climatological destabilization. At least tens of millions would die immediately and at least tens of millions more would die in the months of war, further mutual attacks, radiation, regional nuclear fallout effects and global economic (think food distribution in particular) effects that would follow.
In no time at all, we'd be facing a whole new geopolitical and devastated economic landscape in which more people have died than in all the wars of history combined.
Even if this were not the utter Armageddon of a full blown nuclear war of thousands of raining missiles, it would still devastate the peace and better human trends of the planet as we know them today. Ultimately, it would then also be a humanitarian tragedy on a scale never before seen in modern world history.
That's nothing to disregard, and it's almost certainly something that would brutally damage the lives of every single person commenting here in some deeply personal, hard way, at the least.