The Guardian calls for NATO to declare war on Russia
(archive.ph)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (60)
sorted by:
Stop arguing that Russia is going to fire nukes. It's not, okay? If Russia nukes us, we would nuke them back. Russians, including Putin, don't want to get nuked, therefore they won't fire nukes. This is called MAD. It worked successfully throughout the whole Cold War. There is no reason to believe that it would not still work now.
Also, "global"? Russia stands alone, my friend. Russia has no allies. There would be nothing "global" about NATO bombing some Russians in Ukraine. It would be a very limited war. Russia would not even retaliate against any NATO countries. Know why? Because if it did, then NATO would open up on targets in Russia. Russia loses that fight. It loses that fight 10 out of 10 times.
Here is what would ACTUALLY happen if NATO aircraft began launching strikes:
Russians would get obliterated in short order. The Russian SAM defenses would be easily swept aside because they are a paper tiger completely incapable of dealing with either stealth or jamming SEAD operations.
The bulk of the Russian military would flee, with or without orders. Many would desert and run for their lives. The Russians aren't willing to die to an unseen enemy that completely outclasses them for the sake of Putin's ego.
Ukraine would advance and recapture everything.
Putin would bunker up and might very well be killed in the coup or uprising that would follow his utter humiliation.
You all need to wake up and accept the reality that Russia is not the USSR. Russia is a joke compared to what the USSR used to be. It's a rump state, a shadow. It's a relatively poor country with a big but obsolete military, getting clowned on by an even poorer country that should have been an easy kill.
You've basically defined MAD out of existence. Basically, you've stated that because no party actually wants destruction, nuclear weapons will never be used, and thus the different parties can freely attack each other with conventional weapons without MAD ever being an issue. As the Cold War showed, however, that isn't how MAD works. Instead, MAD means that neither party will ever risk a direct confrontation because the consequences of even a small conflict could lead to MAD, and no one wants to take that risk.
The corollary to mutual assured destruction is that Russia can use a nuke in a regional war not involving a nuclear power because they know no power will retaliate for fear of triggering full out nuclear war.
What keeps them from using in a regional war is social pressure from other peer countries. They won't use a nuke in Ukraine because other countries would see it as crossing the Rubicon and isolate them (also Ukrainians are basically Russians).
But if the West almost totally isolates Russia so they can only trade with China or 3rd world shitholes, then this pressure is gone and they can freely use nukes.
Stalin and Mao didn't care in Korea.
MacArthur to want to nuke at least the Chinks (or more exactly their airfields and bridges near the border), but he was removed for that.
Nuclear powers also directly fought in Vietnam (chiefly the air war over North Vietnam). Again nothing happened.
If by directly you mean covertly and constantly lying about it sure
Uhh no.
Yes, nukes cancel out and conventional weapons are still able to be used.
Yes, it is actually.
Not true at all. Look at the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy was willing to start launching air attacks on Cuba. Khrushchev backed down because he realized Castro was a lunatic who was saying he was totally happy to die to take down America. That was a unique situation and MAD STILL worked because the Russians didn't want to die, so they backed down.
The Russians acted in escalatory ways plenty of times in the Cold War, and in some cases so did the US. MAD proved itself time and time again to work because nobody was willing to launch 1st out of fear of retaliation.
MAD also prevented chemical weapons from being used in WW2.
YOUR formulation means that Russia can just keep invading everyone and nobody will ever do shit because they fear Russia's nukes and are frozen with fear. That's not only a load of shit, it would INCENTIVIZE Russia to act very aggressively with its nukes and to even use them since it could see how afraid of them everyone else was.
You're underappreciating the brinkmanship behind MAD. A NATO attack brings us much closer to it than an invasion of Ukraine. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a better analog of the former, which is why it was resolved without conflict and doesn't support your point. The Cold War was just invasion after invasion with the 2 main contenders always in the corner or fighting lesser opponents. Russia actually can just keep invading "everyone", like America did, until NATO says "raise you" or pre-empts them.
In the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Soviet and Chinese pilots flew missions using their own aircraft against US pilots, and fought them directly.
Stop pretending that it didn't happen, or that if we had American "volunteers" flying F22s over Ukraine and blowing the shit out of Russians, that would be any different than what the USSR did to us in the Cold War.
It was rather Che than Castro.
There were instances of chemical warfare in WWII, especially in China. (Biological too.)
No it was Castro. Nobody gives a shit about Che. He wasn't the leader. Please consult the wikipedia at least before you "correct" me.
i don't care. my life and wellbeing is not worth this fake puppet country.
Why haven't they done that then? Sounds easy and with zero consequences to themselves.
because politicians are pussies and never want to escalate anything unless they run it by some polling firms and focus groups.
even their sanctions are limp dick.
Fun fact: The US has lost the ability to make the detonation material for nukes. We've been cannibalizing out existing arsenal to keep some portion of the bombs active. So our nuclear capacity is shrinking over time. Its very likely most or even all of our bombs will soon be duds.
That does not make sense. Nukes are detonated by lensed conventional explosives.
Tritium.
https://lynceans.org/all-posts/u-s-tritium-production-for-the-nuclear-weapons-stockpile-not-like-the-old-days-of-the-cold-war/
Apparent trtium production restarted: https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.183/gkz.aeb.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Timeline-4_Modern-CLWR-tritium-production-converted.pdf
It's being done with nuclear reactors controlled by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which your link does talk about as well. Basically the issue is just that we didn't need to produce tritium for a while because there was so much of it freely available from decommissioned warheads, so the production cycle atrophied and is now being rebuilt.
The nukes would still work without it, just at lower yields. Still, I don't think there's any chance the Air Force is going to neglect it to the point of not keeping enough for its W87 and W88 warheads.
Tritium is made in nuclear reactors, and we've been shutting them all down. The government no longer values skills over ideology, and doesn't understand what they are doing anymore.
https://lynceans.org/all-posts/u-s-tritium-production-for-the-nuclear-weapons-stockpile-not-like-the-old-days-of-the-cold-war/
All of our current nuclear warheads are "boosted yield" systems, where tritium is injected into the warhead just before detonation to increase weapon yield. But tritium has a half-life of just over 12 years, and once it decays, it becomes a neutron absorber, thus reducing weapon yield.
Problem is, there's no major producer of tritium in the US anymore... we just buy ours from overseas.
Russia will be getting armed drones from Iran, for example. (They might then use them to counter the HIMARS rampage.)
They have also stuff from China, who can give them electronics and other modern technology to bypass the sanctions in exchange for raw resources.
Shitty iranian drones can't do shit to HIMARS. Existing Russian drones are already better than what Iran has.
The reason Russia is going to Iran is because Russian drones are being lost and breaking down thanks to heavy use, and they will eventually start to run out, so they are barrel scraping looking for replacements.
Chinese electronics are joke tier. China makes low end shit, not the high end shit used for military applications. China was still forced to import aircraft engines from Russia until recently because China was unable to build an aircraft engine - which is something Israel was able to do many decades ago.
Iranian are much better than Russian, who are lagging hilariously and always did. Especially their loitering munitions are second only to Israeli.
Russians also use Chinese civilian drones already.
I don't believe for a second that Iranian technology is impressive or high end in any way. Iran has long been a paper tiger that makes fake propaganda weapons.