I didn’t say you couldn’t theorize about multiple nuclear weapons being used. In fact, I explicitly said you could if you wished. What I said was that there was nothing in the OP to support that. Which there isn’t. You quoted the OP.
So once again, if you want to bring multiple nuclear weapons into this debate, you have to back it up. Don’t try to blame the OP because you’ve painted yourself into a corner.
I really wish I didn’t have to keep repeating these things to you.
Moving on.
No, what follows is not my plan, as stated. It’s my plan, as paraphrased by you.
Yes.
Yes
That’s an opinion not a fact. And it’s your opinion. As I’ve noted, your opinions of what’s a good plan are not worth very much. So I see no reason to change a plan just because of your opinion.
Perhaps not immediately. But at this point, it’s abundantly clear that Russia as a whole has a delusional belief about what lands it’s entitled to. Russia would not nuke Krakow and Vilnius and Paris immediately after doing Kyiv. But after it recovers from the Ukraine campaign, it would undoubtedly pursue expansion again. This time with more certainty that they can use nukes to compensate for the weakness of maneuver forces. So there would likely be more war and eventually more nukes.
Russia would absolutely use nukes if it felt its regime was threatened. And there are some factors that make this more likely:
Russia has always relied on nukes to paper over its inability both to defend and conquer.
Russia is paranoid and tends to see threats where little (if any exist)
The weakness of the Russian conventional has been exposed, and the regime now must rely more than ever on nukes as a deterrent.
Russia has a much more expansive definition of what’s considered “Russia” than those of us in the West generally understand, and thence a broader and more aggressive set of "red lines.
All bets are off if Kyiv gets nukes. It will be a very hard needle to thread.
But then, sometimes tensions get so high that someone does something stupid, and everyone suddenly backs off, as they realize they’re about to go running off a cliff.
It kind of got swamped in the whole pandemic thing, so we’ve largely forgotten about the little Trump vs. Iran snit fit, where each side kept talking tougher and tougher about how bad-ass they were, and who was going to bomb who into the stone age, until Iran did something really stupid and an entire plane full of innocent people got shot down, and suddenly all the rhetoric went away as even Donald fucking Trump appeared to realize that they’d gone too far, and there were real-world consequences for this shit.
I suspect nuking Kyiv would be a similar watershed event. A whole lot of people on both sides might finally wake up and realize how badly they’ve screwed the pooch.
And while we’re at it, why are we assuming that he’d use a missile? That might be the easiest way to do it, but it’s also the easiest to see coming, risking the retaliatory strike we’re discussing. Even one such launch might trigger MAD.
But an air-dropped bomb is less likely to cause that. We’d be reacting to “OMG! An Explosion!”, not “OMG! A ballistic missile!” You could also use a truck-borne nuke. I suspect it would be easier for Putin to get a small group of Spetsnaz guys to sneak a nuke into Kyiv than to go through the formal process of launching a missile.
Yes, sometimes. Obviously, invading another country is generally immoral but a person can be reasonable and immoral.
As for the not winning aspect, we don’t know yet who will win. Ukraine is winning now but the war isn’t over; it could swing back in Russia’s direction and they might end up being the winner. And even if Russia does end up losing, that doesn’t make Putin a madman for thinking Russia was going to win back when he started the war; he was just wrong not crazy.
I’ve said launching a missile because I feel it is the likeliest means by which Russia would make a nuclear attack against Kiev. I feel it’s the means which Ukraine would have the least chances of intercepting so it’s the surest means for Russia.
I don’t think detection will be a factor. I think most of our detection systems are geared towards watching for attacks heading towards the United States; we might not detect a Russian missile heading towards Kiev until it hits. (Kiev is so close to Russia that a missile would only need around a minute of flight time.) And even if we did, I don’t think we could tell the difference between a nuclear missile and a conventionally armed missile while it’s in flight.
Once the nuclear weapon is detonated, I don’t think there will be any doubt it was nuclear regardless of how it was delivered. And I don’t feel the means of delivery will be an issue in how the United States and other countries respond to the use of a nuclear weapon.
Plus, losing an offensive war is significantly different than losing a defensive war. No one outside of Russian propagandists expects anyone to invade Russia itself, so even if Putin loses in Ukraine, at worst, he’s still the undisputed ruler of one of the largest countries in history. What does Putin care about a bunch of conscripts dying and obsolete tanks being destroyed?
Russia has launched many missiles at Kyiv during the course of this war. They just launched another one yesterday while the UN Secretary-General was there! Missiles are definitely on the table.
I can’t imagine why missiles wouldn’t be the delivery system of choice, unless there’s some concern about the accuracy of Russian rocketry (which is justifiable based on what we’ve seen so far). Of course nuclear warheads are big and don’t need quite the accuracy of a conventional missile. But if you’re using a small one for a very narrow and calculated purpose, it needs to be on target. The only riskier thing than launching a nuke is launching a nuke and missing the target.
I’ve said before that we shouldn’t ignore Putin’s control over Russian media. Putin can negotiate an end to the war with Ukraine and then announce that whatever agreement he is able to reach was the pre-war goal he was seeking. He can thereby declare the war a success.
Russia doesn’t conquer any new territory in Ukraine? This was never a war of conquest. It was about preventing Ukraine from invading Donetsk and Luhansk and our brave Russian troops succeeded in defending our allies from outside aggression. All we wanted was to maintain the border lines that existed a year ago.
Space Force’s detection systems watch literally 100% of the Earth’s surface 24/7 and note literally every launch event as well as any other significant thermal events.
You’re right that a ballistic missile payload can’t be distinguished from the launch event. It might be a surprise if a medium-range ballistic missile trajectory ends in a nuclear detonation, except if we can tell that the missile is of a type usually used for nuclear weapon deployment or launched from a strategic missile launch facility. (These are the missiles most likely to already have a nuclear warload instead of conventional explosives.)
Well, the detection system predates Space Force (who inherited it from the Air Force), but the USAF Chief of Staff in that series isn’t much of a prize himself, so I guess it’s the same problem.