So you think killing additional 100s of millions of people will somehow fix any of the issues you bring up?
Killing additional hundreds of millions of people just might prevent the killing of even more people.
Yes, a full-scale nuclear war would be horrifically bad. But it wouldn’t kill everyone. And as long as not everyone is dead, there’s always room for the situation to get even worse.
Suppose that Nation A launches a full-scale nuclear attack, and Nation B doesn’t retaliate. Is that better than the situation where B does retaliate? No, because that isn’t the end of it. If Nation A did it once and got exactly what they wanted out of it, they’ll do it again, repeatedly, as often as they feel like it. Retaliating means that the nuclear war is twice as bad. But not retaliating means ten times as many nuclear wars.
Ah yes, the old “we need to kill as many as possible innocent civilians to prevent more deaths” argument. How many do we have to kill to prevent Broomstick’s "we must kill them all, every one” scenario? Is it them all? Every one?
Again, I’m all FOR counterforce strikes. Plus, after a full wargasm, nobody has anything left by definition. Im just saying don’t target civilian centers just to even up a body count. That is pointless.
The notion i reject that Putin would never use a limited nuclear strike within Ukraine, it’s either full on first strike against the US, or nothing. What if he does drop a single, small nuclear weapon within Ukraine? We shouldn’t retaliate with a full nuclear strike against Russia, that would result in a counter-strike against the US, which wouldn’t end until all the silos are empty. We must have an alternative, non-nuclear response to a limited nuclear strike by Russia. The future of the world depends on it.
But no one says that. No one says we must kill them all, every one. The old argument you “cite” there is entirely made of straw.
What we do say is that we must be willing to retaliate, which will cause a whole lot of damage and kill a whole lot of people.
Even if we tried we couldn’t kill them all, every one. And we aren’t going to try. Our goal is to set them back economically and militarily at least as far as their attack has set us back. That gives our survivors a chance of rebuilding our society and civilization, rather than being subject to the rule of the people who just nuked us.
No one is planning on targeting civilian centers just to even up a body count. Now, targeting certain strategic cities that can be used to produce and transport war materiel to be used in invading and oppressing our country, there’s a very good point to doing that, and unfortunately, that is where a substantial number of people live. Lotta people gonna die, no way around that. Well, except the country that they live in not initiating a nuclear attack, anyway, which comes back to the entire point.
Now, I’m sure this is a controversial opinion, but IMHO, what it comes down to is that we need more nuclear proliferation, not less. Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if they had nukes. No country would condemn use of nukes on one’s own soil to fend off a belligerent army. And no country would condemn the retaliation of a country nuked by a belligerent.
Knowing that, no one will invade a country that has nuclear weapons.
By Ukraine not having nukes, that means that we are in a position of having to decide whether to use our nukes, and the consequences that would come from that.
Personally, I’m a fan of nukes for peace. Give every country exactly 2 nuclear weapons. If they use them irresponsibly, they will be annihilated. If they use them to defend their own country, or to retaliate against an unprovoked nuclear attack, then their stockpile is replenished.
Is the world better off with no nukes? Probably, but that’s not going to happen. In a world with nukes, anyone without them is either depending on other countries to invoke MAD on their behalf, or needs to have them themselves.
Broomstick sure though it was a possibility.
Absolutely, say that. Say it loud and proud!
Of course not. So why even bother with those extra few hindred millions?
Ive made my stance on striking their military. Can we please stop with the whole stupid “our” survivors vs “their” survivors bullshit? Nukes flying means MAD has failed and there are only “survivors.” Let’s not presume to know what’s best for them. We already failed to stop a mass murder for whatever reason. Perhaps they’ll learn from our mistakes. Killing more of them isn’t the answer.
Broomstick considered it a possibility that, should we not retaliate against a nuclear attack to destroy their ability to make war, they may take a “we must kill them all” stance, and finish us off.
That is miles away from the claim you seem to be making that anyone said that the nuclear retaliation should be intended to kill everyone.
Okay, but that’s exactly what has been said, and no one has said anything substantially different.
I don’t get your point here. No one is planning on "bother[ing] with those extra few h[u]ndred millions.
Now, in order to destroy their military capabilities, major cities will need to be destroyed, which likely will kill hundreds of millions. (well, maybe a hundred million. The entire population of Russia doesn’t actually earn a an “s” to the hundreds place there.)
I’m not sure what that stance was, exactly. You were against retaliation, which suggests that we just watch the bombs drop on our country without response.
Military capability is more than just military bases, it is logistics, manufacturing, and population to produce and use weapons of war.
If nukes only fly one way, we have survivors, they have victors.
Them is us, in this darkest universe scenario.
Probably because they didn’t think that we had the resolve to retaliate.
The mistake that they will learn from is not take your finger off the trigger when you and a madman are at a standoff.
No one says it is.
There is no possible scenario with a single, small nuclear weapon. Because if it works once, it’ll work again. There’s no reason for Putin to stop with one, unless someone else forces him to stop. And how, precisely, could anyone force him to stop, without also using nukes?
Yeah, whixmch is exactly the ferling i got from chronos to prevent such a thing.
My position all along has been to minimize casualties. On all sides. I’m FOR counterforce strikes…leadership, weapons, assets, etc. But absolutely AGAINST countervalue targets, civilian populations just for the fear factor. If I wasn’t clear, then I apologize. Yet assuming people knew what I was talking about (which may have been my mistake) I’ve found myself fighting/pleading with some of my favorite posters to just not kill hundreds of millions of people just because of MAD. Which is a doctrine that has worked for 60-70ish yrs, but means absolutely nothing once missles are in the air.
Again, not saying we don’t retaliate at all. However, if nukes fly, no matter which way or how many, the world as we know it ends. There is no “we” or “them.” Only survivors and casualties. Everything changes. Do we make it worse just because?
Again, never said don’t retaliate at all.
Who’s madder? The guy who initiated the insanity? Or the guy who added to it just because MAD says so after it makes no difference?
But again, I’d rather not presume to know what survivors would learn from x hundreds of millions killed vs some fraction of x
A few of you seem to be trying really hard to convince me otherwise.
Broomstick, chronos, k9bfriender, you are all some of my favorite people here. I feel like we’ve been talking past each other these past 16 hrs or so. Also, im on like beer 25. So imma take a nap and then I’ll try and grok where things went wrong later. But my general point is that killing hundreds of millions of people more than “necessary” is bad, mmmkay? We can debate on what “necessary” means later.
It’s because you can’t seem to fathom that what you are saying is that even if you have nuclear weapons, as soon as someone else has them you might as well immediately disarm (not just nuclear, but all weapons) and turn over your country to them, for you people to be enslaved.
That’s what MINIMIZING ALL DEATHS tells you to do.
This is just horseshit. I absolutely understand the deterrent capabilities of nukes. And thus the whole point of MAD. It’s to instill the fear of retaliation. And you need a credible threat to do that.
For context, I meant “minimizing all deaths” after “a full blown nuclear exchange has begun.”
If you start by saying we shouldn’t retaliate, there is no fear of retaliation.
The side that is full of snfaulkners is toast. Having a weapon you are not prepared to use is equivalent to having no weapon at all.
The real objective of MAD is to make sure that the initiator of a large-scale nuclear attack is unable to profit from it.
It is literally “we guarantee that if we lose, you lose too.”
“If we go down, we are taking you with us.”
OK, so Putin nukes Kyiv, and we don’t retaliate with our own nukes, but we still retaliate. We send a bunch of tanks rolling towards Moscow, or something.
And then Putin nukes our tanks.
And then, the next year, he nukes Helsinki, as part of his conquest of Finland.
And then Warsaw. And then Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn. And then Berlin and Vienna. At what point do we finally stop him? And how is that any less bad than if we stopped him after one?
It makes you a bigger martyr, so your children and you go into slavery from a higher moral standing.
Putin can’t roll into Europe. His ground forces are a paper tiger. His failure to take Kiev proved that. All he has is threat of nukes, and we don’t even know if they still work.
I just going to point out that NOWHERE did I specify targets. But go ahead, put words in my mouth and distort what I have to say, that’s not going to piss me off at all. [/sarcasm]
May I suggest posting SOBER next time so you won’t misread my statements so grotesquely as you have done?
Nevermind - please delete
Twitter thread on the effects of a Russian tactical nuke.
Which makes me wonder what the response of the US and NATO should be if that happens? My first inclination is that if Russia uses a tactical nuke, they’ll likely deny it and claim it was Ukrainian Nazis or whatever setting off a nuclear device. If so, I think we should respond with some strong conventional attack that we then deny (or at least refrain from claiming responsibility for). The easiest might be submarine attacks on Russian warships - we likely already have several submarines in the Black Sea already, and we might be able to sink several of them at the same time with coordinated torpedo attacks, which we could then deny or refrain from taking responsibility for.
Alternately we could conduct overwhelming conventional airstrikes on Russian positions in Ukraine. That would probably be more helpful to Ukraine’s war effort, though less easily denied than submarine attacks.
A nuclear response should be off the table IMO, so the only other option would be more sanctions and strongly worded diplomacy, which IMO would amount effectively to nothing if in response to a tactical nuke.
Thoughts?