1) It's complex. Formally, Moscow controlled the launch codes. However Ukraine designed and built the ICBMs, and are near the top of nations with the highest nuclear physicist per capita ratio.
On top of that the Soviet nuclear lockout systems are rumored to be much simpler than the American ones. Whereas the American system is rumored to be something like the decryption key for the detonation timings (without which you have at best a dirty bomb), the Soviet lockout mechanism is rumored to just be a lockout device with a 'is locked' signal going to the physics package. If that's all true, taking control of those nukes from a technical perspective would be on the order of hotwiring a 1950s automobile.
Taking physical control would have been more complex, but everything was both more complex and in some ways a lot simpler as the wall fell. It would have ultimately been a negotiation.
2) See above.
3) Which military nuclear power has been attacked by the kind of adversary that you can throw a nuke at? Yes, it doesn't remove all threats, but no solution does. Removing a class of threat (and arguably the most powerful class of threat in concrete terms) is extremely valuable.
Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right?
> See above
Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
> Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right?
The previous owner was the USSR, who ceased to exist, and who Ukraine was a part of.
> Maybe you should see how good the Ukraine was at keeping their naval assets after they used the totally legal methods to obtain them. Maybe then you would have a clue on how good they could had maintained them.
Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally that Russia mostly scuttled on their way out of Sevastopal, in addition to stuff like a 70% completed nuclear powered carrier that even Russia couldn't maintain the sister to, and didn't fit in any naval doctrine that made sense for Ukraine?
Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"?
> Are you talking about the ships that weren't originally
That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
Actually, exactly. We're specifically talking about the arsenal of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. A force not reorganized until much later to be under the Russian Federation, and the relevant 1990 Budapest Memorandum occurred before the 1991 creation of the CIS.
Rather than a vague "not quite", would you care to elaborate?
> Oh, so there were some wedding contract what stated what in case the parties.. part - there would be the transfer and division of assets? When why Belorussia didn't received their part of the navy? Kazakhstan? Georgia? Baltics, because they surely "were parts of USSR"?
I think a divorce settlement is actually a pretty good model actually. Those other states rankly didn't have the means to keep them, but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss. However, as I described above, Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them.
> That weren't originally what? I know you degraded to just throwing words with your blanket knowledge but again you can find out the fate of the ships the Ukraine used totally legit means to obtain from Russian Federation with a quite short trip to Wikipedia.
I'm dyslexic and accidentally a word while editing. Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
Good, you made a first step, now do the other two.
> but should have been otherwise compensated for that loss
It's quite amusing what you are clearly imply what some state shouldn't be compensated at all.
> Are you incapable of telling what was meant by context, or where you just looking for a reason not to address the point made?
Yes, I'm incapable of telling why you threw something completely unrelated to the question. I'm not LLM.
> Ukraine literally designed and built large portions of these systems as was capable of keeping them.
Ah, yes, the mighty Ukraine who solely done that, right? Every other nation, state and people in the USSR didn't do shit to that. I have a feeling you are thinking about that issue as some sort of video game: just a couple of factories and a bunch of special units. But the things are not like that in RL.
> Your computer is designed and built in China therefore your computer belongs to Chinese and China. Right?
The question is whether china would be capable of maintaining the equipment they created and have physical possession of, not whether they can root it without physical access.
Alternatively, we might have entered either a limited or a worst-case nuclear war scenario.
Russia may have just continually pushed the envelope until it became clear there wasn't a bright red line, and eventually someone would push the button.
To be the devil's advocate, I don't think Russia foresaw a situation that had Ukraine looking to join NATO right after NATO had been used offensively for the first time ever to put its thumb on the scale of a civil war that didn't involve NATO countries.
If Putin didn't want NATO getting involved if he started a war there's one special trick he could have played! He could have not started a war ...
The only reason Ukraine joining NATO is a problem is if Putin/Russia (or someone else) wants to attack them.
I know there's a real risk of peaceful trade, mutual alliance, humanity, and democracy from breaking out in such circumstances but somehow I think the risk might be worth it for the billions of us who aren't completely fucked up megalomaniacs.
Who joined NATO that you're blaming the Libya military interventions on?
If your inference is true then Ukraine's membership would be entirely orthogonal to any intervention NATO took to prevent Putin from committing genocide against his own people.
If NATO would come to Ukraine's aid anyway, then again their membership doesn't matter.
Sure, but I think these discussions are more enlightening when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system rather than just whatever propaganda is locally convenient.
> when we model superpowers as rational actors within their ideological system
But they are not. We can thus look at the people who make decisions, but not at the countries themselves. So, it’s most likely not about joining NATO, but about European integration and economic growth.
No no no, some random American diplomat told a random Soviet diplomat during the East Germany negotiations that NATO wouldn't extend east at all.
No, it wasn't put on paper anywhere.
No, it wasn't mentioned (much) when the countries of eastern Europe all chomped at the bit to join NATO in the 90s.
No, it completely makes the Budapest Memorandum bunk.
No, the people of Ukraine absolutely do not have the agency to want to pivot towards the EU and become wealthy and stable like the former Warsaw Pact countries did. It must have been the CIA, so Budapest is bunk again!
(and other lies the war apologists tell themselves)
Even setting aside that Ukraine never had the technical means or infrastructure to operate/maintain those weapons, I don't think they would have dissuaded Russia or actually been used. Russia could turn them into a wasteland in response and 6 million people (including hundreds of thousands of men of military age) weren't even willing to stay in Ukraine, much less fight for the country. If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch.
You don't think that Ukraine, the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes?
And the point of nukes isn't to launch them. By then you've already lost, you're just making good on your offer to make the other shmuck lose too.
> the country that designed and built those ICBMs, and had one of the highest per capita counts of nuclear physicists could handle at least a few decades of upkeep on those nukes?
They don't even need that. They just needed ambiguity.
Ukraine absolutely fucked up giving up its nukes, that's abundantly clear with the benefit of hindsight.
The idea that a nation state could not make use of the hundreds of nuclear weapons in its territory is just absurd. It's sillier than the people that think disk encryption will spare them the crowbar to the face. Beyond the whole chauvinistic idea that it was "Russians" that built them in the first place.
> If Zelensky were to give an order to launch hypothetical nukes, I'd think there would have been a coup and no launch.
Do you understand that nuclear weapons don't work like that, and leaders with nuclear buttons give orders to launch nuclear weapons every few months? And only they know they're using a training launch code; everyone else finds that out when the missiles does not fly off at the end of the launch sequence.
Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly.
That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion.
Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war.
The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded.
All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? Obviously not what the masses would have chosen (just look at what they did choose to do while living under Russian occupation - how many gave up their lives to fight back?). It's fundamentally why nuclear weapons as deterrant is largely fraudulent. They're solely viable as a last option against total oblivion at the hands of an enemy: it entails everyone dies, which means there has to be a good enough reason for everyone to die to justify use.
This isn’t how nukes would get used. They wouldn’t just fire them at cities to start with. It would most likely be something tactical, but perhaps end up escalating to insanity anyway
You don't leave room to escalate beyond use if nukes anymore. Russia's response to a tactical nuke would be to turn Ukraine into glass. All leaving additional escalation on the table does is make sure that you don't make good on your word to make everyone lose too.
> You don't leave room to escalate beyond use if nukes anymore. Russia's response to a tactical nuke would be to turn Ukraine into glass
Tactical nukes are in ambiguous territory. Russia launching a blizzard of nukes at Ukraine is difficult to distinguish from Russia nuking NATO. To turn Ukraine into glass, Russia would need to gamble that Washington and France trust it.
Sure, but that practically looks like Russia telling NATO what it's going to do, then most of NATO sitting at DEFCON 1 and being ready to respond the instant any Russian missiles look like they're not going towards Ukraine. NATO has no reason to inject themselves into a nuclear exchange more than diplomatically, and has the ability to respond well after they know where Russian missiles are going to land.
> that practically looks like Russia telling NATO what it's going to do
Which is indistinguishable from a Russian first strike. Russia glassing Ukraine is about as rational as it launching a first strike. So serious people would have to weigh–based on incomplete information–whether Putin is still in charge and if tens of millions of lives might be saved if we neutralise their silos first.
Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
> Which is indistinguishable from a Russian first strike.
It's really not. Once they've launched, it's pretty clear where they're going. All NATO needs is enough time to respond, and they absolutely have that.
> Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike. India for instance has officially said they "will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail". https://web.archive.org/web/20091205231912/http://www.indian... That's diplomatic speak for 'we reserve the right to glass you after any nuclear strikes in our territory'.
> It's really not. Once they've launched, it's pretty clear where they're going
What are you basing this on? Even back when warheads were strictly ballistic we couldn't do that. Russia's arsenal, today, contains maneuverable warheads.
Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
> All NATO needs is enough time to respond
This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
> If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike
I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalising nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
> What are you basing this on? Even back when warheads were strictly ballistic we couldn't do that. Russia's arsenal, today, contains maneuverable warheads.
> Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
Because while you can't tell how far a missile is going to go, you can tell how far it has gone. We're more than capable of tracking that a missile has gone past what would make sense for a Russian strike on Ukraine.
And you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not. Orbital mechanics and the burn patterns of ICBMs don't really let you redirect at the last minute, and the trajectory wouldn't really make sense.
> This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
> Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left. It's all either airborne or submarine delivery these days.
In this scenario the weapons are all already in the air, or on submarines where they've been as safe as they always are.
> I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalizing nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
Once again, the context here is a Ukrainian nuclear (even if tactical) first strike, and the subsequent Russian retaliation. "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized. Which is why a "tactical" nuclear strike would never make sense.
> you can tell how far it has gone. We're more than capable of tracking that a missile has gone past what would make sense for a Russian strike on Ukraine
Generally speaking, a bunch of Russian silos lighting up would put us at DEFCON 1. We’re not waiting until it passes Ukraine. It we want to engage any boost-phase ABM, we’re not going to let it. (Which leads to its own issues.)
> you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not
At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
> Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left
I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
> "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized
Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
> Generally speaking, a bunch of Russian silos lighting up would put us at DEFCON 1. We’re not waiting until it passes Ukraine. It we want to engage any boost-phase ABM, we’re not going to let it. (Which leads to its own issues.)
I already said they'd be at DEFCON 1.
> At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
Waiting might also keep you out of a nuclear war. They know exactly how long they can wait.
> I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
Convential forces are inconsequential wrt a full nuclear strike.
> Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
I already quoted you the exact policy from one of your examples.
> Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
If you were retaliating because NK had already set off a tactical nuke in your territory? Once again, the orbital mechanics don't work like that. Looking at it, the only thing you could hit from US silos launched so that they look like they're hitting North Korea would maybe be Hong Kong. Which once those missiles go past North Korea, China is already considering it a first strike and retaliating, so you didn't really gain anything.
Your comment highlights some tensions in deterrence theory, but it also oversimplifies over a few things.
If you notice, most countries with nuclear weapons also have published and publicized nuclear use policies. These documents usually highlight lines and conditions under which they will consider the use of nuclear weapons. This is by design. Ambiguity in nuclear policy invites miscalculation. Of course, you don't want complete certainty, lest you risk your enemy push right up to your line and no further; you want your lines defined, but a little blurry, so that the enemy is afraid to approach, much less cross. This is called strategic ambiguity. This is why Russia has been criticized a lot by policy experts for their repeated nuclear saber-rattling. They're making the line too blurry, and so Ukraine and their allies risk crossing that line accidentally, triggering something nobody truly wants to trigger.
In the case of a nuclear-armed Ukraine, given Russia's tendency to like to take over neighboring countries, they could include "threats to territorial integrity" as a threshold for going nuclear. They could also be a little more 'reasonable' and include "existential threat to the state" - which the initial 2022 invasion very much would fit.
What this looks like in practice is that Russia, in their calculations, would factor in the risk of triggering a nuclear response if they tried to take Ukrainian territory. Now, they may believe, as you seem to, that Ukraine would not risk the annihilation of its people over Crimea/Donbas. At which point, Russia would invade, and then Ukraine would have to decide. If Ukraine does not escalate, then they will lose deterrence and credibility for any future conflicts, assuming they survive as a state. If Ukraine does escalate, announces to Russia they will launch a nuclear attack to establish deterrence (reducing ambiguity that this is a full nuclear exchange), and then launches a single low-yield nuke at Russian invading troops, they place the ball back in Russia's court: Ukraine is clearly willing to employ nukes in this war - do you believe they won't escalate further, or do you believe they will launch their full arsenal if you continue?
This is essentially a simplified version of deterrence theory. The idea is to give the other side all possible opportunities to de-escalate and prevent a full nuclear exchange. If you do not back up your policy with actual teeth - by using nukes when you said you would - you're signalling something very dangerous.
This is also why nuclear-armed states do not tend to rely solely on their nuclear deterrence. They want a solid layer of conventional capabilities before they have to resort to their proverbial nuclear button. A strong conventional force keeps conflicts below the nuclear threshold, where deterrence theory tends to get very dangerous, very fast.
>The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded.
Well, Russian occupation usually means your town slowly undergoes mass extermination and genocide....
