Quote:
Originally Posted by IliketoPuck
The way to not have nuclear war is to make it extremely clear that if Putin uses nuclear weapons his dream of a Russian empire ends, because Russia does not exist any longer.
You give in to him now, he takes what he wants in the future because he knows you'll blink.
Stare him right in the face and tell him if you pull the trigger, the first response is going to land right on top of his little 5'5" head, and then the rest of his country ten seconds later.
He blinks.
Maybe he doesn't.
But you can't be the one to blink first, otherwise NATO and the entire premise behind it falls apart.
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But no one actually believes that's what would happen. If Russia drops a tactical nuclear weapon on Ukrainian troops, the US isn't going to nuke Moscow in response. The risk is more step-by-step escalation:
Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons -> NATO conducts air strikes on Russian troops in Ukraine and sinks the Black Sea fleet -> Russia uses more small nuclear weapons in Ukraine in response -> NATO starts conducting strikes on more Russian military targets -> and so on.
It's also important to remember the stakes for each country. The US doesn't
really care all that much about Ukraine and Russia knows it. So Russia likely thinks that by pushing the envelope and making the risks unpalatable for the west, they can get NATO to back off.
So is the answer to never back down in the face of nuclear bluster? I don't know, I guess it depends how real the threat of nuclear war is. But I don't buy the Domino Theory 2.0 people are talking about. The Western allies handed over control over Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union after WWII, but NATO was never under serious threat. And if somehow Russia gets most of what they want out of this war, that doesn't mean they're dumb enough to attack NATO.