Ukraine, Russia, and the West

If we are getting houses flattened here in US and Canada, you are probably better off dead.

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This is definitely not true. If Putin launches a huge first strike, it’s virtually guaranteed that there will be a massive response. If Putin uses a tactical nuke, it’s not guaranteed that there will be a massive response, because a massive attack on Russia would guarantee a massive retaliation. The goal of nuclear escalation would be to force the West to choose between doing nothing and destroying everyone. That’s a tough choice. If Putin nukes the West, the choice is between the West being destroyed and the West and Russia both being destroyed. That’s no choice at all (for the people who would actually make that choice, by design).

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Arrest him and try him for war crimes/turn him over to Ukraine.

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Man watching that video and I can’t help but compare it to all the videos I’ve seen of police violence used against protesters in the US. Like, the Russian soldiers there clearly saw more humanity in the Ukrainians than US police see in BLM protestors or a whole host of other groups of fellow countrymen.

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Yeah I think he uses a “little” one to raise the stakes demonstrate his willingness to burn this bitch down. I think the best response to that is to keep doing what we’re doing.

Escalate with limited tactical nukes with the goal of deescalating is maybe Soviet/Russian nuclear doctrine from what I’ve read.

Does that mean whichever side fires the first tactical nuke has the escalation advantage?

I don’t think so. Tit-for-tat seems like a pretty good counter.

https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1506986809380962306?s=20&t=6YRCjI0hH0huBU72y8gy8Q

The White House also announced it would allow as many as 100,000 Ukrainians to enter the U.S., with a focus on those who are most vulnerable. The administration is also prepared to offer more than $1 billion in additional funding toward humanitarian assistance and $11 billion over the next five years to address worldwide food security threats after the disruptions to the Russian and the Ukrainian agricultural industries.

https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1506900560167026690

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This port is a little southwest of Mariupol, not in Crimea or Russia, for anyone curious about the reach of the Ukrainian military here.

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Amphibious assault on Odessa is going smoothly, I see.

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I very much disagree with this take. If you game it out, if he used one tactical nuke on the battlefield in Ukraine, the likely response from NATO would probably be a no fly zone, missile/air strikes on Russian targets in Ukraine, and possibly a tactical nuke fired at a Russian military target outside of Ukraine. Perhaps at a naval target, perhaps at a very remote base. If Putin used a tactical nuke on a NATO target in a NATO country, then the NATO response would likely be tit for tat, a tactical nuke at a military target in Russia.

There would be at least one or two off ramps before full scale end of the world nuclear armageddon.

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U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals are designed so that they can’t be destroyed by a pre-emptive strike, with warheads in silos, on board stealth bombers, and in submarines (and for all I know in space). It’s not clear how NATO/U.S. would respond to use of a tactical nuclear weapon by Putin, but it almost certainly would not be a full out attack on Russia.

Yeah. Both sides have a dead man’s switch so that if certain inputs aren’t made at a certain time, the system assumes that all political and military leadership has been incapacitated and it’s gg life on earth.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1507033950224805889?s=21

Something along these lines is what I’ve assumed is most likely. Russia using a tactical nuke (or maybe chem/bio weapon) means NATO unloads full air power on any and every Russian target in Ukraine, but no strikes inside Russia and no ground troops.

Anyone worry in this dvr/podcast world that things will just end with no warning?

https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1507044017279803394?s=21

If Putin had just been reading this thread, he would have known to pull those dudes back.