- US officials are considering letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons, The New York Times reports.
- Ukraine says it’s necessary to fight cross-border attacks.
- But fears of crossing Russia’s red lines have long made the US hesitate.
The US has barred Ukraine from striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons.
But that may be about to change. The New York Times on Thursday reported that US officials were debating rolling back the rule, which Ukraine has argued severely hampers its ability to defend itself.
The proposed U-turn came after Russia placed weapons across the border from northeastern Ukraine and directed them at Kharkiv, the Times reported, noting that Ukraine would be able to use only non-American drones to hit back.
The Times reported that the proposal was still being debated and had yet to be formally proposed to President Joe Biden.
Actually, we can and should. Here’s why…
Russia’s nukes are mostly 40 year old warheads on 50 year old delivery systems. These systems have been maintained by notorious black market scalpers who have somehow managed to sell massive amounts of valuable rocket fuels, nav computers and other unique parts on the black market over the last several decades. We can be sure the launch, guidance and detonation failure rates would be extremely high. High enough that, even without intervention, a long-range attack is very unlikely to be successful.
Now, factor in the decades of aggressive research and spending the west has focused on mitigating nuclear threats, with a high focus on Russian systems. While it’s always best to avoid the attempt if possible, Russia has almost zero chance of posing a serious threat to the west. The threat to Ukraine, however, is a bit higher as they may (smartly) choose very simple delivery methods instead of what we would be able to defend against. But, that still requires a ton to go right and could cause the U.S. or the EU to become aggressive. Putin will do almost anything to avoid that outcome.
So, the smart money on expediting the end to this war and minimizing casualties is to have a policy to almost always call Putin’s bluff. He has a very weak hand and has shown it to pretty much everyone at the table.
1% success rate * 5,580
Still more nukes than I want to deal with today. Nobody off of Lemmy/Reddit seriously suggests this.
Y’all are gonna get us all killed.
Nah, it’s part of the game, he’s just sending a healthy message that western governments also have their share of deluded drunken idiot medvedev equivalents, so only start nuking if you’re sure you have absolutely nothing to lose, because that’s what you’re going to end up with.
Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice but it’s about whether chuds will end the world through overt jingoism and aggression or libs though a lack of self-awareness of how jingoistic they are combined with intentionally deluding themselves about the state of the world.
Fucking Americans. Fucking post-communist Russia too (which is also America’s fault). We coulda had an enemy properly terrified of a nuclear exchange and committed to peaceful coexistence but noooo, we gotta open up those markets and now the omnicidal liberals want to risk destroying the world rather than give up a bit of land none of them could find on a map three years ago. Liberals are functionally indistinguishable from someone screaming “Blood for the blood god! Skulls for his skull throne!” except they know how to be all polite about it. A kinder, gentler global thermonuclear war.
Thank God the capitalists who rule this country don’t give a shit what their supporters think or all humanity would be dead in a week. Sure they’re bringing about the climate change apocalypse but at least that’s more delayed than a nuclear apocalypse and I guess that’s where the bar is these days.
Sorry I’m low-key drunkposting rn so I’m telling the truth more directly than usual.
If authoritarian dictators can do whatever they want via nuclear blackmail, we’re already all doomed anyway
The world will be split into two camps: countries with nukes or otherwise under some sort of nuclear umbrella, and countries who are desperately rapidly developing a nuclear program, the third group who doesn’t have nukes and isn’t rushing to develop them will have already been annexed by the first group
What we have here are people convincing themselves that nuclear war is either not a possibility at all, or a tolerable outcome. That’s a incredibly dangerous and delusional perspective.
There is a middle ground between “letting nuclear armed countries do whatever they want” and “completely disregarding any and all risks of escalation.” The entire postwar order of the past 70 years has been grounded on that. If those lunatics ever get anywhere near the levers of power, then they will provoke nuclear war, maybe not with this specifically (maybe), but if they’re taking that kind of cavalier and deluded approach in general, then it’s only a matter of time.
If you go all-in every hand, you will eventually bust.
And if every country on earth suddenly starts playing a hand, someone is going to bust, so pick your poison I guess
Appease thugs with nukes and proliferate nuclear weapons around the world adding dozens more dice to be cast every conflict, or call their bluff and risk them actually using them
That’s not even remotely how poker works, at all (or geopolitics).
It’s okay if you don’t understand the analogy
When everyone has nukes, all it takes is one country busting for us all to lose
Indeed.
Iraq (no nukes) - armies flattened and US-installed government running the show.
North Korea (nukes) - stern finger-wagging by Democrats and angry rhetoric followed by hand jobs from Trump.
Pakistan (got nukes violating treaties) - serious frowning by US until we needed them for our pointless “war on terror” in Afghanistan, then all was forgiven and forgotten.
Iran (desperately seeking nukes) - agreed to stop their efforts for a hot minute until Trump rolled the deal back, showing that US is an unreliable partner and not to be trusted.
Overall the message is clear: get nukes as fast as you can and you’ll be safe to torture and oppress your people. The west in general and the US in particular doesn’t have any real efforts to stop you (although watch your opsec and don’t use Israeli USB sticks you find lying around…).