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Trump’s Iran war will reinforce North Korea’s view that nuclear weapons are the only path to security
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Costs less than defending your land with conventional weapons and lives.
As long as you plan on nuking someone I guess. Have you ever seen the infographic from the Cold War when everyone launches their nukes? Mutually assured destruction ringing any bells? What kind of sovereignty do you expect to have of your nuclear wasteland?
they exist to prevent conflict at all because everyone knows the consequences of using them.
As I said to the other guy, I’m pretty sure the people in charge of the United States right now would happily let their people get hit by three nukes so they could new nuke you back. It’s a win win for them.
I'm not so sure about that since it's still possible for them to hit stuff and people they care about even though they may not care about the country or its people in general.
With the administrations effort to collapse the value of the US dollar, I think we may be getting to the point where they stopped caring about the stock market gains too. Which would make them irrational actors. They already own most of the stock market anyway. They can crash the market and still control the companies.
Well as soon as oil prices surged and markets dipped, Trump switched from "war could go on forever" to "almost done". I guess it remains to be seen if it is only a rhetoric switch but if that was the case it wouldn't help for long. The less certain thing is whether Trump can even get the strait to reopen by withdrawing at this point.
They only prevent conflict if you have enough to annihilate your enemy. We have a full nuclear umbrella over the globe so no matter how many nukes you throw at us we are still going to be around to throw them back at you. 3 nukes won’t save you. 3,000 might?
There's still a significant deterrent effect even if you'd "only" lose a few major cities worth while others stay around. There's also potential for extended responses by other nuclear weapons states that further increase deterrence for such a scenario.
I’m trying to think of how Ukraine acquiring nukes would work with Russia? Do you think Ukraine having a nuke would deter Russia or would it make them an existential threat and have Russia nuke them? Let’s look at this from two different countries stand points and take the USA out of it for a second.
That would depend on the details of the hypothetical. Certainly if Ukraine was able to develop a credible threat with first strike survivability before Russia became aware I would expect Russia to be forced to move towards de-escalation and diplomacy because their major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg which Putin has tried to shield completely from all effects of the war would be in danger.
Lacking that and with a credible ability to eliminate the nuclear weapon completely with a pre-emptive strike Russia would probably do it even if it meant nuclear strikes against Ukraine.
That’s basically how I have it gamed out, although I think the situation would be wildly unpredictable. Throw some bad intel and paranoia into the mix and it gets quite messy. I’m obviously just some dude from America, but if I was Ukrainian I would be really nervous about the results of going nuclear. Personally I’d like my country to get rid of more nukes and stop encouraging the world to build more. I understand the perspective, but I think it’s short sighted and dangerous. I hope the people freely advocating for it on the Internet, have thought through it as much as you have.
The future comes down to one thing - management.
In science, we prefer observational to speculative evidence.
If you prefer observational evidence do some research on a proper nuclear counter and check out what happened to those USSR nukes.
Russia had about 10,000 of the biggest bombs in the world. Same doctrine just splatter anything close to being considered a friend of the US. So like it’s not having a nuke. It’s having enough nukes to outnuke the next guy and an survival plan for when your whole civilization turns to glass
OK well the USA will launch 3200 nuclear missiles at just about anything that threatens it with a nuclear missile. We will basically hit every known nuclear missile site and every related population center.. so I guess when you are thinking about nuking the United States before they invade you…. Just know they will nuke the entire world and they will dump more nukes on you. Then you could create in a lifetime.. that’s our actual nuclear doctrine
Works both ways, while the USA is thinking about invading another country with nuclear weapons they have to know that will lead to nukes from that country hitting their major cities which will probably make them think twice.
Then the discussion moves to pre-emptive strikes which have the same problem if the other country already has nukes. Eventually we end up in this situation where some might see even pursuing a nuclear weapons technology as justification for a war of aggression like we're seeing in Iran so you certainly need to be careful during that phase but once you get there you're in a much safer place than you used to.
The US is a big place, and we starve our citizens for fun. I don’t think the higher ups would care if you dropped a handful of bombs up.
A true nuclear deterrent is a combination of icbms and sub launched missles. A lot of them. I’m thinking 300 before I even start to get scared. 3,000 and I’m shitting bricks. If you build 3 nukes and think that will stop the USA from invading it’s just nonsense. They’d happily let those hit so they could glass their enemies and start the apocalypse.
You’re dealing with mad men.
They'd care because it's not just the poor citizens you'd sacrifice to the gods of nuclear fire but also the very important ones with money and political connections. And the stock markets would really sink, the thing that gets Trump to TACO out every time.
Of course you want as strong a deterrent as possible but from estimates I've read North Korea's 10 nukes with MIRVs and decoy launches would very likely still be effective enough to extract a very serious price for invading.
Obviously if you just assume there is not even the slightest bit of rational self-interest from the actors involved, you've already lost humanity to nukes anyway.
That’s what I’m saying we have systems in place to save the important people. The same people that will press the button.
So you’re gonna gamble on the fact that America cares about its citizens getting nuke or not. I can tell you from the ground floor of America. They do not care if we get nuked. That would certainly help them proceed with their planned goals..
I totally agree with the theory if we were all dealing with rational actors, then yes, having a few nuclear weapons as a method of deterrent probably not a terrible idea. But the reality is nuclear powers already pretty concentrated and the powers that be don’t want anyone else getting the power. The American military complex is not being run by rational actors. Nuclear weapons are best at deterring military peers. The us military has no peer. You’d need to be building nukes for 100 year to catch up and that shouldn’t be a global goal.