EDIT: For clarification, I feel that the current situation on the ground in the war (vs. say a year ago) might indicate that an attack on Russia might not result in instant nuclear war, which is what prompted my question. I am well aware of the “instant nuclear Armageddon” opinion.
Serious question. I don’t need to be called stupid. I realize nuclear war is bad. Thanks!
nuclear war
There’s a problem with your premise. NATO (much like the UN) is not a military force of its own. Rather, it’s an agreement between many nations, each with their own militaries. There is no NATO army. There is an agreement of the United States (with its army), the UK (with its army). Germany (with its army), etc.
Each of them could independently invade. They could even negotiate an agreement to invade. But that would have limited impact on NATO. The big thing would be that any invading country loses the agreed upon defenses of the rest.
That’s rather pedantic, but I guess it’s a valid point, so I clarified my question to mean what you already know I was asking.
Technically, NATO has multiple multinational battalion battlegroups at Russia’s border in Poland and the Baltic States, although they consist of only a couple of thousand soldiers.
Assuming no one nukes the world or that all air defenses work, it’d be a mess. There’s no force in human history that can stop NATO in a traditional war. (Maybe the Mongols because they’re always the exception.) But it’s very likely China, North Korea, Iran, and others would be much harder to conquer/occupy at the same time.
It would be widespread suffering in most of the world. The truth is that war is obsolete as a means of accomplishing 99% of political goals. Most of the world would descend into chaos and civil war. Food would be scarce and in times of scarcity, the drunkest, most violent people usually end up in charge. You’d have warlordism in the vast, vast majority of the world.
The natural state of humanity isn’t trade and property rights. It’s warlords offering protection in exchange for whatever they need. No one “wins” wars in 2024. Groups like ISIS would thrive, not law and order.
Easy way to kill a country: Disrupt the critical infrastructure at multiple points.
Just imagine how crippled we are without AWS, Azure, Cloudflare and Gcloud. Kill electricity, damage water supplies and destroy medication supply and the chaos is perfect.Gotta think of the Mongols.
It’s kinda sad to see Mongolia now. Not a lot going on, almost completely dependent on China.
That’s what they want you to think.
As long as we’re living in the past, let’s revive the golden horde to deal with Russia
Hmmm. Ok, let’s.
Vote for me as your warlord plz!
It’s nearly impossible to mobilize a large force quickly, or covertly. There would be plenty of warning, especially if the US is involved because there’s an ocean in the way in either direction.
If Western nations decide to attack Russia, I doubt the conflict will stay limited to Russia.
- North Korea will probably support Russia militarily very quickly. They’re already supplying weapons, they have a close relationship, and they’re reasonably secure against counterattack because China would react very badly if NK were attacked directly.
- Iran will join with Russia, but uncertain whether Iran will actually deploy its military in Europe (probably not), or take the opportunity to pursue their own goals in the middle east while the west is distracted.
- China will probably play neutral for awhile, but continue to trade with Russia and sell them military equipment. China is circumspect, they won’t jump into a conflict for ideological reasons, though they’ll certainly quote ideological reasons in their propaganda. They will join the conflict when it benefits them and doesn’t present extreme risk. Most likely they will pursue their own goals in the south China sea (Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines) while the US is busy elsewhere.
An attack from the West on Russia will balloon into a global conflict. It will be bad for everyone, even if it stays limited to conventional warfare.
I agree with your prediction of China’s behavior (and especially their motivations) 100%.
It will be bad for northern hemisphere *
This point of view is at best myopic.
A more complete description would be ignorant, narrow-minded and reckless.
It is a complete crapshoot because it all fepends on whether thechain of people between Putin and the missles are more interested in going out with him.
What I expect to happen with an invasion:
NATO invades and quickly disables a ton of Russian military objectives. This is because Russia is already flailling with Ukraine due to lack of discipline and outdated tech that theybhave mostly lost already. Plus they can’t do waves of conscript tactics at a moment’s notice.
Putin loses it and tries to launch the missiles knowing it is the end of hos time in power. His military advisors refuse the order and stage a coup, killing Putin and blaming NATO, then fight a half hearted conventional defense for show before negotiating a ceasefire.
But that is just my thought and the risk of a nuclear launch makes it a terrible idea to launch a surprise invasion as some nuclear sub might respond tonthe invasion if their cummunication is cut off.
Considering that Ukraine is advancing inside Russia without so much problems, probably bad, for Russia
If Russia uses nukes, Russia, the state, will cease to exist. The Oligarchs know this, Putin knows this. Only an existential threat to the Oligarchs and Putin would result in a nuclear strike. And that’s why there was no nuclear response to the Kursk incursion so far.
In addition It’s also not a good idea to nuke a place you intend to occupy.
There’s also a risk that the weapons have been so poorly maintained that they’d fail silently or spectacularly, which would not be great for Russia’s end of the mutually part of mutually assured.
I bet they fizzle. By weight, tritium is one of the most expensive substances on the planet; do you think the people in charge of refilling the nukes have actually been doing so, or just stealing the money?
I do remember hearing that half of the users nukes were decoys that were only found out after the USSR fell so I do wonder if Russia is still bluffing with decoy nukes or if the decoy nukes were more prominent than we thought considering the a amount of fraudulent conventional weapons that the Ukraine war has revealed I suspect that Russia is still heavily dependent on bluffing with decoy nukes and the few that are intended to be real are poorly maintained or poorly made
If Putin get shoot in the head?, the oligarchs don’t like him, and there’s a gigantic amount of people wanting to get his place
Pakistan and India have enough nukes to cause major famine across the world. Russia alone has enough nukes to nearly if not surely end humanity even if only 1% of the human population were killed directly from a nuclear explosion. I think the only way NATO could take Russia is if they were to somehow disarm their nukes.
Also, we have to consider alliances. Russia and North Korea are closely aligned. If the entire world went to war with NK, it is still possible that South Korea would be devastated because they have setup their entire military to shell the fuck out of South Korea at a moment’s notice and have an extensive underground tunnel system for retaliatory purposes. However, it’s possible that NK would value self-preservation over maintaining it’s alignment with a Russia that will definitely not exist anymore.
Not to argue, but shit hitting the fan on this scale makes loyalties much harder to predict.
I wonder what would be required to surreptitiously disable most or all Russian nukes
Well the good news is that we do have some ballistic missile defence in place. The bad news is that we don’t really have enough of it. We could probably shoot down a couple hundred nukes… I’m highly doubtful that we could shoot every nuke out of the sky, if Russia decided to unleash everything they had.
I’m imagining some sort of three-pronged strategy. One, espionage to convince people in the nuclear chain of command to disregard any orders to fire nukes. This would involve converting people that have likely been thoroughly vetted by the Russian government. It would also be risky in that all it would take is for one person to snitch for the Russian government to catch on.
Two, a cyber attack that disarms nuclear weapons firing systems. This would likely involve gaining physical access to many launch systems, infecting their computer systems, then letting the infection stay dormant without getting caught yet somehow activating it when necessary. Say for example they run a dummy drill without nukes, the infection could be discovered.
And three, a interception system for nukes that are launched. This would be the most risky because it would involve intercepting nukes immediately after being fired. For ICBMs, we’d have to get them right after launch since once they’re in space, it’s nearly impossible to intercept, especially after the warheads separate from the rocket. Submarine-launched weapons might be easier to intercept if they’re strapped to a rocket until detonation. Bombs would be nearly impossible, but it would be a lot easier to intercept the planes they’re on.
Overall, I would guess we’d be able to stop some Russian nukes from hitting NATO targets, but not all of them. It would be a wild guess to calculate the percentage that get intercepted/through. Russia has about 1,710 nuclear weapons deployed. Let’s say they fire half of them as a retaliatory strike saving the other half as defense in case the retaliation stops a NATO attack. If only 1% of that half make it through, that’s still
858.5 nuclear strikes.If only a 10th of that were aimed at major cities, that would be 8 major NATO cities that are obliterated and then require major recovery efforts.Not one country is prepared to recover from a nuclear strike because that’s virtually all natural disasters in one. Imagine the devastation if London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. There would not only be major loss, but the rest would have to dedicate immense resources to helping those areas recover, further pulling resources away from defense and counterattack.
We would also have to consider that the other 75 nukes attacked infrastructure and military targets, so we’d be severely incapacitated.tl;dr: stopping and surviving a Russian nuclear attack is practically impossible
I like it. 1% of 850 is 8.5 though!
Good catch! I’m still waking up this morning 🥱
That depends on how well maintained their nuke arsenal is. I can see a couple launches that will be shot down but other countries would not rick nukes for the sake of Russia.
Nuclear annihilation. Got nothing to lose at that point
But I am le tired!
The end of the northern hemisphere*
Well, nuclear winter would certainly solve that global warming problem for everyone left.
what are the likely outcomes?
Putin launches nukes, huge amount of civilians die, russian military is crushed within next few months. NATO wins at the cost of horrible loss of civilians killed by russian nukes. World economy shrinks considerably
So, this is the same analysis I read like a year ago. Do you feel that the current situation is not different enough now to indicate an alternate course of events?
Do you feel that the current situation is not different enough
Putin has the exact same number of nukes and ICBMs as before. This is the main factor, and I don’t see it changing any time soon
I’m not who you asked, but I’ll answer anyway: no
Fair enough!
Because Putin is a “So much for your fucking canoe!” kind of leader. I think most world leaders are if they have the chance. Look what we still say about France for surrendering in WW2, they get plenty of mockery despite being the very nation that helped the US exist in the first place.
So the default is that the worst of the rich and powerful like Putin have the relationship with their citizens and country that a narcissistic, severe domestic abuser has with their partner:
“If I can’t have you, no one will…”
About those nukes…
I’m sure they were kept at the same tip top condition as the rest of the russian military complex’s equipment.
Possibly. But even if 99% of their strategic arsenal is junk, they’d still be left with 17 working warheads. Who’s gonna risk 17 large cities wiped out?
Poorly maintained nukes, that make me feel better, thanks
For more humorous (but still serious) answers try asking in !noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works
I’ve never posted there, but damn I’m glad I found them. Highly recommended.
kinda depends on what china would do.
china is one of the only reasons russia is still standing on their feet. if china wanted, russia would be out of ukraine tomorrow.
nato vs china is ww3
Short answer: the end of the world.
The resultant nuclear war would kill a good portion of Earth’s population, but it’s likely far more would die from the chaos of civilisation being instantly forced back to the iron age by the EMP frying every silicon transistor.
I used to be a Boy Scout. That just means I’ll die a bit slower.
The end of the northern hemisphere*
For anyone interested in some light fiction on the subject, may I direct you to On the Beach by Neville Shute.
The film Threads is also relevant.
