NATO does it's thing in the MAD game... but it's involvement in any European regional conflict can only be problematic or ineffective.
Eg. a non-NATO EU army could get more involved in Ukraine, and maybe other wars int the Middle East and Africa to, if it weren't tied down to the big heavy NATO that would always go "but muh, can't do that, because global nuclear war".
The MAD thing really just applies to Russia (China too I guess?). France was in Africa pretty recently as a non-NATO involvement [1]. The United Kingdom faced off against Argentina in the 80s as well [2].
What do you envision a non-NATO EU army would be doing in Ukraine that isn't currently being done?
Without the United States backing up the EU wouldn't Russia just threaten EU member states and make them back off? It kind of seems to me that NATO is what's keeping Europe from breaking out into a war outside of just Ukraine. Why wouldn't Russia invade Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia? What would Germany do about it? What if Russia sank France's aircraft carrier? Would they still continue the fight? Not to mention the ability of the U.S. to do logistics to help European countries supply weapons to Ukraine to help them fight. Hell, nobody in Europe believed Russia was going to do it while the United States and United Kingdom were screaming bloody murder about it.
"The MAD thing really just applies to Russia (China too I guess?)."
And North Korea, and soon possibly Iran.
It's not clear how much longer the nuclear genie can be kept bottled up. Belarus is already asking for its nukes back from Russia. It's likely that other countries that feel threatened may start pursuing their own nuclear programs now that they see how vulnerable non-nuclear nations are to attack.
In the long term, technological advances will concentrate ever more power in the hands of the few, and MAD may start applying to other technologies, not just nukes.
To the largest extent, MAD applies to Russia and USA, they have by far the most nukes.
I am Czech and this war convinced me to be against our membership in NATO, which I think is ill-conceived, for the following reasons:
1. We should have our own defense, both on national and EU, and not rely on USA, who might have different interests, and is not always making us safer. USA might accidentally provoke Russia (their archenemy) or they might decide not to get involved in our defense for political reasons (actually, in democracy, it should be their right), leaving us exposed.
2. NATO causes proliferation of nuclear weapons, by expanding the trigger area, and also stations nukes in countries that don't own them. I favor a complete denuclearization of the world, IMHO MAD is a crazy theory that relies on rationality of people involved too much.
3. European NATO members are at this moment incapable of stronger (military) help to Ukraine, because of the nuclear (MAD) threat. NATO is now actually a reason why we cannot fight Russian invaders the same way Allies did fight against Nazi Germany.
> European NATO members are at this moment incapable of stronger (military) help to Ukraine, because of the nuclear (MAD) threat. NATO is now actually a reason why we cannot fight Russian invaders the same way Allies did fight against Nazi Germany.
MAD is only the problem here to the extent one assumes that the US nuclear shield, and MAD, still protects you from nuclear escalation by Russia in the event of nuclear escalation by Russia if you are out of NATO.
Otherwise, the problem shifts from MAD to unilateral assured destruction, which is an even bigger constraint on your action against Russia’s whims.
No, the hope is, if say, Germany and all the North and Eastern Europe is out of NATO, they would make their own coalition, which would be non-nuclear and could go to war directly, to defend Ukraine better. The MAD not working properly complicates the situation, yes, but then our only other choice is capitulation to Russia. As I said, long-term, I favor complete nuke ban in which NATO is not helping (largely due to lack of US willingness), unfortunately.
> No, the hope is, if say, Germany and all the North and Eastern Europe is out of NATO, they would make their own coalition, which would be non-nuclear and could go to war directly, to defend Ukraine better.
A non-nuclear coalition faces unilateral assured destruction against a major nuclear power unless the latter is deterred from nuclear escalation by an outside force (in practice, another major nuclear power.)
> As I said, long-term, I favor complete nuke ban
Sure, and once you have accomplished and permanently secured compliance with that, your non-nuclear coalition could work for situations like the present one (but then, all existing coalitions would also be non-nuclear.)
What makes you think Russia wouldn’t use nukes if an alliance of Western European states entered the war against them? Especially if they don’t have nukes to attack. Do you think Russia would just lose the war happily?
Precedent of not using nukes before (excluding Hiroshima), not wanting to lose nukes against nuclear states, but most importantly, us treating our enemy with a modicum of dignity, just like Allies treated the Germans. If we truly believe that we are freeing Russia from oppressive dictatorship that got them into a war, it shouldn't be a big problem.
I think all the game theory "rationality" is off the table anyways, because the very act of Ukrainian uprising against Russian invasion is already irrational (see ultimatum game). And the act of some other countries acting on Ukraine's behalf is irrational too.
MAD is just a THEORY. Very nice mathematically, but the real world is much more nuanced. And IMHO it's a scarecrow used to justify ownership of nuclear weapons, which are just horrible and should be banned.
Addendum: Hitler actually wanted to destroy Paris (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Decree), but it, almost by miracle (in reality it was brave work of different people involved) survived. We need to have a hope, but also get rid of all the nukes.
This is just so naive and unrealistic that I don't understand how anyone could believe it. You can't count on adversaries acting with dignity when they have core interests at stake. In the future more countries will acquire nuclear weapons, or ally with nuclear powers, specifically because of what happened to Ukraine.
I think you can make a better counter-argument than "it's unrealistic, people are stupid and they won't do it". The idea that more nukes are making the world safer is like the idea that everybody having a gun is making USA safer.
There has been some progress on this in recent years, see https://www.icanw.org/. And in fact the nuclear arsenals of USA and Russia have been (albeit too slowly) reducing over the past 30 years. But more governments (NATO expansion) relying on nukes for their security (which is a false sense) is a pretty big setback.
It's not a matter of stupidity at all, it's purely self interest. Giving up nukes is irrational when they're such an effective tool.
The USA and Russia reduced their arsenals primarily as a cost savings measure. Keeping the weapons systems operating is shockingly expensive. Modern delivery systems are more accurate so we can now ensure MAD with fewer warheads.
I think I already addressed "rational self-interest" (and how it can lead to stupidity) elsewhere in the thread. It's not an end-all be-all of human nature.
> Eg. a non-NATO EU army could get more involved in Ukraine,
That would trigger a nuclear bomb from Russia, the same as with NATO's involvement. When a nuclear power gets involved (and an EU army would posses nuclear weapons) then we enter the MAD scenario even if we want it or not. Re-labelling the Europe-based part of the NATO forces as "EU Army" I'm afraid won't foul the Russians.
You must accept that your adversary is rational if you aim to avoid nuclear war because if you believe that they're mad and can't behave rationally then you have only one logically-consistent option remaining.
> You must accept that your adversary is rational if you aim to avoid nuclear war
In practice, humans are neither entirely rational nor entirely irrational. Humans occupy different positions on this spectrum according to genetics, culture and circumstance.
If we want to avoid triggering escalation events that may lead to an eventual nuclear episode it seems sensible to avoid certain emotionally-charged and chaotic situations such as having the armed forces of nuclear-armed states or their close allies in direct combat with each other.
> Re-labelling the Europe-based part of the NATO forces as "EU Army" I'm afraid won't foul the Russians.
That's true, yes. But in an alternate reality, where NATO doesn't exist after Cold War, the European countries have built up their own defense (maybe shared to an extent to allow compatibility), and they create an ad-hoc pact based on situation presented, this would, I believe, give us better options to help defend Ukraine. And maybe, who knows, Putin wouldn't even go crazy being paranoid about NATO.
There is no reason for Russia to do so. Ukraine is not part of Russia. There already is a precedent for military operations in a country occupied by Russians (when Trump bombed Syria).
You could claim that Putin was bluffing, but he recently said that if NATO tries to take back crimea, he will use nukes and it will be bad for everyone.
France has nukes though. So I think you still have the MAD issue. Maybe France doesn't have enough of a stockpile to destroy all humanity 8x over, but not sure how much that changes the game theory.
> Maybe France doesn't have enough of a stockpile to destroy all humanity 8x over, but not sure how much that changes the game theory.
I think we currently have 2 submarines with 150 nukes each around the world. Probably not enough to end humanity, but enough to ensure mutual destruction.
Yup, deterrence theory is quite interesting and every country has different strategies. One doesn't need hundreds of nukes to deter an enemy from nuking them.
For example is a large difference between massive retaliation [1] which the US uses to deter North Korea, and minimal deterrence [2] used by China (during the cold war), or Pakistan currently.
Secondly it's not just the amount of nukes that influences deterrence, it's how one says they will use them. For example China has pledged "no first use" from the moment they got their first nuclear weapons, whereas the Russia and the US both adopted official policies stating the right of first use.
Modern ballistic missiles have multiple independent warheads. For example the French M51 has "6 to 10" independently targetable warheads. The submarine carries "only" 16 of these missiles.
They wouldn't have to share them with an EU army, they could leave them for "national use" only and avoid any possibility of escalation.
Now the EU Army being a non-nuclear entity would make anyone using nuclear army against them "the villain" and onward one could easily justify using "all means" (there's stuff there I'd say even nastier than nuclear...) against them, so a "moral" deterrent could work fine in practice (since everyone knows you're technologically capable of developing the really nasty stuff if anything motivates you to...).
Which "stuff" is even nastier than nuclear? Chemical weapons aren't very effective against modern militaries. Biological weapons are nearly as dangerous to the user as to the target.
probably it's more like sharing "the COST of maintaining and upgrading it" :)) ...EU Army funds would probably be better spend on tech for urban/guerrila warfare + next gen UAVs, eg. stuff you'd actually end up using in a real war!
Heck Russia would probably have the military capability to actually win this war cleanly and quickly of they didn't have to invest billions in their strategic weapons that will (hopefully) never be used. If the current world leaders are competent, they are probably only pretending to properly maintain and upgrade strategic WMDs while covertly diverting the funds to other secret operations... If WMDs are actually used, we've all lost anyways, so it probably only makes sense to keep a huuuuuge stash of the cheapest + most destructive and suffering-maximizing stuff around (I imagine some hellish bio thing) for pure revenge end-game.
Eg. a non-NATO EU army could get more involved in Ukraine, and maybe other wars int the Middle East and Africa to, if it weren't tied down to the big heavy NATO that would always go "but muh, can't do that, because global nuclear war".