this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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The first and primary reason for NATO existing: "deterring Soviet expansionism". Distance makes a lot of difference. 30 minutes for a missile from the US to reach Russia. 2-3 minutes for one from Europe to reach them. That's enough of a difference for people to get into bunkers or not. You are being disingenuous in not admitting that bringing nuclear weapons across an ocean and placing them next door will be perceived as very threatening, regardless of whatever explanations are given. Think about how asymmetric that power is too. The US reaches Russia in 2-3 minutes with their nuclear weapons, while it would take Russia 30 minutes to do the same. It means Russia would effectively be largely wiped out before they would have a chance to return fire to the US.
Since you're just not willing to admit that such "defensive" moves can feel very threatening to another country despite evidence and logic, there's no point in discussing further.
I haven't mentioned a submarine in any of my posts. You're the one who brought them up. I'm not concerned about the scenario that I described because the country I live in doesn't have nuclear weapons from a distant foe nearby. We were discussing why Russia would legitimately feel that these things were a serious national security threat, but I see you're intent on sealioning. I've had enough of it, so I will not be responding further.
Edit: on second thought, I've blocked you since you're not willing to have an honest discussion.
Edit 2: unblocked you because I decided my threshold for blocking someone is higher than this. I just won't discuss politics with you in the future.
You don't understand MAD. MAD is what keeps nuclear war from happening. The USA consistently has a position that they must work to establish the capabilities to WIN a nuclear war, and one of the key tenets of that is undermining MAD.
The way to undermine MAD is two-fold:
So while you are correct that people won't really survive a nuclear war, it's the USA that believes they can win and they have been hard at work for decades to create the conditions for them to do so. They believe that even if a couple nukes make it through to the US, that would probably still be a victory for them. They believe they can wipe entire countries off the face of the earth in exchange for losing a city or two. That's the USA.
The USA constantly reminds everyone that they reserve the right to strike first with nukes. It's part of their military doctrine. So every other nation has a responsibility to their own people and in fact to their neighboring countries to prevent the US from furthering it's development of both forward missile deployments and forward missile defense systems. Both of those things make it more and more likely that the USA will launch a nuclear first-strike under their stated doctrine because they will have achieved or believed they have achieved an asymetry that undermines MAD. Every nuclear nation, and every nation that is under the aegis of one of those nations, is responsible for ensuring MAD remains the game state.
No. I understood your point. You're wrong. You think "nukes next door" is an argument about distance keeping a population safe. In the casus belli for the Russian SMO, that's not the point. In essence, you are making a strawman. The reasoning is NOT that the nukes are too close. The reasoning is that nuclear capabilities are too close, and those capabilities include missile defense, delivery time, and delivery volume. That is to say, the problem is the undermining of MAD, which the US has as its military doctrine and has had for a few decades. No one else in the world wants to undermine MAD except the USA.
Proximity is one of the KEY components of the USA strategy for undermining MAD.
I explained it already, I'll explain it again. You can read about this stuff, you know. You can also just ask yourself why the US would spend the money and the time to deploy nuclear capabilities encircling Russia and China when they could save the money and just do it from Kansas and Texas with same effect.
To overwhelm missile defenses, you need a large number of missiles flying at each target and you need a large number of targets. This means that the more nukes you have, the better. However, it also means that the more locations your nukes are in the better, because it means your opponent must target ALL of your locations, not just a few. By having nukes in more locations than Russia and China does, the USA begins to undermine MAD because it creates an asymetry. But this doesn't cover why closeness matters, only why distribution matters.
To reduce reaction time, you need shorter flight times and longer periods of ambiguity. The less time your opponent has to react, the less effective their response will be. When the US deploys forward nukes, it creates asymetry again. Yes, everyone can load a nuke on a submarine and deploy the submarine, but their capacity is limited. Land-based nukes allow for much higher volume - at least one order of magnitude higher. The asymetry emerges such that when the US chooses to strike first it will give its opponents only about 5 minutes to react before the first missile hits, whereas should Russia choose to strike first the US would have nearly half an hour to react. This reaction time is critical to successful enactment of the MAD doctrine.
There are other points, but let me pause here to combine these two. With high volume, high distribution, and low response time, the USA already undermines MAD substantially. It creates the conditions for a nuclear first-strike where the US is guaranteed to destroy a substantial portion of the retaliatory capabilities of its opponents, which means that mutual destruction becomes less assured. When mutual destruction becomes less assured, you get US military strategists considering how else they can push the envelope to undermine MAD and "win a nuclear war".
Also remember that a retaliatory launch of nukes under the MAD doctrine is not as simple as just saying it. First, the targets of the first-strike have to detect that a nuke is inbound. This is a matter of analysis. It's not like nukes have radar signatures or transponders that identify their payload. Time is critical to determine whether or not nukes are heading your way so you can enact MAD.
Because of this particular problem, most nuclear countries have automatic launch capabilities that trigger when they detect nuclear explosions. This system is a fail safe to ensure MAD. It doesn't work if the first-strike is dense enough and fast enough to take out all nuclear facilities in the first round.
This is the first major step in undermining MAD - high volume, fast delivery speed, globally distributed = able to overwhelm defenses and disable retaliation in a first-strike.
The second major step in undermining MAD is missile defense. This is, again, why proximity matters.
Missile detection facilities. By placing nuclear missile detection capabilities in a circle around targeted nations, the USA is able to detect and track missiles at the earliest possible time, far earlier than their opponents can.
Missile defense capabilities. By surrounding their targets with missile defense batteries, the USA is able to track AND destroy missiles on their path to their US targets. After a nuclear first-strike by the US, one that has destroyed a significant portion of the nuclear launch capabilities of their targets, whatever remains to enforce the doctrine of MAD will be smaller in volume, easily tracked, and the US will have nearly 30 minutes to shoot every single one of them down.
And that is how proximity undermines MAD.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
You're just not willing to accept that I may even possibly have valid points and are now laughing and accusing me of dishonesty. That's enough. Like I said in my last post, I no longer wish to discuss this with you.
Thanks for clarifying. I think there may be a misunderstanding about my argument. I'm not saying that distance necessarily makes us safer from my own perspective. I could agree with you that mutually assured destruction is probably the end result regardless of distance. The point I'm making is that for military and national security experts, distance (and consequently time before being hit) is assuredly considered a factor, despite what you or I may think. This article may provide some useful background on these concepts. There may be better articles out there but I happened to run across this one when I searched for when ICBMs became viable.
I've mentioned this before, but the US nearly completely lost it when they found out that there were Russian nukes in Cuba in 1962. The same exact scenario would be just as alarming to the US today. Trying to wave away Russia's concerns with this type of scenario is unrealistic. Have you ever watched Dr. Mearsheimer speak? If you haven't, it's worth looking on Youtube for his name and Russia or Ukraine. He is a renowned scholar in international relations who has a realistic perspective of West-Russia relations and who speaks very clearly about it.