President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that the possibility of ending the war or achieving a truce in Ukraine hinges on Europe’s readiness to take a tougher stance on Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that the possibility of ending the war or achieving a truce in Ukraine hinges on Europe’s readiness to take a tougher stance on Russia.
Nukes are very useful… to deter global powers from waging global wars or to keep someone from full out destroying your country. That’s what kept global powers from waging full out wars for the better part of a century now and stick to small scale conflicts and proxy wars.
They are however indeed useless in a conflict with a direct neighbour in an area of only several hundred kilometers rught at your border. Tactical nukes will not be used out of the blue because it instantly escalates to a global war then. They will also not be used on territory you plan to occupy and use for yourself. Strategic long range nukes are a deterrent to not let a conflict escalate to a global war, sure.
Are you assuming that Ukraine would have nuked Moscow after warning them against occopying parts of their territory? Then you are probably now wondering why the hell Russia did not nuke Kyiv when they invaded the Kursk region… Yeah, exactly. Because you simply don’t use nukes close to home ever unless you can live with the next stage of global nuclear war. Not the small ones because their value does not compare to the massive negatives of the following escalation, not the big ones because that nuclear war is literally the end. Not only for those who started it.
Russia has consistently talked about launching nukes in response to various red lines, and their sabre rattling has been effective in moderating everyone’s tone even when it was blatant lies.
I don’t take seriously the idea of either side actually using nukes, and I never suggested it. The point I was making was about the damage it does to disarmament efforts when, say, a smaller nation gives up its nukes in exchange for assurances and is then invaded by one of the very signatories of those assurances.