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ChristianKl comments on February 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong
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I think Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire and is going to keep taking more territory until he encounters serious resistance, and this resistance could easily turn into a war in which nuclear weapons are used. Putin might rationally calculate that if he tried to conquer Finland (which used to be part of the Czarist Empire) there is only a 10% chance that the U.S. would put up serious resistance, and this was a gamble he would be willing to take. But if the U.S. did decide to fight it would easily beat back Russia if the war stayed conventional, and this might cause Putin to use atomic weapons.
Putin probably calculates that Obama is much less likely to use military force against him than the next U.S. President will be, so we might be entering a period of great danger.
Finland is an EU country. Even if the US doesn't care about defending EU territory the EU does.
Military power of EU was not enough to stop or seriously inconvenience Milosevic.
What? Did he invade an EU country?
But would the EU do anything, especially if the Greeks decide to veto everything if they are not given a bailout?
Military is not commanded via the EU commission but by individual member states. There nothing to veto. Finish citizens have free movement via the EU. That means average people know more Finish people than Ukranians and actually care about defending Finland.
Ukraine is for political purposes like a third world country. People far away that nobody deeply cares about.
It's worth looking at innerpolitical issures. I don't think German or France politicians would get away in their own countries with not defending Finland. On the other hand Germans who already don't want to pay for the Greece bailout, don't want to bailout the Ukraine and have substantial resources spent over there.
From Putins perspective the Ukraine conflict made him popular at home, I don't think starting an additional conflict in Finland would help Putin inside of Russian politics.
Russia invades Finland. Germany announces it's going to send lots of troops to Finland to fight against the Russians. Putin announces that if Germany does this he will drop an atomic bomb on Berlin. Germany then backs down.
Since Germany doesn't have atomic weapons, it can't credibly threaten Russia absent Russia invading Germany.
Russia doesn't even invade the East-Ukraine as far as Russian media is concerned. It's done by plausible deniable locals supported by Russian citizens on vacation.
Military action can be done without announcing it and a tanks that move into NATO or EU territory will likely produce an immediate military response within less than an hour.
NATO doesn't send tanks to clear cities in East Ukraine that are under the control of separatists, but
Germany doesn't but France does. The UK does as well.
US innerpolitics even forces the US president to increase North Korea sanctions after the recent cyberattack when he knows that the thing that actually good to do is to increase interaction between North Korea and the outside world. Ignoring threads of nuclear attack is likely not very popular in the US.
That's a very risky thing to do. It might trigger nuclear first strike protocols on the US side.
I doubt it. The U.S. didn't initiate a first strike against North Korea when it threatened us with nuclear weapons, and unlike with Russia, the U.S. almost certainly could eliminate all North Korean nuclear weapons without any significant U.S. losses.
North Korea didn't threaten in a way that the US military considered to be highly probable to start a war. It's more seen as posturing. It would need a plausible thread to achieve military objectives.
North Korea can complete destroy most of Seoul. It's in artillery range.
I think the scenario will be a wee bit different:
Russia invades Finland. Germany announces it's going to send lots of troops to Finland to fight against the Russians. Putin announces that if Germany does this he will drop an atomic bomb on Berlin. Terrified Russian elites remove Putin from power.
Even in Russia I don't think there is any political faction which thinks that a nuclear exchange is a good idea.
Unfortunately, the idea of limited nuclear exchanges or making credible or close to credible threats of such exchanges is is depressingly popular in Russian military and political discussion. See e.g. here. More generally, this is actually an old idea that of the "tactical nuclear exchange" with a few nukes being perhaps exchanged in Eastern Europe without a full-scale war. During much of the Cold War this was actually more common as a NATO idea whereas the USSR accepted that limiting nuclear exchanges was not viable and that there was no clear line between tactical and strategic exchange of nuclear weapons.
Yes, and I seen nothing particularly wrong about this idea -- it's a possibility. However I don't think the current Russian elite (with bank accounts in Switzerland, houses in the Cyprus, sending their kids to English private schools, etc. etc.) would be willing to contemplate high risk of even a limited nuclear exchange.
The wrong aspect about this is that it seems very unlikely to actually stay that restricted. And it may not at all be easy for a country to tell that another launched only a few nukes and isn't intending to use more. The standard way this sort of thing goes wrong is where the exchanges get pushed farther East and West until they are close to Moscow and Paris and then all hell more or less breaks loose.
That seems likely to be true, but how much influence do they have? And note that even with Putin's repeated mentions of nukes they haven't taken any steps to curtail the situation. A nuclear exchange if it started could start well before they had a chance to do much about it.
I don't know -- my level of uncertainty about what's going to be "likely" or "unlikely" in the event of a limited nuclear exchange is very high :-/
The question at this point will be not "influence" but "capability" -- will they be able to remove Putin and those personally loyal to him at any cost from power? I think it's "likely" but see the previous paragraph :-)
Title of a Daily Beast article "Putin Threatens Nuclear War Over Ukraine"
Headlines are written to attract eyeballs and clicks. Would you like to know one weird trick which will enhance and supercharge your understanding of European politics? X-D