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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27069 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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What are people's guesses for when the first nuclear weapon (since WWII) will be fired?

Could it happen before 2030? Before 2040? In our lifetimes? And between which actors, and in what context? And how would the likelihood of this change depending on political changes like upcoming elections (both in the US and elsewhere?) This isn't necessarily referring to a MAD scenario or global nuclear war, simply any non-test use of such weapons by a state or group for military purposes.

I'm far from an expert on geopolitics but my sense is that these are the regions where this is likeliest to happen:

1/ The Middle East

Since the start of the Israel/Gaza war, US and global efforts have been overwhelmingly focused on convincing Israel to abandon military action. Whether or not you agree with that, it's hard to imagine that Hamas/Hezbollah/The Houthis/Iran will look at this and feel anything but emboldened to continue attacking Israel in the near future (as is already happening with Hezbollah in the north). An extreme hypothetical scenario is one where Iran and its proxies continue making war on Israel while Western nations distance themselves more and more, refusing diplomatic support and eventually imposing economic sanctions including prohibitions on the sale of weapons. Backed into a corner and beginning to face existential threats, Israel launches one or more tactical nuclear strikes to change the situation on the battlefield.

With the Democrats increasingly hostile to Israel and in favour of conciliatory action towards Iran, and Donald Trump's likely intention to maintain his prior administration's forceful foreign policy in the region, I think this is the one situation where the choice of next US president will have the largest impact on whether we see nuclear weapons get used. I'm going to make the prediction that there's a 50% chance Israel launches a nuke in some capacity by 2030 if Biden is elected later this year Since posting, people have pointed out that tactical nukes aren't especially useful for, so instead I'll predict there's a 50% chance they launch a nuke by 2040.

2/ Ukraine

This is another obvious candidate for where we might see nukes used. This is something that has been talked about since 2022 although obviously nothing like this has come to pass. With greater resources and numbers of soldiers, it's hard to imagine Putin feeling the need to escalate the situation in such a manner, unless the West starts deploying their troops such that the course of the war radically changes.

This is another situation where the choice of next US president will play a crucial role, although it's less obvious IMO what effect this choice will have. Biden has been rhetorically and financially supportive of Ukraine, but has been cautious of engaging the US more deeply in the war, only recently permitting Ukraine to strike inside Russia using US weapons. Trump's friendly attitude towards Putin is well known, as is his skepticism towards foreign intervention, but he's also unpredictable and belligerent. I've seen the point made here that he may take the idea of the US "losing" in Ukraine as an affront to his pride and consequently decide to escalate.

3/ China and Taiwan

This feels less likely than the previous two examples, mostly because there's no active conflict in the region yet so there are still several further stages of escalation that would need to be crossed before nuclear weapons become worth considering for anyone involved. The US also seems to be taking steps to reduce their dependence on Taiwan. On the other hand, the US is interested in countering Chinese influence for reasons that go beyond the situation with Taiwain, and if China starts making SK and Japan worried enough to think about establishing their own nuclear programs, the US might start to find its credibility in the region tested.

4/ Pakistan and India

I unfortunately know almost nothing about the situation here, besides the fact that these are two nuclear armed neighboring states with a pretty unfriendly history, which felt like a good enough reason to add them to this discussion.

3/ China and Taiwan

This feels less likely than the previous two examples, mostly because there's no active conflict in the region yet so there are still several further stages of escalation that would need to be crossed before nuclear weapons become worth considering for anyone involved. The US also seems to be taking steps to reduce their dependence on Taiwan. On the other hand, the US is interested in countering Chinese influence for reasons that go beyond the situation with Taiwain, and if China starts making SK and Japan worried enough to think about establishing their own nuclear programs, the US might start to find its credibility in the region tested.

Reasons I'm shit-scared* about this one:

  1. The PRC probably has some sort of attack (not sure if it's invasion, bombardment, or general blockade) being prepared for 2024-5 if the US election is enough of a shitstorm - their plan to integrate Taiwan peacefully died a horrible screaming death when Xi Jinping did an "I am altering the deal" on Hong Kong, the US military is old but being modernised, and the shitstorm was obvious several years in advance and isn't necessarily going to recur afterward. As more direct evidence, the head of ASIS (Australia's equivalent of the CIA - note that Australia shares intel with the USA in the Five Eyes) said that "a linear path" leads to "great-power conflict" and he hopes leaders make decisions to take us off that path.
  2. If the ROW doesn't come in to defend Taiwan, the First Island Chain is broken - rather than being confined to the South China Sea and East China Sea (by sea mines in the various narrow straits in Indonesia/Malaysia/the Philippines/Taiwan/Japan), the PLAN gets to operate in the blue-water Pacific because of the ports on Taiwan's east coast. This is an existential threat to Japan and South Korea because their population densities are so high they require food imports to avoid mass starvation, so if Taiwan falls both of them will almost certainly withdraw from the NPT and acquire nuclear weapons in order to deter the PRC from blockading them in event of conflict (and thus allow them to have foreign policies that aren't dictated by the PRC by that threat). Also, if the PRC doesn't stop with Taiwan (and they likely won't; they've already started claiming the Ryukyu Islands) and WWIII happens anyway, it's going to be harder with Taiwan in PRC hands. As such, I give a high chance (about 80%) that the ROW does in fact come in, because nuclear proliferation sucks and if nuclear war's inevitable anyway we should have it on the best terms possible.
  3. I find it highly unlikely (about 10%) that a conventional conflict over Taiwan (with the USA in play) wouldn't go nuclear. The problem is that the PRC's nuclear deterrent is fairly fragile - the sea leg is strongly hampered by the aforementioned First Island Chain, the air leg doesn't have the range to reach the USA or Europe, and in event of conflict there would be enemy nukes quite close to almost all of China (the Bay of Bengal and India proper, Taiwan itself and the uncontested waters east of it, and South Korea, plus the bombers the USA would be heavily using anyway are nuclear-capable) so they'd get at most like 10 minutes of warning before their land leg was neutralised by the siloes being nuked (which the USA can do, because it's got a lot more nukes than the PRC does). This means the PLA would have to be on a hair-trigger in order for their deterrent to do anything, and the coalition would be strongly tempted to also be on a hair-trigger in order to perform such an alpha strike (and minimise the death toll) in event of an intercepted launch order or launches starting. Hair-triggers are bad, because they go off accidentally - see the Duluth bear and Vasily Arkhipov incidents for examples of the sort of things I'm thinking about. The chance of nuclear war per day is only like 1-2% (it would be less, but nobody would have launch-detection satellites because PLA doctrine for WWIII for decades has been to start out with massive ASAT use and that means Kessler syndrome wipes out all of LEO, and while there are backups they're not as reliable), but that adds up very fast.

It's a long way from assured, but the spectre of imminent WWIII hangs over the globe once more.

*Well, I'm not especially scared for my own life, because I took action to ensure I only die if we have total state failure - I live in Bendigo and have 20L of water in my bathroom cabinet. But I'm scared for other people's sake, and I'd have less creature comforts.

If I've understood you correctly you think that there's a 1-2% daily chance of nuclear exchange conditional on ROW joining a war between Taiwan and the PRC? Given an 80% chance of the ROW joining the war, this should work out to about 50-70% chance of a nuclear exchange by D-100 of a war. Not sure what your odds of the war breaking out at all in the next 5 years or so would be (presumably pretty high).

If I've understood you correctly you think that there's a 1-2% daily chance of nuclear exchange conditional on ROW joining a war between Taiwan and the PRC?

Yes. Maybe lower if Russia joins the war on the PRC's side, as the Russian deterrent is far less fragile in a number of ways (10x as many nukes, closer proximity to North America/Europe for the air leg (remember that the Arctic Ocean's only about five times the area of the Caribbean Sea, and is narrow in the direction connecting Russia to Canada), well-situated ports for the sea leg).

Not sure what your odds of the war breaking out at all in the next 5 years or so would be (presumably pretty high).

If I had to toss out a number I'd say 70%, but I'm a lot less confident in that than in the conditionals; I don't have direct access to the kind of intelligence reports on the internal memos of the CPC and PLA that I'd need to nail it down.

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