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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   32489 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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Hard agreed on this. Nuclear weapons are a classic prisoner's dilemma, where it's better for nobody to have them, but if one side gets them then that's really really bad if the other side doesn't have them. It was America that underpinned most antiprolif efforts since the end of the Cold War, partially through providing its nuclear umbrella, and partially by strongarming those who thought of getting nukes themselves away from doing so. This has led to the dictatorships of the world playing defect-bot, where no democracies have gotten nukes since the 90s, but Russia and China have increased their stockpiles while North Korea has nukes now, and Iran isn't far behind. Russia's has effectively been using nuclear blackmail in Ukraine as well, breaking the previous norm of nukes giving a strong defense-only shield. Now, anyone with nukes apparently has more right than other nations to offensively invade their neighbors too

It's a sad fate, but Poland, Japan, and South Korea all need nukes now. If Taiwan and Ukraine had nukes, then it's likely they wouldn't face anywhere near the level of insecurity they do. They probably wouldn't be able to get them now since China/Russia would freak out.

I don't think it's clear that American foreign policy has been, in the long run, to reduce nuclear proliferation.

If I were a leader of a country contemplating a nuclear weapons program I'd look at the examples of Kim and Qadaffi.

America made a bunch of noises against North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, and has imposed sanctions in response to its success. But in the end this appears to have secured North Korea against military intervention.

Contrast with Qadaffi, who on his own accord negotiated to end his WMD programs in consideration for normalizing diplomatic relations and lifting of sanctions. He was rewarded with what was a likely color revolution that resulted in a knife in his ass.

So do you want to be Kim or Qadaffi? The winning move seems to be to develop your nuclear program in secret, or under very heavy fortification, so that it can't be preemptively destroyed. Then once you have your nukes, the West will leave you alone.

The US certainly sparked some prolif itself with foreign policy (mostly Iraq + Afghanistan, Libya was more of a European-led conflict). But on net, the US has been the biggest leader of antiprolif by far. Very few middle powers had nukes under American unipolarity, but that's almost certainly going to change over the coming decades.

Russia and China have increased their stockpiles

I'm pretty sure the opposite actually happened, at least in the case of Russia.

I don't know what's happened to Russian nuke numbers in the short term (i.e. since Ukraine), but they've reneged on arms talks which indicates they'll almost certainly build a lot more once the war is over. So I guess I could have been technically incorrect when I was talking about Russia having increased stockpiles already, they've just signaled they want to in the medium-long term.

It was actually the US that withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2001 and the INF Treaty in 2019. Which arms talks are you referring to?

Russia is only decreasing theirs because their Cold War stockpiles were insanely large, something like 45,000 warheads. They still have 7000 in active service or available to be put into active service, giving them the largest stockpile on the planet. Russia has spent trillions of dollars in the last couple of decades modernizing their delivery systems, which I think is what @Botond173 is referring to. China has never actually had that many nuclear warheads, and they are working on increasing their stockpiles to give them more strategic flexibility.

Russia is only decreasing theirs because their Cold War stockpiles were insanely large

Didn't the same apply to the US as well though?

Yes, the United States is down to about 4000 warheads in active service compared to about 30,000 during the Cold War

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