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The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
The most important reason for every sane countries to defence Ukraine is nuclear non-proliferation.
Gaddafi served as the original prime counter-example of nuclear non-proliferation. Obama et al. can still marginally justify the action with human right violation (to which, as a realist, I totally disagree, in my opinion they should protect Gaddafi at all cost, to set the example of what the world are willing to do for you with the virtue of giving up nuclear)
Ukraine now being the newest example of why you should not give up nuke and instead one should seek it. Obama and Trump 1 failed nuclear non-proliferation by not helping Ukraine in the 2014 Crimean war with everything they can, under the context of Budapest Memorandum. If the Budapest Memorandum failed to protect Ukraine's border, what is the point of giving up nukes?
Then 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War started and once again, Biden and Trump 2 failed them by not protecting Ukraine's border after they give up nuke, and in some way what Biden demostrated by not wanting to esculate with Russia, and what Trump 2 is demostrating with his esculating action against Iran, is that nuclear weapons will protect you
With these 2 ongoing conflicts, there is no way any rational non-nuke country support nuclear non-proliferation anymore, any real support of such is basically treason.
It would not surprise me if more are secreatly developing nukes now, and announce the possesion of nuclear weapons in 10-15 years, or even attempt to deceive others by announcing the possesion while not actually have one or announce it to gain time while only being close to getting one.
Edit 1: For everyone how said Ukraine don't have the launch code: There is a saying that government with access to nuclear weapons is more stable from oursiders due to the risk of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist. If terrorists are said to be capable of using nuclear weapons from arbitrary country, a functioning industrialized economy with actual nuclear weapon engineers and nuclear scientist, should be able to make use of those USSR nukes
I’m not sure how nukes stop internal security problems from getting you butchered. Gaddafi didn’t fall to a ground invasion.
Gaddafi did fall to a NATO air campaign stopping and then reversing the civil war's progress, which at the time of intervention he clearly had the momentum in. Had Gaddafi had a nuclear weapon, it's extremely doubtful the NATO air campaign would have occurred, and without that, he would have been doing the butchering.
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I agree that it's hard to look at the current state of global conflict/deterrence and not concluded that having nukes is the dominant strategy for maintaining sovereignty.
But Ukraine couldn't keep the nukes. They didn't have the launch codes, they didn't have the economy to maintain them indefinitely. They definitely didn't have the economy to build out the other two legs of the nuclear triad (especially SLBMs). And finally, there's a 0.0000% chance the big dogs were ever letting them keep them.
Ukraine could trade the nukes for a "deal" or they could give them up later once they got sanctioned into oblivion, at a time their economy was already imploding.
The critical problem of getting function nukes is enriched uranium, delivery mechanism can be a truck, like the recent Ukrinian drone carrier
While they don't have the launch codes, by definition nukes must be weapon grade enriched uranium, the big dogs are likely bluffing
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The Budapest Memorandum doesn't suggest anyone do anything more than complain to the UN when triggered. It's a meaningless pinky-swear to avoid attacking them, not a guarantee of their defense. When someone brings it up at this point, years into the war, I just assume they're a support-maximalist who hopes no one knows what's actually in it.
Ukraine never had launch codes for "its" nukes and when Russia demanded them back its choices were to either comply or have the world force them. They never had any actual leverage and that's why the Budapest Memorandum was a worthless cumrag from the start.
Budapest Memorandum is always worthless in wording, but ideally should serve as the example of what the global powers are willing to commit for nuclear non-proliferation, which, many years later, is little to none
No country even make the claim that they support Ukraine base on the virtue of giving up nukes, instead of they support Ukraine mainly because it is a defensive war close to Europe
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Your point's a strong one, but I don't think your last sentence lands as the flourish you probably intended.
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One question I feel is underexplored is, to what extent would things have gone differently for a hypothetical nuclear-armed Ukraine? It seems plausible enough that in the first few weeks of the conflict, when Russia was actually aiming for the jugular, Nuclear Ukraine could have countered with a credible nuclear threat. However, if Ukraine magicked up a full nuclear triad now, would much of anything change? That is, would it be able to credibly threaten MAD to demand back Crimea and Donbass alone? (I don't think so. It seems pretty obvious that the more realistic form of their current war goals - EU and NATO membership for a rump state minus approximately what Russia has taken, plus or minus some more parts of Donbass - is too valuable to go va banque over, plus the West has an enduring interest in maintaining the nuclear-strike taboo lest the End of History gets undone any further.) Consequently, could it have credibly threatened MAD when Russia grabbed Crimea? ...when it supported the Donbass separatists in uprising? ...if, instead of doing the push for Kiev, Russia only had blitzed for the territory it controls now from the start, declaring that it wants to seize a buffer zone for Crimea and the Donbass separatists? In the worst case, Ukrainian nukes would merely have stopped Russia from making its grand opening mistake (blowing its confidence and certain classes of special force reserves on a useless operation).
Ukraine's fundamental dilemma is that while the EU/NATO exists and is friendly to it, it is very hard for it to credibly signal that it has its back to the wall; but if the EU/NATO backstop were to disappear, it would become very hard for it to marshal the will and unifying purpose to resist Russia.
In an alternate history of nuclear-armed Ukraine, I believe Putin will choose a different country to invade instead
The alt-path will likely start with Ukraine not signing the Budapest Memorandum thus keeping their Soviet nukes, while Ukraine will likely suffer some form of international trade sanction (but not a lot, as the newly created Russia will likely not sanction them to cripple they own nation)
Going into the 2000s, I believe Ukraine will achieve a status similar to pre-2022 Finland, where they will be a Friend of Russia economically, with the promise of not joining NATO, after all, everyone knows there is no benefit for Ukraine to join NATO when they have nukes, thus Russia unironically will feel a lot safer from Ukraine compare to our history
In our history, Ukraine is always a somewhat Russian friendly country before Russia fucked them hard by all the means after 2000, would Russia fuck with the government of a nuclear-armed, Russian friendly Ukraine?
As long as Ukraine demonstrate their discipline on international affairs and don't actively fuck with others, they likely achive at worst the status of Pakistan (who hosted Osama bin Laden without real consequences), likely the status of India (internationally not one give a fuck on what they do internally), at best the status of pre-2022 Finland (Staying friendly to everyone, everyone want them to be the buffer state while giving you some form of trade access), all depends on what Ukrainian can achieve diplomatically
...which one? Do you figure there is some priority list of countries he wants to invade? What does it look like?
The Russian view there is quite different - as they contend, at some point after the early 2000s, Ukraine started responding to its economic malaise by stealing gas meant for transit to EU customers to help itself meet its own demand, with some complicity from EU states who refused to hold Ukraine responsible for this diplomatically while also working to sabotage any projects for new pipelines that would bypass Ukraine completely (in EU propaganda, this was framed as the bypass pipelines "enabling Russia to blackmail Ukraine" - as in, blackmail it with the threat of taking away the free gas). If a nuclear-armed Ukraine becomes a pariah in your scenario, is the dominant consequence that its economy is in even more shambles (so it needs to steal more gas) or that the EU objections to bypass pipelines disappear (so it never gets the opportunity to steal as much gas)?
A scenario in which Russia still depends on them for transit but now they are even more desperate to extract unnegotiated concessions for it may not be one in which Russia sees it as friendly. Certainly, my memory is that even in reality, the gas siphoning resulted in a lot of grassroots resentment towards Ukraine among Russians at the time, to the point that they could have easily been persuaded to endorse some punitive aggression against it by a thus inclined statesman.
(I find it interesting that the gas transit story is never mentioned in mainstream reporting on the war, not even with a framing that puts all the blame on Russia. Through my conspiracy goggles, this looks like another instance of a general pattern of producing simple good/evil narratives by cutting off history at a convenient point - in the media, the Israel/Palestine war started on 23-10-07, Russia/Ukraine started in 2014 with a little exemption for the Budapest Memorandum in murky prehistory, and everyone/Iran started with the Islamic Revolution. No hard questions about who shot first. Not that this is new - America/Japan, they claim, started with Pearl Harbor, too.)
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Ukraine is already striking Russia. I don’t think that, if they had a nuke, they wouldn’t launch it.
How does this follow? Ukraine could do great damage to Russia if it used one nuke or a handful, sure, but Russia could use a fraction of its nuclear arsenal to turn Ukraine into an uninhabitable wasteland. Besides, there is already a level of escalation available to Ukraine that is of the nuke nature without being of the same degree, which is that they could use their ample supply of mid/long-range drones to strike civilian centers with incendiary charges. Why do you figure they do not do that, by the same reasoning, whatever it is?
Highly doubt that Ukraine could inflict significant civilian casualties in Russia with drones. It takes thousands of tonnes of incendiaries to ignite a big city-killing firestorm. Plus modern buildings are harder to burn down.
They were basically dropping nuclear weapon's worth of conventional explosives on Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden in 1943 and 1945, especially when you account for how much nuke energy is lost going up into the sky, many smaller bombs are more efficient in energy terms.
But obviously Russia has the upper hand here, as you say.
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This is a super interesting comment.
On a first read, I totally agree. If I'm zelensky, I'd infinitely prefer to be the leader of "the remaining 75% of Ukraine" versus "the shattered remains of the country once known as Ukraine".
But then that completely undermines the entire concept of deterrence. If your neighbor, who you have a long and shitty history with, is invading you with the full might of their army with the goal of totally capitulating you, isn't a high enough bar to use nukes, what is?
Further, it's really interesting to consider the history (or lack thereof) of nuclear war. The USA and the USSR were locked in what I'm sure felt like a profoundly existential struggle to determine the forward looking economic/social paradigm of the human race. One in which (until the maturation of SLBMs) the first mover's advantage could realistically result in complete victory for one side, and nuclear genocide for the other.
And yet, despite all that pressure, and moments where it seemed credible the other side had or was about to launch, the actual human(s) in charge of pushing the button always found a way or a reason to not do it.
And it raises an interesting question about the game theory and logic of deterrence. Under the framework, it's extremely "logical" to both ensure your nation state opponent believes you'll nuke them if they push you too far. It's also "logical" to actually nuke them if they do push too far, otherwise they'll realize you're a phony and they'll fuck with you as much as they want. But! As an individual enjoyer of industrial civilization who enjoys having their friends and family alive and not vaporized or starving to death, it's also extremely "logical" to absolutely not press that button. Sure, maybe someone else will, but hopefully when it finally comes time to do it, they'll think of their families too.
As an enjoyer of industrial civilization myself, I'm glad the second group seems to have been around when it counts.
Well fortunately thanks to Ukraine/Russia, India/Pakistan and Iran/Israel we now have an excellent iterative stress-test of just how far you can push a nuclear power before they push that big red button. Yeeting quadcopter drones into a leg of the nuclear triad? Check. “Accidentally” blowing up the other side’s nuclear weapons with a conventional strike? Check. Chucking ballistic missiles with a 4,000 lb warhead into the densely populated high rise downtown area of the capitol city? Check. And of course the control group for the study, China/USA, where nothing ever happens, but it’s always looming.
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Thanks for your kind words.
I think that you are on to an important aspect with your consideration of the history of nuclear war - this history is also a history of our theory of and intuitions on deterrence, which may not be fully applicable to modern-day situations. Most of our expectations around it evolved in the peculiar setting of two fragile apex powers locked in what felt like an unstable equilibrium in a life-or-death struggle - both the US and the USSR saw themselves as standing atop a slippery slope to complete defeat, as a USA that lost a single direct engagement with the USSR would thereafter just be a strictly weaker, less intimidating USA (and vice versa), and if they were barely stemming the tide of global communism (capitalism) now, how would they fare then? In such a setting, a "not a step back" policy is sensible and credible.
On the other hand, is this true for Ukraine? One can argue that a Ukraine that has lost Crimea, and even Donbass, is in some meaningful sense a leaner and meaner Ukraine - they are rid of the albatross around their neck that were the initially about 50% at least ambivalently pro-Russian population, both by capture and galvanization of those who remain, and backed by a West with a significantly greater sense of urgency and purpose. As 2022~ showed, Ukraine's subjugation is not in fact a monotonic slope but comes with a very significant hump around the 25% mark. What should be the theory of nuclear deterrence for that scenario? I think there is at least circumstantial evidence that it is different - since 199X, aggression towards nuclear-armed countries has not proceeded in line with the Cold War at all, whether it is India/Pakistan or in fact US/Russia.
Could you imagine, in 1980, US-made weapons hitting Russian cities using US targeting and US satellites? I'd say that the reason this is possible is that there is common knowledge that some HIMARS hits on Belgorod do not in fact leave a Russia that is strictly less able to prosecute a conflict against the West in which it is already barely managing. The modern theory of deterrence may look more like identifying the humps that disrupt the slippery slope, and trying to beat your opponent back to one of those humps but no further, versus... trying to push your humps as far up the slope as possible?
I think the term in the literature you're looking for is "escalation dominance."
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I completely agree.
I would add that having defensive alliances between nuclear and non-nuclear states is a great boon to non-proliferation. Being in NATO is very much preferable from owning a few nukes, but if NATO membership was not an option for former east block states (like Poland, whose past experience with Russia/USSR would make them wary), then these states might have started pursuing nuclear weapons after the fall of the USSR.
However, the Ukraine war also shows that nukes are not the "I win" button. Instead, the button is labeled "Fuck you, fuck me, fuck everyone". Threatening to press it outside the most existential crisis of a regime is not credible, for the most part. (The death star gambit, to blow up whichever polity annoyed you most from time to time pour encourager les autres might or might not work.)
An interesting factor here is that a number of not-themselves-nuclear powers in NATO(including Poland, but also Turkey and the Netherlands) have technically-American nuclear weapons in their arsenals. Absent this program I'd expect Poland and Turkey, at the very least, to have their own nukes.
It's similar to cluster munitions: a number of American allies are very willing to sign global treaties banning their use, knowing that in a shooting war, the USA will happily bust out its own stock.
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