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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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