Have a read of Eric Schlosser's book, Command and Control
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...
The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to the point of madness.
Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
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Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
He wanted them to pay their fair share. They wanted the US to foot their security bill which he balked at. Now we see Germany at least say they will up their contribution and rebuild their military in order to be better prepared. That’s pretty much in line with what he asked from them.
Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-nato-wi... “Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/13/book-exce...
Those articles are lying by omission, and so are you.
Trump was certainly looking at getting out of NATO, which he saw as an arrangement where the US increasingly foots the bill for protecting other members. He openly criticised European dependence on Russian oil and gas, and Germany in particular for not paying their fair share towards defence.
There's a fantastically awkward video [1] of him explaining all of this directly to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg. Germany announced this week that it will do exactly what Trump said it should: massively increase military spending [2] and decrease its dependence on Russia for energy [3].
Who is more useful to Putin? Trump, who told Europe to get its ass in gear and treat Russia as a threat, or the stooges you support, whose selfishness and complacency emboldened Russia to carry out this invasion?
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M5MJEMHZZsI
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/budgetary-about...
[3] https://dw.com/en/ukraine-crisis-forces-germany-to-change-co...
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#43> Put differently, Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up. Even he himself cannot meaningfully answer the question “What’s the probability that Russia will launch nuclear missiles 6 months from now” unless his answer is 100%. It depends on many factors, like how NATO reacts and how strong the Ukraine military is, none of which can be captured by probabilities.
There's a guy[0] who spent a career analyzing and writing about these things.
His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either. According to Piontkovsky, (to Putin,) there's no essential difference, and the (lack of) NATO membership reason provided by NATO is a lame excuse indicative of a lack of resolve to commit, NATO member or not. So Putin is willing to keep upping the ante until NATO folds and becomes irrelevant.
[0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R...
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#44A useful metric - how often does a national leader willing to start a nuclear war come to power in a state with nuclear weapons? That's measureable from historical data.
If they're not disarming they're either willing to use them or bluffing.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#45I would say that probability is 100%, having a corrupted system, with corrupted people and madmen, on all sides, it is not question of "will" but rather "when"...
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
So? Whoever is insaner wins? Nah, remind Putin that we all saw how much the russian army sucks and in case of nuclear war the US still wins after they get out of their bunkers.
Nobody wins in a nuclear war.
This is actually exactly what Putin said - that NATO is much stronger, but if there is a nuclear war, it's going to be bad for everybody.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#47The whole article is basically about different interpretations of probabilities -- probabilities as reflecting the degree of belief, vs pure frequentist ones. Both make sense, they just need to be used in different situations and need to be interpreted differently.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#48I would prefer being wiped out of a giant meteorite than all nukes going off because at least I know it wasn't humanity that did us in.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#49> Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up
Very true. Using, essentially, the infinite typing monkeys idea to say that a nuclear war is bound to happen eventually is just a pseudo-scientific rationalization of war. Put this way, almost anything becomes certain if you completely ignore the fact that you don’t know P(nukes|war) since we have no further data to base this on. Even a coin flipped once or twice might not be heads and tails. The idea of P(heads) = 0.5 is that eventually, as the flips extend to infinity, it equals 0.5.
This would be similar to someone living in the Black Plague saying “since 10% of Europe is dying per year, in 10 years we will most certainly be extinct.” I don’t know the technical or formal name for this fallacy or line of thinking, so I’ll just call this gross oversimplification.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#50> Put differently, Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up. Even he himself cannot meaningfully answer the question “What’s the probability that Russia will launch nuclear missiles 6 months from now” unless his answer is 100%. It depends on many factors, like how NATO reacts and how strong the Ukraine military is, none of which can be captured by probabilities. There'…
I don't buy this. The NATO message was clear & consistent that they will intervene in case of an attack on a member - there's 0 reason to believe otherwise. In fact, I'd say that current response in Ukraine enforces this (though it's not a NATO member it got plenty of offensive equipment, intelligence, money, support, etc. - basically everything possible short of direct declaration of war / direct military involvement from all NATO members).
Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this. And he probably knows it. This is the weakest position he can be in - if the west attacked him, he could at least mobilize the Russians to "defend against western aggression" and could even justify the nuclear bombs to his generals; As things stand, his rhetoric and position are very shaky (he's not being defeated by mighty USA, but by the "weak" Ukrainians who "aren't even a nation")