What discounts the UK and France?

Insufficient operational warhead count (and size; how much you can take is an issue here) for MAD against Russia, leading to an insufficient guarantee that their tripwire forces would provide sufficient certainty of an immediate unacceptable conflict.

Eh? France and the UK have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the population centres of Russia. Let's be frank, as much as the Geneva Convention says 'play nice', if nuclear weapons are involved, are you going to use them to bomb an airbase in Siberia, or hit Red Square dead centre? That's enough.

France/UK have enough so that an attack on France/UK can cause unacceptable losses for Russia (the loss of 5-25 of its biggest cities) at the cost of the existence of the entirety of France/UK after Russian retaliation.

But let's say Russia uses tactical nukes to kill a Polish air base or an Italian carrier or an Estonian infantry division? Would BoJo or Macron press the button and consign his nation to nuclear destruction? No he certainly wouldn't.

That's not a number-of-nukes problem, though. That's a threat credibility problem.

If France won't launch their 300 warheads, they wouldn't launch if they had 3,000 either.

You seriously think the French wouldn't launch at Russia if Russia launched first?

I didn't say that.

I said that, if MagnumOpus believes the French wouldn't launch, that's not relevant to dragonwriter's observation the EU doesn't have many warheads, which DrBazza was replying to.

Would Biden?

Russia isn't as big as the USSR was. You don't need to glass Siberia to make even a limited nuclear exchange unpalatable.

Lol what? UK and France absolutely have enough warheads to end Russia if they should choose to do so. They could level every major city in Russia and Russia as we know it today would break up into several states in the following weeks. Putin knows that.

You do know that Putin's bluster notwithstanding, MAD only applies to nuclear conflicts? EG Russia can march into Poland and that doesn't instantly 'trip' MAD.

> You do know that Putin's bluster notwithstanding, MAD only applies to nuclear conflicts?

This is inaccurate.

MAD applies with progressively decreasing strength to:

(1) Nuclear conflicts, (2) direct conflicts between nuclear powers, (3) direct conflicts between a nuclear power and the powers with which a nuclear power has a firm defense commitment, (4) direct conflicts between parties where a different nuclear power has firm defense commitments to each, ... (there are more categories where it has some attenuated impact, but it gets pretty weak beyond this point and the heirarchy becomes murkier)

Tripwire forces are a means of moving category #3 into category #2 as a means of deterring them (also, #4 into #3, which is sometimes also of perceived importance.)

The whole WWIII argument against NFZ in Ukraine is that it elevates a conflict that is not on this chart at all straight to a #2. If you think MAD applies only to nuclear conflicts, you don't understand the role of MAD.in deterrence very well.