> Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced.

Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes.

> To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

> Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union

We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them).

With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

> Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2].

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...

> With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

Totally correct. It's impossible to talk of global peace when you know that 2 most malevolent political entities on the planet were not only let to live, but empowered by yesterday's victor, all knowing that internal elites of USSR, and PRC were burning with "Never forget USA!" It was totally the West repeating the folly of king Helu.

Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

We already seen that UN based security can work in nineties, when Russia, and China were made to lay cathartic.

If we can defeat the USSR 2.0, and PRC, we would have a very real shot at working global security system as was imagined by UN's forefathers.

>Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

Does global here mean "the US, Europe, Australia and Japan"? I followed this a bit, but it's concerning that you don't consider the US a malevolent entity. By numbers alone, the in the last 30 years the US has done the most harm to innocent civilians worldwide.

I read the GP a lot more differently, in that non-proliferation was a mistake and if you are a nation-state it's likely of utmost importance that you begin to build nukes in order to prevent Russia (if you are Ukraine), China (if you are Taiwan) or the US (if you are Iran, Palestine, Libya), for fucking your shit up.

It might make sense to integrate the effect.

Are aspects of US power malevolent? Absolutely.

Did US protected trade routes also bring billions out of poverty by letting the spice flow? Absolutely.

Are all countries flawed? Absolutely.

I'm interested what numbers you're pulling that tell the story of the US doing more harm (define harm?) to innocent civilians versus, just the first example that comes to mind, the uyghur genocide.

>"were not only let to live"

At that point Russia was choke full of nukes. How can you possibly not "let them live" without being annihilated in return.

>"UN based security can work"

Remind me when did UN security ever stop the US doing whatever they've decided to do.

> why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes

Partly because Ukraine never had nukes. They had Russian nukes on their soil, but no ability to use them. Letting Russia take them back was the only reasonable answer.

Also, it was hardly a guarantee that Ukraine was going to end up with a democratic government, could just as easily have been a string of dictators. We don't need yet more dictators-with-nukes.

Your arguing is a bit odd. You say that Ukraine had no abilities to use Russian nukes, but then in the 2nd paragraph you say -- hypothetically assuming that Ukraine would end up in a dictatorship -- that "we" (probably the western portion of the world?) "do not need yet more dictators-with-nukes".

But Ukrainians could not use these Russian nukes in the first place, so it would probably be better to let them keep these because they would end up not being able to use them anyway. I guess there is something missing :)

I think the GP is implying an "even if" between their two lines of argument.

On a side note, given enough time, they presumably could reverse-engineer plenty of bomb design secrets even if the permissive action links couldn't be circumvented. Permissive action links are insurance against maniac generals, rogue commanders, wealthy terrorists, etc., not against a decade or two of nation-state-funded reverse-engineering.

My understanding is that some of the PALs for two-point nuclear weapons will result in the wrong timing of the two initiations if the wrong code is used... resulting in a small dirty bomb instead of a thermonuclear blast. I presume reverse-engineering the correct timings for the two detonators is significantly easier than designing the weapon in the first place.

I would rather a hundred, a thousand, a million people die in conventional warfare repressed by brutal dictatorships than a single nuclear weapon get detonated in anger. When that starts, the death of billions is not far behind. Nuclear weapons are the first of the real short term man-made existential threats, and as long as anyone has them we have to try anything and everything to make sure they don't proliferate.

I would advocate for the existing ones being destroyed as well, but I think that cat is not going back in the bag. It does make one consider the other short term (and longer term) man-made existential threats and why we aren't frantically trying to keep those cats from emerging from their respective bags.

Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands.

The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.

Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet.

If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.

no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.

The reason is the very legitimate fear of a rogue nation with an unstable or autocratic government trying to use nuclear weapons as an element of international blackmail or to deter retaliation for its own military adventurism. Which is more or less exactly what we see happening with Russia right now, so the fear wasn't unfounded. I mean, if we could have gotten Russia to give up their bombs too, we would have preferred that.

As it happened, Ukraine turned out to be less of a risk than Russia. Which is unfortunate. But the logical calculus is pretty clear.

What about a mafia nation selling those assets to the highest bidder? I think that is what worried the US the most because it was more plausible.

I guess there was a fear that all those former-Soviet republics would turn into rogue states or end up selling them to terrorists or something. But surely Russia itself would be responsible enough? That was a bit of a misjudgement.

Most of the world would much rather no Russian nukes but didn't have the power to get that.

Ukraine found out they basically could afford to maintain the nukes. So the next best thing was getting an agreement that the worlds major powers would not respect its sovereignty and territory. Even Russia signed on to this agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

They were Russian nukes. Yes, they were sited on Ukraine land, but Russia had the keys and controlled them. Ensuring they were disposed of was a decent option.

Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

> Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

You keep forgeting that Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state like Belarus until the first Orange Revolution took place. Saakashvili tried it and lost because Russia would not allow a former militarised satellite which they do not control in its proximity. That's part of the reason for the Ukraine invasion: they would rather start a war or several wars than lose control over these countries. Kazahstan's Tokayev is playing the right card while Russia is being busy in Ukraine: diversifying, sharing and reforming power rather than militarising. I'd really like to see one or several trans Caspian gas pipelines to Azerbaidjan, Georgia and Turkey or through the Black Sea, allowing Kazahstan to sell gas to the EU. Militarising is an option when Russia grows weaker and Western money flows in your former Soviet satellite. It was also an option after '91, until the early 2000s, but the US was being busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Central Asia and the Caucaz to a lesser extent is the key to further weakening Russia.

> But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.

Have a strong military and don't use it.

It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of.

It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage.

3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).

"Have a strong military and don't use it."

Is that possible?

Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.

Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.

There is a common conspiracy theory that roughly every decade or so, the US needs to get into a conflict as a means of flexing it's military. Whether it's to showcase the military-industrial complex or keep others in line by sending a warning is up for debate (as it the idea itself).

1983 - Grenada

1991 - Gulf War

2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom

2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan

They are not out of practice, they were just/are in Syria etc.

They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.

Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.

Did they have a convoy of tanks in Syria? My understanding is that it was primarily air assault. That would seem to support the idea that practice is necessary for an effective military.

This isn't a good argument. The US has friendly neighbors on its northern and southern borders. It has thousands of miles of ocean separating it from Russia or China (neither of which have any major military blue water transport capacity). We could defend the US homeland with a tiny fraction of our current bloated 700+B / yr budget. That money could be going to fix problems that affect the common citizen rather than enriching the shareholders of defense contractors. I don't buy this at all.

Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution.

Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.

This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit.

What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.

Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.

> What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).

You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.

you forget / ignore another aspect of conflict: territorial disagreements or historical arguments. some countries or politicians may feel that area of other country supposed to belong to their country based on history or something but that other country is happy with how it is right now. and no amount of charity money or help will solve this.

as we have right now with Russia.

another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.

so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.

No good deed goes unpunished. So it probably wouldn’t work. America already helped Africa with so much aide, but didn’t market the help nearly as much as China did, so it is already forgotten.

It would have been better for the US and the world as a whole if it adopted Keynes' Bancor proposal. What the world economy needs is balanced trade between nations.

In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well.

As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time.

Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.

Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)

Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries?

Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state

You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.

I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view:

NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats.

Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.

History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.

> "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace."

There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with?

QED war will be forever with us.

My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.

You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't.

It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....

> Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war

I have not seen rigorous evidence for this.

> the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances

Agree with this.

I suppose I have not seen evidence of it either, only evidence of the converse: People lacking the basics on Maslow's hierarchy of needs have repeatedly made war in an attempt to get them. I suppose I could have been more careful in my choice of characteristics, I'm just suggesting that because we know about this incentive for violence, it seems prudent to attempt to remove it if your goal is peace.

and in some sense we right now observe failure of this proposal.

Russia was included in majority of international organizations; trade was increasing with Russia with hopes that they will start prospering and become less agressive than before. I think it was such sentiment especially from Germany and France, there were multiple cases of “we need to be friends with Russia, trade with it and everything will be great”.

what actually happened was that government of Russia took all those trade benefits, neglected their citizens and intentionally made them poor so they would be more depending on the government. everything was intentionally oppressive, abusive. how do you solve that?

It wanes as people advance in age :)

Seems like there have been a lot of well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy organized crime gangs throughout history. "Happy" is anyone's guess.

I'm not convinced you've found the cure for violence.

Wealthy people with everything in the world still stomp on those around them chasing more power. Once you get rid of this thread of human behavior, then there can be peace.

What is your explanation for Russia invading Ukraine?

As far as I can tell, it's a war for glory or destiny or power or something. Not food or shelter or school.

Russia wants access to some of the best farmland in the former USSR, mineral resources and the strategic benefit of unfettered access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean? It's a war for resources Russia doesn't have and Putin thinks it needs, and a target for the Russian population to distract them from how shit things are.

Populists and authoritarians are supported by those at the bottom of the pile with little to lose. Russia's actions are very much related to food and housing and education and jobs.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine.

There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.

Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!

I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict.

One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared.

The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land.

One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.

so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?

Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.

This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.

I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left.

This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.

You don't always get a choice.

"War is peace" sounds like classic 1984 doublespeak. For example, we could be working to partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, but instead we're choosing to promote conflict because we'd rather be the winner that takes all.

Germany followed a mutual cooperation approach to Russia. It was foreign policy doctrine for years, Ostpolitik. It didn't stop Russia invading a sovereign neighbour and it prevented Germany from reacting due to the dependence.

We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.

Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization.

All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...

What? We have been working with China on mutually beneficial agreements for 60 years, which is the direct cause of their rise.

Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.

Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive.

And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.

Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.

Very much agree. You might find this book clarifying. I know I did.

Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...

> ...kept its post-separation guns...

What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?