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Thanks for the thoughtful response. That's some interesting somewhat new information about the missile shield stuff. To be clear, I'm framing all of this exactly on that last premise, where Russia's whole argument against NATO is that it's somehow an existential threat against the Russian state. This is absolutely ridiculous. In absolutely no world would the US much less NATO actually launch a nuclear decapitation first strike against Russia, and yes I'm willing to bet the world on that. The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point. NATO again requires a ton of buy-in from many actors, which means pulling the trigger on offensive actions isn't some secret. Whereas there was legitimate doubt whether Russia would actually invade Ukraine up until they actually did it. NATO would never. It's a committee, for crying out loud.
Anyways. Yes, in theory, the various nuclear agreements were supposed to give decision-makers more time to make such decisions, thus increasing the chance of a good decision, by limiting the (relatively) shorter range types of missile, but IIRC (welcome corrections) the Russians literally were the first ones to purposefully develop such a missile in violation of the treaty, and thus deserve the bulk of the practical blame. I think that's still in keeping with your information, as again, even IF the conversion of Aegis systems to Tomahawks was possible, my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing. (Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?) Thus, even if Russians might be upset that the US isn't keeping the spirit of the INF treaty, developing their own non-compliant missile creates the exact risk the INF agreement was supposed to prevent, and their concerns, while justified maybe more broadly, still shouldn't have extended to this particular issue. Which brings me right back to the original point. I get that the Russians are historically touchy, but there's a difference between paranoia and common sense.
Russia is a single entity and NATO is not. Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone - even in Georgia it was secessionists who were shelled, not Russian territory - but the same is patently not true for individual European states. Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism. We can tell exactly because of the Ukraine stuff that went down can genuinely cause us to re-examine the 2014 grab and conclude (even if we hadn't been sure already) that this was starting shit, not 'taking advantage' of an existing crisis. The additional fact that Russia has been deliberately and freely embracing "grey zone" tactics to achieve their goals (little green men, online astroturfing, etc.) should work against their credit, not in their favor.
Yugoslavia on the other hand is not Russia. If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.
I strongly believe the US would act in exactly the same way as Russia if put in the same circumstances. Imagine if there were a
couprevolution in Mexico tomorrow, throwing out the elected pro American government for one that is decidedly pro China. So much so that Mexico wants to join an alliance with China, stop trade with the US, possibly disallow the US military and civilian ships access to the Gulf of Mexico, provide accommodations for military bases for China in Mexico on the border, and possibly station Chinese nuclear weapons pointing north. While the US has never been to war directly with China, and they aren’t threatening to invade, we would invade Mexico and not think twice. We would field tactical nukes in the case we were losing ground with Mexican troops approaching San Diego and not think twice.Believe me, things like the Cuban Missile Crisis are almost perpetually part of my thinking that I like to challenge myself with. But I try to avoid too-crazy what-ifs because nothing in foreign policy is ever divorced entirely from history or circumstance. Lack of realism proportionally decreases the usefulness of thought exercises. A better thought exercise is, for example, if the US gets in a shooting war with China and loses a major fleet, does it use a tactical nuke? What if instead China air-nukes a fleet, do we air-nuke a city in response? What do we do if China preemptively shoots down a ton of our GPS or other satellites, but takes no other action, how would we respond? All of those are much more relevant and important questions to ask and plan for rather than... whatever weird fiction that is. Or, talk about for example the actual real-world case of US putting pressure on Panama to kick out the nearby Chinese ports near the canal (and whatever other crock Trump is spouting). Maybe engage in some reasoning about what if those ports were militarized or something. Would the US be justified in invading Panama to stop Chinese influence in this case? Well, treaty-wise I think we'd have some latitude, but practically speaking I think that that would be bad and the world would be wise to try and stop it from happening.
To the extent that moral reasoning matters (which is, not much, mostly when convenient and/or don't infringe too much on the more core responsibilities) I similarly think it's enough to put yourself in their shoes and better understand context rather than conjure up some kind of convoluted alter-history just to reason through a low-relevance moral point.
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Of course!
I don't think this is true. The threshold for nuclear use is probably lower than people think and does not require miscommunications.
Particularly when discussing tactical nuclear weapons, the location is very important. Russia can't hit the US with ~any of its tactical nuclear arsenal, whereas the entire US tactical nuclear arsenal can be targeted at Russia due to NATO air bases.
I agree that NATO/the US is very unlikely to launch a first strike against Russia, nuclear or otherwise.
It depends on what exactly was done to the VLS cells to prevent Tomahawks from being loaded in. If the answer is "nothing" then you could stick a Tomahawk in at any point.
Yes, but the INF bans conventional intermediate-range weapons as well. China did not subscribe to the INF, which is one of several reasons why it was good the US withdrew.
Is this historically true? How long has it been since Russia fought a large conflict to maintain control of their territorial borders? World War Two? Maybe the 1990s...?
Is this an either/or? It seems completely wrong, if you pay attention to individual Russians, to think at least some of them aren't emotionally caught up in the cause of the Donbas separatists. If Russia was entirely motivated by greed and expansionism I would have expected them to seize Finland first, as it is smaller and much less armed than Ukraine. (Similarly I would have expected them to have seized Latvia and Estonia in 2003 before they became part of NATO, those countries have essentially zero power to resist a Russian invasion.) But instead they first attacked Ukraine after the government was violently overthrown in 2014. It seems to me that "realpolitik," while present, is probably overstated when modeling Russia's interactions with its neighbors, particularly with Ukraine.
The analogous situation is California leaving the Union during a big break-up and then flirting with a Chinese security alliance. After a revolution overthrows the democratically elected government and replaces it with a Chinese-favorable one, the government of the United States moves to seize its naval bases and a land corridor to ensure they can be resupplied. Local insurgents, with a bit of CIA encouragement, attempt to split some of the northeastern farmland off from California proper, and California, with supplies and training from China, responds by shelling the insurgent's cities for eight years and preparing a large offensive to retake their territory.
Do you think the US government would be entirely motivated by realpolitik in that scenario? Might some other motivations creep in?
Yes, this is CTSO.
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I think a lot of this is just how soft power looks when the enemy does it. The russians of course have their narrative about colour revolutions, and the recent USAID cuts have certainly found a lot of direct state involvement in "independent media". Theres arguments that ours is in some way legit and theirs manipulation, but thats far too deep into the ideological weeds to be the basis of a diplomatic rule.
Little green men are just Russian troops out of uniform. That isn't soft power, it's hard power deployed perfidiously.
I agree that Russian social media troll ops look like Voice of America in reverse if you don't start with "democracy good" biases.
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