[alephnerd]

> Poland might be/have been another good example. They would only need to guarantee that St Petersburg, Moscow, and Minsk would be vaporised in case of invasion to be safe on their Eastern border

As I mentioned above, the fear of vaporization goes away if you can continue to keep striking after being striked. If you've reached the point where you are launching nuclear strikes, you accept the massive toll that you will have to pay with a launch, and wish to enact as severe a toll as possible. To do that you need second strike and nuclear triad capabilities.

Every single one of the countries you mentioned has second strike capabilities and either has Nuclear Triad capabilities (China, US, Israel) or is working to implement them (France, North Korea).

A country like Poland or Germany is too late in the game to build second strike or nuclear triad capabilities, and even starting a nuclear weapons program would be causus belli enough in the short-to-medium term for a war while being unable to prevent a strike.

[mytailorisrich]

No,the fear does not go away. The point is that Russia isn't even going to try if they know their main cities are going to be wiped. Whether they can possibly ultimately "win" because irrelevant if it is a pyrrhic victory and/or cost is to high.

[alephnerd]

> The point is that Russia isn't even going to try if they know their main cities are going to be wiped

And my argument is if you as a state are seriously consider a nuclear strike, you have accepted that millions will die, but it's better to completely wipe out the other opponent. No amount of rationalization can resolve that level of existential threat. Poland saying "we can threaten to nuke Moscow" is enough of a justification for Russia to view Poland as an existential threat to wipe off the map.

Large countries, and especially large nuclear powers, have multiple cities where industries are distributed. This remains true in Russia, as most of their military manufacturing capabilities remain spread out across Omsk, Kazan, Novosibirsk, etc.

If you wish to scare a country from fighting a war with you, even conventional capabilities are enough to highlight the pain while also not reaching the threshold where a conflict becomes existential.

So no, it does not make sense for Poland or Germany to develop nuclear capabilities so late in modern world.

[mytailorisrich]

France can nuke Moscow and is still there, North Korea caan nuke Seoul and Tokyo and is still there.. once you have credible nukes you can't be wiped out, that's the point of having them.

There is no being 'late', either. It's about the threats.

I have never implied that Poland should develop nuclear weapons. I wrote that they are/were in the very situation in which nuclear weapons may be desirable (similar to France, Israel, North Korea). Relatively small countries have nukes simply to make any attempt at invasion not worth it even if everyone knows they can't "win" against the USSR/Russia/the US, anyway.

[alephnerd]

> France can nuke Moscow and is still there

They have second strike capabilties and a nuclear triad

> North Korea caan nuke Seoul and Tokyo and is still there

They have second strike capabilities and are working on nuclear triad capabilities

> I wrote that they are/were in the very situation in which nuclear weapons may be desirable

But unlike the nations listed above, they do NOT have a domestic ballistic missiles program, and that would take decades to build.

SK and Japan both have had domestic ballistic missile development and submarine development capabilities for decades, and that's why if they wished to become a nuclear power, they could do so very quickly.

Poland and Germany does not.

> Relatively small countries have nukes simply to make any attempt at invasion not worth it even if everyone knows they can't "win" against the USSR/Russia/the US, anyway

You can't make nukes (and the associated delivery systems) overnight. It takes decades to build the entire ecosystem.

Just having a nuclear bomb isn't enough if you lack the ability to develop and manufacture ballistic missles or submarines domestically.

Furthermore, as was seen in the Kargil War in 1999, nuclear weapons can fail as a deterrence for war.