| > Poland with 10 credible nuclear weapons is enough to break the economic back of any country who attacks, so they won't attack. If you are in a situation where you are even seriously considering a nuclear strike, that means you are viewing a threat as existential, which completely undermines the economic argument. > This needs what you said before, second-strike capability. Either that or a fast enough response time that they can launch while hostile missiles are still inbound. (Or does that still count as second-strike?) Absolutely, but the issue is that this takes A LOT of time to build and implement, and a country like Poland or Germany cannot build that kind of capability overnight. Yet a nuclear program can be viewed as an existential threat that can be used as a causus belli for war (conventional or nuclear). This is a pretty bad RoI. Nuclear programs are expensive, and instead of spending the amount you would need to build a nuclear program, it's much better for Poland and Germany to double down and concentrate on conventional war capabilities such as rocket systems, drones, artillery, and heavy weapons. The fact that a country with an ossified MIC like Ukraine is able to bog down a military like Russia's with conventional capabilities is proof enough that doubling down on building conventional war-fighting capabilities is enough to cause severe pain on an aggressor while not turning a conflict into an existential one which justifies nuclear warfare. And this is why you never hear Polish or German military leadership talk about developing a nuclear program. |
No, because it's not symmetric.
Party A may be an existential threat to party B, party B can prevent that existential threat just by being sufficiently painful. B doesn't even have to be close to an existential threat to A for it to be painful enough to reconsider.
That's how bees keep humans away from hives. Also how the Irish kicked my great-grandparents generation out of controlling Ireland, even at the height of the British empire.
> Nuclear programs are expensive, and instead of spending the amount you would need to build a nuclear program, it's much better for Poland and Germany to double down and concentrate on conventional war capabilities such as rocket systems, drones, artillery, and heavy weapons. The fact that a country with an ossified MIC like Ukraine is able to bog down a military like Russia's with conventional capabilities is proof enough that doubling down on building conventional war-fighting capabilities is enough to cause severe pain on an aggressor while not turning a conflict into an existential one which justifies nuclear warfare.
Yes, they are expensive. Also, I expect a multi-polar nuclear arms race to go hot much more easily, to normalise their use, to generally be bad for everyone.
So I hope you are correct (or, more importantly, that your opinion is shared by decision makers). On the other, there's clearly a constant undercurrent of "let's not give too much more aid to Ukraine just in case the Russian nukes actually work", so I don't think it's seen that way.
> German military leadership
Given the local attitudes towards even nuclear reactors, I think it's just a political non-starter around here. (I'll have to wait and see if @TeMPOraL sees this and responds regarding Poland's politics?)