[spacebanana7]

Not all uses of nuclear weapons necessarily escalate to the doomsday maximum exchange scenarios. There are many interesting points of equilibrium in between.

For example - if far right extremists took over Turkey and attacked Russia, then Russia nuked a Turkish airbase, what would the US/UK/France do? It's not actually that obvious.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

You’re going to see the most strongly worded letter in the history of human civilization.

[euroderf]

Responding to conventional weapons with a nuke ? Unlikely.

[spacebanana7]

The USA did it against Japan. Of course those were special circumstances, but all wars have their own set of special circumstances to some extent.

There’s also the argument that using nuclear weapons make sense when a nuclear state has a weaker conventional force that its opponent. Russia still has a pretty strong conventional force, but for example North Korea is in this position against most likely adversaries.

[euroderf]

> There’s also the argument that using nuclear weapons make sense when a nuclear state has a weaker conventional force that its opponent.

Facing the Warsaw Pact, the US never renounced first use of nuclear weapons.

[mkfs]

Which is actually quite unfortunate, given that China, our closest rival, has an avowed "no first use" policy. Sanctity of human life and fundamental reciprocity would behoove us to at least, with respect to them, adopt an equivalent posture.

[euroderf]

One might counterargue that in a fair fight (i.e. all-conventional), China might clean our clocks. And they certainly have lots of domestic political reasons to start a wholly unnecessary war.

[Nevermark]

The irony is that if your defenses consist of, on the one hand, nuclear weapons, and on the other hand, pitchforks brandished by several farmers... You are going to be very, very respected.

[anikan_vader]

Until someone calls your bluff, perhaps accidentally, and realizes much of the nuclear saber-rattling was just that. Of course, since it wasn't entirely a bluff, this is the easiest way to get a nuclear war going. (Get a country with nukes but limited conventional capabilities into a brinksmanship contest.)

[rjsw]

Turkey is a member of NATO.

[dragonwriter]

More than that, Turkey is a member of NATO that participates in US nuclear sharing and has substantial US forces (aside from the nuclear weapons) deployed.

A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which it would do massive irreparable damage to US credibility to ignore, but would almost certainly be a nuclear attack on US forces in the direct and literal sense.

[margalabargala]

> A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty

In the given scenario above, Turkey attacks first, in which case Article 5 would not apply to a retaliation.

[spacebanana7]

The text of article 5 doesn’t distinguish whether the attack on the NATO state was justified or even whether the NATO state attacked first.

This lack of blaming is partly why Turkey and Greece had to sign at exactly the same time, so that neither could take advantage of being able to attack the other whilst being themselves shielded by NATO.

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…” -

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm

[dragonwriter]

> The text of article 5 doesn’t distinguish whether the attack on the NATO state was justified or even whether the NATO state attacked first.

Arguably, the text of Article 5 doesn't have to, since an act of aggression breaches the obligations of Articles 1 and 2, as well as the pre-existing obligations which the Treaty explicitly does not alter under Article 7.

[spacebanana7]

I see what you mean - although articles 1 & 2 seem to be treated more like guidelines rather than rules.

Otherwise I struggle to understand how any NATO member could’ve engaged in any of the overt or covert expressions of military force in Iraq 2003, Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Egypt, or Algeria to name but a few.

[AtlasBarfed]

Not under the Trump doctrine

[spacebanana7]

That’s the point. In theory Turkey is covered by the NATO nuclear umbrella.

But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.

[dragonwriter]

> But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.

The question is how many would be willing to go nuclear in response to Russia nuking US forces in Türkiye in response to a conventional attack by Türkiye, which any plausible "Russia nukes Türkiye" scenario would involve.

[spacebanana7]

It’s not obvious how many casualties the US itself would tolerate before going nuclear.

In circumstances where there were only a couple thousand American casualties, and those were incurred as collateral damage rather than as primary targets, it might make sense for the US to respond with conventional airstrikes and for Russia accept those and not escalate further.

This would depend a lot on the individual president though, like I could imagine Trump/Obama being much more risk averse than personalities like Bush 2 or JFK.