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It's about time to spell out something painfully obvious, because I don't see anyone else doing it:
Russia would have lost this war decisively long ago if it was no nuclear power.
The frontline combat is at a stalemate, the naval blockade crumbled long ago and Russia cannot win by strategic air war because Ukraine gets enough outside support to cope with the damage done to its infrastructure and economy.
Ukraine, on the other hand, could have won long ago by a strategic air war effort:
It could have destroyed the oil refineries, which a Russia under sanctions could not have coped with.
It could have destroyed enough transformer stations to collapse the Russian rail traffic in European Russia, which Russia could not have repaired due to sanctions alone (tiny chance that China could have helped out enough).
Both would have collapsed the Russian economy as much as the railway grid bombing collapsed the German economy in I/1945.
Why didn't Ukraine do it? My best guess is that its Western supporters gave support under the condition that no such extreme (=decisive) measures would be taken. Why would they have done that? Nukes.
So nuclear munitions are not just a deterrent in peacetime that so far helped to avoid direct war between nuclear powers. Nuclear power status has consequences during wartime that go beyond making force concentrations and single breakthrough points impractical. They also exert political influence. In the case of Russia, nukes protect Russia against strategic knockout blows.
Ukraine really has to work toward collapsing Russian ground forces' morale in order to reconquer the occupied areas. That is, unless a Western nuclear power grows some balls and knocks out Russian oil refineries by itself. The British could do that with cruise missiles.
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If Russia didn't have nukes, this war would have ended in '22. Either when the Ukrainians had encircled and cut off the enitre Russian Kherson grouping - which were let go in reality because of western fear about nukes - or via a Desert Storm like coalition kicking the Russians' teeth in.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson then, though it is not new, is that every country that values its sovereignity and freedom needs to build a nuclear arsenal.
If enough countries assume this to be true, nuclear armaments will sprout like mushrooms, bringing us ever closer to nuclear war.
ReplyDeleteOr to world peace, I suppose nobody knows yet.
DeleteThe problem of aggressions may also simply shift onto the weakest states, leading to all states joining some nuclear umbrella bloc/alliance for security.
You could also made the argument that with even a small Ukrainian arsenal of tactical nukes on cruise missiles, Russia would not have tried to invade Ukraine, maybe just a proxy war in the Dombass using the ''Republics'' as in 2014-22... and Ukraine had a lot of industries and designs bureaus related to ICBMs.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite clear that Russia is more than just a big regional power only thanks to the big arsenal of ICBMs. A part from that even in the horrible Yelstine days there was some money for the strategic nuke force. So corruption and incompetence doesn't mean that they can't erase civilization from earth in a few hours... I suspect they will double down on this in the next years, along with the ''wunderwaffen'' that their propaganda always use. So they can claim some real world power status.
"... unless a Western nuclear power grows some balls..."
ReplyDeleteWell the entire world wonders why people in the most populous and richest country in Europe does not grow some balls build it's own strategic (nuclear) force, as well as the ability to deploy an armored corps+ in addition to its current force... Hello Deutschland - more action, less tough guy talk.