- US officials are considering letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons, The New York Times reports.
- Ukraine says it’s necessary to fight cross-border attacks.
- But fears of crossing Russia’s red lines have long made the US hesitate.
The US has barred Ukraine from striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons.
But that may be about to change. The New York Times on Thursday reported that US officials were debating rolling back the rule, which Ukraine has argued severely hampers its ability to defend itself.
The proposed U-turn came after Russia placed weapons across the border from northeastern Ukraine and directed them at Kharkiv, the Times reported, noting that Ukraine would be able to use only non-American drones to hit back.
The Times reported that the proposal was still being debated and had yet to be formally proposed to President Joe Biden.
Russia has nukes. We can’t do that
Actually, we can and should. Here’s why…
Russia’s nukes are mostly 40 year old warheads on 50 year old delivery systems. These systems have been maintained by notorious black market scalpers who have somehow managed to sell massive amounts of valuable rocket fuels, nav computers and other unique parts on the black market over the last several decades. We can be sure the launch, guidance and detonation failure rates would be extremely high. High enough that, even without intervention, a long-range attack is very unlikely to be successful.
Now, factor in the decades of aggressive research and spending the west has focused on mitigating nuclear threats, with a high focus on Russian systems. While it’s always best to avoid the attempt if possible, Russia has almost zero chance of posing a serious threat to the west. The threat to Ukraine, however, is a bit higher as they may (smartly) choose very simple delivery methods instead of what we would be able to defend against. But, that still requires a ton to go right and could cause the U.S. or the EU to become aggressive. Putin will do almost anything to avoid that outcome.
So, the smart money on expediting the end to this war and minimizing casualties is to have a policy to almost always call Putin’s bluff. He has a very weak hand and has shown it to pretty much everyone at the table.
1% success rate * 5,580
Still more nukes than I want to deal with today. Nobody off of Lemmy/Reddit seriously suggests this.
Russia also doesn’t and hasn’t had the money to maintain them.
I don’t think this particular policy would result in a nuclear war, but “they haven’t maintained their nuclear weapons” doesn’t sound to me like a good enough argument to not risk a nuclear exchange.
Even one successful weapon exploding would be catastrophic.
Can’t get nuked if it’s a hypothetical and you’re on a keyboard!
You know, somebody in Ukraine is bound to be taking volunteers if you’re all so committed to taking down Putin. (Not you OP)
So did Ukraine until they gave them up at our behest because we promised we’d intervene if Russia were to invade them.