Yeah; I also tend to feel that nukes are vastly overstated in their sovereign defensive capability. Definitely non-zero, they help, but at the end of the day having strong normative political and especially economic ties is vastly more powerful.
Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected.
Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex.
Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west.
North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way.
Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.
> North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why?
Attacking North Korea means millions of starving brainwashed uneducated refugees flooding into China. China will make any deal to avoid that nightmare, that (and Seoul’s destruction) is why no one bothers with North Korea.
Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected.
Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex.
Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west.
North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way.
Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.