Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country

[Dartz]

Nuclear war was based on some very specific assumptions. They kind of knew how it'd go

You push the button when your existance is under threat - that's basically it. There's the red-line where - when you feel you have no other option, where you're about to be annihilated by the enemy, you push the button in the hopes they get the message and stop. And you kinda hope they realise you have the button, so they don't drive you to the point where you might need to use it.

So instead of directly attacking each other they sort of bump and grind and use proxies and spin stories to change the level of acceptable conduct without actually attacking each other.


So NATO goes into Belarus and picks up a few casualties but they've no reason to launch because they're not under existential threat. Russia - in theory - isn't under existential threat from a war in Ukraine - so it has no reason to launch beyond sheer bloody overkill - or trying to pull a Hiroshima and terror-bomb Ukraine out of the fight.

But Ukraine isn't under the nuclear umbrella. That begins at NATO borders.