The point parent is in making is that this strike against Iran demonstrates, that yes indeed you do need nukes to be safe and that's one of the major risks of this action.

Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.

To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.

A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.

Except that police exists. We willingly relinquish the monopoly of violence to the state that protects us. The world nation stage is anarchic instead, there is no world police, and the strong dominate

Please note ICE is doing operations in blue cities against law abiding immigrants at hearings because to go after either actual criminals or the gun infested red areas would be a danger to life and limb.

Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.

6 months ago I woildnt have disagreed. Be ause law enforcement had guns for you.

But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.

It's an interesting analogy. I'm opposed to guns in every household because we have the police which is meant to give security to people. There, we allow gun use, but under stricter conditions. The majority agrees that this is right, so the system works.

What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.

Kinda sorta in some ways, vastly different in others.

The differences are so extreme it's a waste of time to discuss the analogy further.

That analogy fails due to the sheer power of nuclear weapons. A comparable analogy would be that every household should have an Abrams tank.

In properly safe countries this is of course not true. But sadly the world stage still seems to be on the development level of ”lawless neighborhood” so there’s some merit to the idea (not that it is necessarily the best way forward though).

If someone knows you are heavily armed will they be more or less likely to attack you?

Attacking North Korea would result in millions of refugees pouring into South Korea and China. Nobody wants that

I'm not sure that's entirely true. We naturally always try to paint the "enemy" as an unhinged maniac ready to unless destruction on the entire world at a whim, but in reality I don't think this is pretty much ever the case. A population with the industrial and intellectual capability to develop a nuke in the first place is going to have grander ambitions than going out in a blaze of glory. I think even ultra-fundamentalists like the Taliban mostly just want to build up their own little vision of a utopia.

I think a part of the reason North Korea plays crazy is because they have to. If the US didn't think they'd push the big red button, then we'd invade them in a heart-beat. Mutually assured destruction only works when you believe the other guy will push the button. So you need the bomb and then you also need to make sure everybody thinks you're willing to actually use it.

I think GP is right, sadly. The logical conclusion from Ukraine, Iran and North Korea is, get nukes. UN designations of illegal wars turned out to be BS, the only thing that may work is nukes.

Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.

We all hooray (well, some of us) the "good" countries having nukes, to bring peace and stability. But it only takes one funky election to get a crazy person in charge of such "good" nukes. And if you 10x the number of nuclear powers, that's 10x more shots at that.

Rockets?

Seoul is in artillery range of the border.

Why would they hit the front line?

The only nuclear weapons Ukraine would need is enough to reliably ensure Moscow and St Petersburg cease existing.

Do you really think the US would trade Washington and New York for a chunk of Mexico?

They always immediately stop their conflicts once the building opposite of the one with the nuclear command center blows up. So... it seems to work for them

with the lack of a war happening between them? neither side invaded or killed 800 of the other's citizens and US/china didnt step in to back their horse with bombs

both have nukes and that acts as a strong deterrent for both of them not to escalate (which they didnt). the countries not having nukes are still in much worse situation

I mean israel gets attacked even though they have nukes, but some rockets are not the same as a regime-changing war

The DMZ is 35 miles north of Seoul and there are enough NK artillery pieces aimed at Seoul to level it.

> Iran has been attacking Israel for the last 30 years

Please give dates, locations, and number of casualties. Iran has made many aggressive statements and funded and armed Palestinian resistance organizations, but actual conflict between Israel and Iran has been mostly clandestine and not officially acknowledged, with a few exceptions where Israel and the US unilaterally attack Iran.

It's the prisoners dilemma: best scenario is nobody has nukes. But if your enemy get nukes, you better get them ASAP. A Nash equilibrium is set where everybody should either have nukes or be strongly allied with someone with nukes.

Regarding guns: if you have easy access to weapons, everyone also has access, so the Nash equilibrium is "get a weapon". If weapons circulation is restricted, the Nash equilibrium is "don't waste your money on weapons".

In a reasonable world, the first step would be reforming NATO so that it becomes more neutral and focused on preventing wars rather than countering Russia. I'm saying this as a Pole, so definitely this isn't self-serving, since Poles are second most hated by Russians after Ukraine. This step should, however, happen in parallel with the EU developing its European army, to defend itself from Russia if that's needed, which is another challenging and non-obvious step, but we're closer to this now than we were before Trump.

However, we don't live in a reasonable world, so I suspect the first step will be, as much as I don't want it, World War III.