[Goose]

Putin has got to be asking himself if anything more can go wrong.  I can see the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons inching a little closer to the forefront of his mine.  

Would the United States be accepting of Cuba joining a military alliance with China and Russia;

Well, in fact we did exactly that, Russia anyway. Russia had a naval base in Cuba. They flew also  TU-95s there and back twice a week for years. These flights dropped so many sonobuoys the claim was you could walk from Havana to Russia on them. Twice a week, out and back, come home with a tan.

having their missiles positioned close to our border?

This was only off the table because Russia did not have the conventional naval strength to break our "quarantine" and were unwilling to start a nuclear war over it. In the end, we removed our IRBMs from Turkey in return for them not placing theirs in Cuba. Both sides figured out that with all the ICBMs pointing at each other coming online, the IRBMs didn't matter much. There are NATO states that explicitly prohibit nuclear weapons on their soil (Denmark, for one). Finland can do the same.

There's no way Finland would proactively attack Russia but I can't envision how things look from Putin's viewpoint.

Me either, and there is the rub.

This thread from Pavel Podvig, a Russian expert on Russian nuclear and missile forces, I think is very good on the topic of "tactical" nukes and thinking about what their purpose would be for Russia.

https://twitter.com/russianforces/status...zltTghlZog

Does using a nuke enable Russia to improve their military situation on the Ukraine? I don't think so. It would be about terror/resolve. And there are a lot of downsides for Putin. China and all the other fence sitters would get off the fence for sure and his domestic situation would be even worse. Of course, leaders do not always think rationally and act according to their best interest. Nuclear weapons are still controlled by fallible people.

I think the tweet has it right. No reason to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine other than to kill lots of people and make them give up or to demonstrate a willingness to do so. You are also unfortunately exactly right IMHO that Putin is a very fallible leader. Hopefully the guys actually in the chain of delivering these weapons will just not do it. Even more hopefully we don't have to test that hypothesis.

[Goose]

Putin has got to be asking himself if anything more can go wrong.  I can see the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons inching a little closer to the forefront of his mine.  

Would the United States be accepting of Cuba joining a military alliance with China and Russia;

Well, in fact we did exactly that, Russia anyway. Russia had a naval base in Cuba. They flew also  TU-95s there and back twice a week for years. These flights dropped so many sonobuoys the claim was you could walk from Havana to Russia on them. Twice a week, out and back, come home with a tan.

having their missiles positioned close to our border?

This was only off the table because Russia did not have the conventional naval strength to break our "quarantine" and were unwilling to start a nuclear war over it. In the end, we removed our IRBMs from Turkey in return for them not placing theirs in Cuba. Both sides figured out that with all the ICBMs pointing at each other coming online, the IRBMs didn't matter much. There are NATO states that explicitly prohibit nuclear weapons on their soil (Denmark, for one). Finland can do the same.

There's no way Finland would proactively attack Russia but I can't envision how things look from Putin's viewpoint.

Me either, and there is the rub.

This thread from Pavel Podvig, a Russian expert on Russian nuclear and missile forces, I think is very good on the topic of "tactical" nukes and thinking about what their purpose would be for Russia.

https://twitter.com/russianforces/status...zltTghlZog

Does using a nuke enable Russia to improve their military situation on the Ukraine? I don't think so. It would be about terror/resolve. And there are a lot of downsides for Putin. China and all the other fence sitters would get off the fence for sure and his domestic situation would be even worse. Of course, leaders do not always think rationally and act according to their best interest. Nuclear weapons are still controlled by fallible people.

I think the tweet has it right. No reason to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine other than to kill lots of people and make them give up or to demonstrate a willingness to do so. You are also unfortunately exactly right IMHO that Putin is a very fallible leader. Hopefully the guys actually in the chain of delivering these weapons will just not do it. Even more hopefully we don't have to test that hypothesis.