you also need submarines to have a "credible" second strike deterrent. It's not enough to just have a bomb.

you can have a tiny nuclear war, as a treat.

insane we're back here.

Following Betteridges Law the answer is of course No

It's time to disarm Russia.

Edit: to be more clear: I can't believe that after 4 fucking years, a hostile nation is still permitted to wage war against a sovereign country.

nuclear weapons are one of those insidious technologies that are almost self-replicating in a sense, because if your enemy has nukes it strongly behooves one to either also have nukes or to buddy up with someone who has them. Opting out entirely is very difficult once the genie is out of the bottle

I get why they would want them but it seems so clear to me that the world is going to end in fire

Time for a Nordic nuke is at least from 2008.

Russia is genocidal, US unreliable and erratic. The civilized world needs nukes. Not only the Nordic countries, but also Germany and Poland. Unless Russia and US are willing to give up theirs ;)

Instead of nukes, maybe another massive pandemic super virus that kills off half the population of humans on Earth wouldn’t be so bad.

This is what Trump's dismantling of US power has brought us to. Our soon-to-be-former allies can't count on US nuclear deterrence to protect them, because not only is the US unreliable, but they might be the ones attacking.

We're in crazy-town because of Trump and the Republicans, with very real consequences.

No. Nei.

I don't think there's any question at this point that it's in Nordic self interest to develop a nuclear deterrent. This has also become true for other regions in the world.

This is all a horrible development for the overall future of humanity, but it's the world we live in now. At a minimum hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned off from more beneficial uses over the coming decades, and the risk of major accidents will increase. The worst change is of course the fact that the odds of a complete societal collapse have increased dramatically.

Almost all of the world's nukes are controlled by aging old dictators or aspiring dictators who are surrounded by sycophants and treat competence as much less important than personal loyalty. Geopolitical risks are only going to increase as these rulers become more erratic and demented.

In light of renewed aggressions from powerful states, the only recourse smaller states have to defend themselves is to turn themselves into a fortress like Taiwan (which is prohibitively expensive for most larger states) or nuclear deterrence (which Ukraine gave up for false guarantees of protection from invasion). Guarantees aren't what they used to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if many waning US allies are covertly developing nuclear capabilities.

I hope my state is because the alternative is being at the whim of the powerful nuclear states around us in a political climate of rising authoritarianism.

Yes please.

The Greenland affair has illuminated the US-Europe relationship. For whatever inequities may lie in asking / threatening to take this essentially worthless piece of land... I would have thought the value was less than a powerful ally.

The fact that Europe unified against the US, threatening to shoot first, proved they'd rather have an empty piece of ice / dirt, than our friendship and protection. It made me re-evaluate the whole Russia / Ukraine affair.

While Western Europe claimed to be mortal enemies with Russia... the US was providing much of the weapons. While the US was seizing Russian oil tankers, Europe was buying their gas. There's no dispute that the US is against Russia... and yet Europe would turn to fight the US too?

However, Europe doesn't view the US as an ally. Greenland is not enough to change their position, but it's enough to reveal their true position.

Europe is far more aligned with Russia than they are against. Both sides have the same goal. Russia is killing swaths of European men, and that's about it. Ukraine is killing swaths of European men. The territorial control doesn't explain the war. The killing is the purpose.

Nordic countries have had nuclear power plants for half a century.

If they don't have a sufficient secret stock pile of nuclear weapons already, then they have been utter and total fools.

If they don't have secret nuclear weapons in orbit, they have been severely irresponsible.

Let's hope the plans of their leaders is not to send all young men as infantry to the meat grinder to die for a country which hates them, like they are doing in the Ukraine war. But who knows? Life is full of surprises.

The lesson from Ukraine is resounding Yes.

Any country (this includes both democracies and petty dictatorships) which wishes to be safe and independent must get nukes and means of delivery now.

Yes.

Russia will be prepared to launch another attack in just a few years after the war on Ukraine ends and the US cannot be relied upon.

In fact, it's even worse as the US may end up as the enemy!

As a Swede we don't have the competence or expertise anymore. We did have at one time and we tried to make the bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_progra...

Everything is service or finance economy now. Nobody cares about science sadly (me included).

It's all Netflix & TikTok, Foodora scrolling until the end now.

Any nation launching any nuke has the potential to eliminate most life on earth. Limited nuclear war is very unlikely. This is a nightmare.

Please read Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book by Annie Jacobsen that discusses the insanity of nuclear war.

This article is so batty it's hard to take seriously. The Nordics are not going to be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. I know the UNSC seems toothless most of the time, but on this issue they are united.

Best time was over 70 years ago. Second best time was 69 year ago. But currently best is now.

From what I have understood, a significant part of the reason why Sweden scrapped its nuke program last time around, was that we found out that nukes pose more questions than they answer. Obviously, you need the nukes themselves, and a reliable delivery mechanism. Neither are cheap. Preferably, you want second-strike capability, which is kind of tricky. And you want some way of balancing things so that the enemy does not take a chance on that second-strike capability and nuke you first anyway. Then you need something to use them for. At the time, the targets would probably have been ports in the Baltic states, then (involuntary) parts of the Soviet union and likely starting points for the hypothetical Soviet invasion fleet. Could we really stomach the idea of killing a few thousand Estonian civilians, probably not too happy about being used as stepping stones by the Soviets? For most military targets, there are better weapons.

Of course, it has later been argued that by entering into various more or less hidden agreements with the US, we made ourselves nuclear targets anyway, with no formal guarantees whatsoever to show for it...

Bring out the Swedish Nuclear Canon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90wcPsxr4H4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsMcAvAITjk

I live in Norway and I agree we should have a nuclear deterrent, however this article feels like navel gazing, it’s long projecting and speculative.

What is not discussed well is delivery systems, which we are lacking for second strike capability… submarines or complex siloes?

My only wish for the program is that we keep the capability within our control to prevent political and give the current government the ability to destroy the current capabilities at a moment’s notice in case the following govt seems irresponsible. Who knows what we will look like in 200years.

Is it time? Maybe. Will they do it? Probably not. The European countries constantly talk and never act. It took the second Russian invasion of Ukraine for them to even barely start to do anything and even now, they are still trying to get the US to continue to be the backbone of their defense strategy. Even as the US takes actions that (in their minds) are ruining that idea, instead of acting, they just complain and condemn.

Even if tomorrow they decided to actual work together and invest in their own capabilities it would be decades before they would be free of the US defense sector and they know it and it's why they are so resistant to the idea. I think you would need to see more aggression by the Russians combined with substantially more shenanigans by the US (more than just bombastic announcements for the sake of grabbing media attention) for that to change because you are talking about trillion dollar investment, every year, for decades to walk a different path.