How do you square "The evidence shows people only consistently respond to threats in quite low-stakes competitions, and that high-stakes conflicts are either regulated by shared ideology or else they escalate indefinitely to maximum force." with MAD?

"The real danger for the world is not that Putin actually overplays his hand. It would be that Western liberals believe they have a much stronger hand, and cause their own destruction as other regimes feel forced to go all in to correct perceptions." Wouldn't MAD mean Putin overplayed his hand, whether or not the West did too?

"given at how close proximity the West already is - there's no buffer zone" NATO has bordered Russia proper since its formation.

"Does NATO have a single command and control leadership who consider the entirety of NATO to be their national territory?" I suggest you read up on NATO Supreme Allied Command.

There are some areas where your answer could use improvements/fixes.

@bharring, I reconcile MAD with the fact that both sides seemed to settle into an ideological respect for the other's territory and sphere of influence, and therefore eliminated ungoverned conflict over the matters of highest stakes. The most dangerous escalation was the Turkey-Cuba missile crisis of 61-62, where NATO stationed nukes in Turkey and the USSR responded putting them in Cuba. The solution was that both sides backed down and removed them.

@bharring, NATO has bordered Russia via Norway since inception, but that status quo was established under very different circumstances, including the fact that the touching points are geographically remote and the political commitments of the Norwegian government. Finland, notably, was not a member until now.

@Steve washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/18/… There have been nukes and carrier systems in Turkey from 1959 onwards.

@bharring, on the Supreme Allied Command, the reality is that national politicians are still in charge of determining what the actions of NATO will be, including their own continued involvement in the alliance. Poland might be jumping their head through the ceiling calling for war, but if the US president decides that isn't the day when the world ends and his own family dies over the fate of Poland, then the alliance is bust. NATO would have to unify into a real national people for the Russians to stop looking behind it.

@haxor789, it was something to do with the range and speed of the missiles iirc (and in the context of defence systems in the 1960s), not Turkey's mere possession of nukes. I can't read that article as it is paywalled. I was asked how my logic reconciled with MAD, and I've explained: both sides were happy enough with their status quo, to compete on their political models, and neither side was ever de-secured enough to launch nuclear winter defensively. When the USSR did collapse, it was not through the overwhelming violent force (or superior threat) of the USA.

@Steve Not sure it's worth it but does that work? web.archive.org/web/20231213034922/https://… The article is mostly arguing about the threat of having Turkey have nukes given their turn towards dictatorship and deteriorating relations and as a side note mentions the nukes that are still deployed there. Given the proximity even the short ranged missiles would have hurt Russia where it matters so still a big deal I'd say.

@Steve Not really, the USSR has built doomsday devices and the U.S. has constantly tried to get around MAD and regaining first strike capabilities or increasing the defense capabilities. With the threat of nuclear winter being quite tangible from what I've heard, too young for that. Putin apparently said as much as that being a state of both sides being content with but I'm not sure about the parallel universe that he's occupying...

"NATO would have to unify into a real national people" and in doing so, become the very thing they hate?

@haxor789, I don't have the information at my fingertips to understand all the details, I just know that the issue wasn't nukes in Turkey per se, it was that the USSR responded by putting nukes at a similar striking distance to the USA, and the USA found that so frightening that both sides agreed to withdraw the particular technologies or placements involved. I don't think the issue was the mere capability to hurt the other - it was the ability to do so unreasonably quickly, without time for detection, analysis, or decision-making.

@Steve According to Wikipedia. The nukes in Turkey and Italy had been there since 1959 but hadn't been much of an issue. But the U.S. tried to invade Cuba and so the USSR supplied Cuba with military assistance including nukes and including offensive nukes that could have bridged the gap in intercontinental ballistic missiles which was apparently in favor of the U.S. so the mid range weapons probably didn't matter that much. And as a secret protocol the U.S. agreed to remove those from Turkey and Italy if the Russian mid range weapons were removed.

@haxor789, you're right that each side tried to get ahead somehow, but I'm not sure either side ever achieved supremacy.

@bharring, unfortunately that's the way things are. You can't hang on to models of organisations which are weak.

There are no Eastern European borders thousands of miles from Germany. Berlin to the farthest reaches of Ukraine are less than 1500 miles by road, and to Tallinn less than 1000. Even Paris to Tallinn, as the car drives, is less than 1600.

@prosfilaes, completely irrelevant nitpicks, which doesn't engage with the thrust of my point which is that politicians are above all loyal to their nations and not the NATO alliance, and their populations even more so. Putin has an army and officer class drawn from every corner of his territory, he's elected by citizens from every corner, and schoolchildren are shown what is and isn't Russia. NATO doesn't have an army, an officer class, a citizenry, an election, or a schoolbook. That's why Putin will look behind the paper tiger. And as China shows, liberals will always sell out for a buck.

This box says "use comments to suggest improvements". That's a factual error in your answer, and if you dismiss that correction, it means your answer is less a statement of fact and more an argument driven by opinion instead of fact.

@prosfilaes, there was no relevant factual error. I concede that the distance between a German border and an Eastern European frontier is less than a thousand miles if the nearest possible points are selected, but I spoke of "France and Germany" without being so specific, and only then as examples of major NATO members. The thrust clearly was not to make claims about geographic facts, but about political facts and national loyalties. I'm not therefore going to dignify your quibbling with any kind of edit.