this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
748 points (98.8% liked)

World News

54654 readers
2930 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As speculation mounts that Kim Jong-un and Trump could meet this month, analysts say Pyongyang will continue to see nuclear weapons as a matter of survival

North Korea’s launch last week of a missile from a naval destroyer elicited an uncharacteristically prosaic analysis from the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The launch was proof, he said, that arming ships with nuclear weapons was “making satisfactory progress”.

But the test, and Kim’s mildly upbeat appraisal, were designed to reverberate well beyond the deck of the 5,000-tonne destroyer-class vessel the Choe Hyon – the biggest warship in the North Korean fleet.

His pointed reference to nuclear weapons was made as the US and Israel continued their air bombardment of Iran – a regime Donald Trump had warned, without offering evidence, was only weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 6 points 12 hours ago

The Security Dilemma: Any steps a state takes to protect itself also threatens their neighbours who can't tell if those actions are purely defensive or if they might be used for an offensive war.

In the Realism interpretation, this necessarily produces an arms race: The neighbours also need to increase their own safety, in turn threatening the first state, who then needs to...

WMDs and nuclear deterrence are the escalation of that dilemma. By raising the potential cost of an attack war to the level of annihilation, this leverages the most fundamental state objective (securing its own survival) to deter from ever attacking (at least one paper; war and diplomacy never turn out quite as the theory might imagine).

Idealism would instead trust in mutual understanding between states, that this arms race will produce pointless cost for all parties, which might be better invested in infrastructure and trade to make all parties more prosperous. Which also sounds nice on paper, but greed, ego and military industrial ~~corruption~~ "lobby" are working hard to separate us.

Remember, you've got more in common with a working-class American, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, North Korean, Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian or any other other country than you do with billionaires or the leaders working so hard to spread hate and division and turn us on each other. We do what we must to protect ourselves, but we must not forget that the guy on the other side is just as much a victim.

Until we can make that unity a reality, it unfortunately does seem that nukes are a critical component in any state's security strategy.