I see a weird dissonance in your post - you clearly believe in nuclear deterrence, but also negate that NATO - a nuclear alliance - provides deterrence, and claim that it would be better for nations to not be part of NATO, but have their own small nuclear force instead.

The first point is something that you'll have to resolve yourself, so I'd actually like the time to disagree on your second point - that a small nuclear force provides deterrence against major powers, like North Korea. North Korea has a very small nuclear arsenal, and an even smaller number of carrier missiles; this is exactly the threat you counter with BMD, and indeed, if you look at a map of where the US's BMD is located, you will find that it's squarely pointed at North Korea. North Korea is safe for other reasons, not because it could lob a nuclear-tipped missile at the US; it could lob nukes at various US allies, this provides deterrence, and is more difficult to defend against (and, as you would expect from this line of reasoning, both Japan and South Korea have been investing and continue to do so a lot into BMD). And North Korea is of course in a range where it could glass Seoul using conventional weapons, which is virtually impossible to defend against. On top of that there is an unclear amount of China in the back of North Korea; it seems unlikely that you could intervene in NK without China doing something.

The situation is even worse for a country like Lithuania. Even assuming they bring up their own nuclear arms program without Russia or anyone else intervening, which seems like one heck of an assumption to me, deterrence requires that you're actually able to feasibly launch something. This essentially rules out land-based nukes, because Lithuania is too small and all possible locations are too close to Russian land forces or naval forces to be able to launch a missile without giving a large window to intercept it. Air-based nukes are out for similar reasons, the country is small enough that air defenses would cover most of it. So now you're looking at SLBMs and the submarines that go with them.

There is only country that managed to do something like this, and that's Israel. And it does not border on another nuclear country, not even close - in part because they actively prevent that from happening.

> Lets not pretend we are saints. The empire that needs to go today isn't the soviet union or [russia]. It's NATO. The greatest source of destruction, death, instability around the world.

This would have played a decade ago, or even after Russia's quasi-covert military actions in Ukraine in 2014 that were easily relativized away. But these days, tens of thousands of humans in mass graves and billions worth of destroyed civilian infrastructure say otherwise.

The USian economic empire is a malevolent force, for sure. But Russia's industrial genocide and concomitant domestic nosedive into totalitarianism is on a completely different level, on a scale that we thought was a relic of the 20th century. Equating the two demonstrates a staggeringly foolish lack of perspective.

> tens of thousands of humans in mass graves

The civilian casualties in ukraine since 2014 is about 3,000. Not sure where you get tens of thousands.

> But Russia's industrial genocide and concomitant domestic nosedive into totalitarianism is on a completely different level, on a scale that we thought was a relic of the 20th century.

You do realize that far more people died in iraq, afghanistan, etc than will ever die in ukraine right?

That fact that you have to outright lie shows that your position is wrong.

> The civilian casualties in ukraine since 2014 is about 3,000. Not sure where you get tens of thousands.

He is clearly referring to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

> You do realize that far more people died in iraq, afghanistan, etc than will ever die in ukraine right?

Iraq was notably not a NATO operation, and Afghanistan was a protracted twenty year long war that saw some ~50 000 civilian deaths. At this point, considering the intensity and very high casualty numbers in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it's hardly credible to claim to know how many will "ever die in Ukraine" if we don't even know where that war is going, let alone how and when it will end. Above you also brought up Syria, which is again not a NATO operation, and Libya, where some 10 000 NATO air-strikes ended up killing less than hundred civilians [1]. Would it be better if those 40-70-ish people not have died? Obviously. Is an amortized 0.7 % chance of a given air-strike killing one civilian showing that NATO targeted civilians? I think not. That brings up to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which if I recall is the only time NATO actually did something without UNSC (~everything) or Article 5 (~once) authorization, solely based on all NATO members agreeing to do it. Personally, I think it was the right thing to do, but it was done the wrong way legally and operationally.

[1] A popular claim on social media is that NATO killed over 500 000 civilians in Libya, which would amount to about 10 % of the population at the time.

Fog of war means there is no good count of casualties. Tens of thousands is my earnest order of magnitude based on rough estimations I've heard reading about various sites of atrocities. A good faith estimation is not a "lie". If anything, repeating an extremely conservative lower bound as if it were the full story is closer to being a lie (see also: the official USG Iraq body count versus unofficial ones).

The magnitude of the Iraq body count is horrendous, agreed. USG unilaterally deciding to attack Iraq is undeniably evil, agreed. If the US empire diminished, it would be a good thing - assuming it were due to underlying causes weakening the fundamental viability of large influence structures, and not simply different empires becoming more powerful.

But since we're talking about war, and not say cryptography bolstering personal liberty, then I'll begrudgingly accept the least-worst empire. And that is the role the US is playing in this situation, supporting Ukraine's self-defense against an aggressive totalitarianism-resurgent Russia. It does bother me to say that, knowing weapons manufacturers and other architects of USG's aggressive wars are making bank, and knowing the perverse incentive is for USG to string Ukraine along with just enough supplies to damage Russia but not make for a decisive end to the war. But I remember I am against Russia's imperialist attack on Ukraine for the same exact reasons I was against USG's imperialist attack on Iraq. The roles of the players have changed, so I must incorporate nuance to my views rather than leaning on the same old USG-bad heuristic.