Russia vetoes a UN resolution calling for prevention of a dangerous nuclear arms race in space

Abandon all reason and logic, ye who enter the russian / MAGA rhetoric.

This place is not a place of honor.

What the hell is an ambassador doing calling something "political"

No shit, idiot, you're a politician.

"It's absurd that you won't let us have the political win with our populace by looking like a strong country by putting nukes in space" is what he meant.

Anything you'd get him to answer would be as good as "it's because the Russian economy is booming!"

"Nu-clear weapon is very important part of foreign policy"

Because then they can use the fear to get reelected or pass the laws that they want

Some of them are Christo-fascist and they just wanna get raptured.

Some of them are nationalist and they think their country is so awesome, it can tank a few nukes.

And some of their number are so mind fucked by machismo and toxic masculinity, that they just want to wave the big stick.

They want to LARP Fallout.

I'm pretty sure that the Soviet Union was.

googles

Yeah.

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

The Soviet Union was a charter member of the United Nations and one of five permanent members of the Security Council. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its UN seat was transferred to the Russian Federation, one of the many successor states of the USSR.

But as to why they have a veto, they have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. If the UNSC says "do X", and Russia objects, it'd probably be preferable in most cases to not do X and maintain the status quo than for it to be nuclear WW3. I don't think that that'll change unless there's a reliable counter to the Russian arsenal.

The US might be able to pull off a successful first strike, wipe out enough of the arsenal and destroy any remaining counterstrike in the air that no direct nuclear response could happen, but even in that case, it'd be risky and would have colossal costs, kill the nuclear taboo -- very bad news for the world as a whole moving forward -- kill enormous numbers of people and scatter fallout all over. You really, really don't want those things to happen.

Plus, the US cannot counter Russian weapons in a Russia-launches-first scenario.

And the other permanent UNSC seat-holders won't even have the possibility of pulling off a successful first strike, even with the attendant risks and costs.

Nothing else approaching a counter exists today, and preemptively kicking off a nuclear war is a very bad counter, so...

Maybe, maybe not. Their existence and the mutually assured destruction that comes with it might be the primary factor responsible for preventing WW3 during the Cold War. The "balance of terror" is still working to this day.

SDI didn't have nuclear weapons in space.

Some proposals did include anti-ballistic-missile systems being stationed in space, but those had no nuclear payload.

This recent thing about nuclear weapons in space is about use of nuclear weapons in an anti-satellite role, which the US believes Russia is banging on a system for. Problem is that those are indeed pretty good at messing up satellites, but also horribly non-specific and will clobber many, many satellites from many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion

The US did a test of a high-altitude nuclear explosion back when, not realizing the consequences, back when there were a tiny fraction of today's electronic and satellite infrastructure, messed up terrestrial infrastructure and satellites, and realized that doing these was a very, very bad idea.

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

Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 900 miles (1,450 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,: 5  setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.

The explosion released roughly 10^29 electrons into the Earth's magnetosphere. While some of the energetic beta particles followed the Earth's magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped and formed radiation belts around the Earth. The added electrons increased the intensity of electrons within the natural inner Van Allen radiation belt by several orders of magnitude. There was much uncertainty and debate[by whom?] about the composition, magnitude and potential adverse effects from the trapped radiation after the detonation. The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low Earth orbit were disabled. These included TRAAC and Transit 4B. The half-life of the energetic electrons was only a few days. At the time it was not known that solar and cosmic particle fluxes varied by a factor of 10, and energies could exceed 1 MeV (0.16 pJ). In the months that followed, these man-made radiation belts eventually caused six or more satellites to fail, as radiation damaged their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar, as well as the United Kingdom's first satellite, Ariel 1.

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

If Russia uses nuclear weapons in space in an anti-satellite role in 2024, when there's a lot of satellites up there, it's probably going to dick up a hell of a lot of satellites from a hell of a lot of countries. Not to mention any terrestrial effects.