I recently listened to a podcast interview with Daniel Ellsberg on his book, warning the public of the less public aspects of US nuclear policy. This made me much more pessimistic about how well the MAD model describes the dynamics of conflicts between nuclear powers. Notes that I took of Ellsberg’s claims, which I have varying levels of doubt in:
There appear to be and have been principal agent problems within the US and USSR governments that makes it unwise to treat them as a single agent.
In practice, parties have not preserved their enemies’ second strike capability (which the US could do by e.g. giving Russia some nuclear submarines). [EDIT: actually I think that wouldn’t currently work, since Russia’s submarines are trackable by US satellites because the US has good satellites and something about Russian harbours?]
In practice, parties have secretly committed to destructive attacks on other countries, which serve no deterrence purpose (unless we assume that parties are overrating the spying capabilities of their adversaries).
Any widespread nuclear weapons use would be so devastating to the Earth that no second strike is needed to preserve deterrence (I find myself skeptical of this claim).
I recently listened to a podcast interview with Daniel Ellsberg on his book, warning the public of the less public aspects of US nuclear policy. This made me much more pessimistic about how well the MAD model describes the dynamics of conflicts between nuclear powers. Notes that I took of Ellsberg’s claims, which I have varying levels of doubt in:
There appear to be and have been principal agent problems within the US and USSR governments that makes it unwise to treat them as a single agent.
In practice, parties have not preserved their enemies’ second strike capability (which the US could do by e.g. giving Russia some nuclear submarines). [EDIT: actually I think that wouldn’t currently work, since Russia’s submarines are trackable by US satellites because the US has good satellites and something about Russian harbours?]
In practice, parties have secretly committed to destructive attacks on other countries, which serve no deterrence purpose (unless we assume that parties are overrating the spying capabilities of their adversaries).
Any widespread nuclear weapons use would be so devastating to the Earth that no second strike is needed to preserve deterrence (I find myself skeptical of this claim).