For singleton events (large-scale nuclear attack and counterattack), deception plays an important role. This isn’t a problem, apparently, in dath ilan—everyone has common knowledge of other’s rationality.
(It is pretty important to very transparently respond with a nuclear strike to a nuclear strike. I think both Russia and the US are not really unpredictable in this question. But yeah, if you have nuclear weapons and your opponents don’t, you might want to be unpredictable, so your opponent is more scared of using conventional weapons to destroy you. In real-life cases with potentially dumb agents, it might make sense to do this.)
I think creating uncertainty in your adversary applies a bit more than you give it credit for, and assuring a second strike is an exception.
It has been crucial to Russia’s strategy in Ukraine to exploit NATO’s fear of escalation by making various counter-threats whenever NATO proposes expanding aid to Ukraine somehow. This has bought them 2 years without ATACMS missiles attacking targets inside Russia, and that hasn’t require anyone to be irrational, just incapable of perfectly modeling the Kremlin.
Even when responding to a nuclear strike, you can essentially have a mixed strategy. I think China does not have enough missiles to assure a second strike, but builds extra decoy silos so they can’t all be destroyed. They didn’t have to roll a die, just be unpredictable.
Make your decision unpredictable to your counterparty but not truly random. This happens all the time in e.g. nuclear deterrence in real life.
For singleton events (large-scale nuclear attack and counterattack), deception plays an important role. This isn’t a problem, apparently, in dath ilan—everyone has common knowledge of other’s rationality.
(It is pretty important to very transparently respond with a nuclear strike to a nuclear strike. I think both Russia and the US are not really unpredictable in this question. But yeah, if you have nuclear weapons and your opponents don’t, you might want to be unpredictable, so your opponent is more scared of using conventional weapons to destroy you. In real-life cases with potentially dumb agents, it might make sense to do this.)
I think creating uncertainty in your adversary applies a bit more than you give it credit for, and assuring a second strike is an exception.
It has been crucial to Russia’s strategy in Ukraine to exploit NATO’s fear of escalation by making various counter-threats whenever NATO proposes expanding aid to Ukraine somehow. This has bought them 2 years without ATACMS missiles attacking targets inside Russia, and that hasn’t require anyone to be irrational, just incapable of perfectly modeling the Kremlin.
Even when responding to a nuclear strike, you can essentially have a mixed strategy. I think China does not have enough missiles to assure a second strike, but builds extra decoy silos so they can’t all be destroyed. They didn’t have to roll a die, just be unpredictable.