For the first time in decades, America is attempting to vastly improve its defenses against nuclear attack—and this might be the most dangerous thing it can do.
This is a really interesting piece. Reminds me of Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press' The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence arguing that the rapid change in technology will be the end of MAD.
We walked back from MAD awhile ago, like Nixon …because mass suicide isn’t appealing. We as in both sides at the time the USA and USSR. We need defenses past a suicide pact, especially when the world was already destabilized the last 24 years.
Certainly MAD “stability” doesn’t make sense in a world where frightened politicians in Germany threaten to use nuclear weapons against Russia in 2022 prior to the start of the Ukrainian Russian war , Russia issued a demarche in response. That has only become public quite recently, although the demarche of 2022 was known publicly the backstory of Germany making nuclear threats wasn’t. For those who don’t know NATO countries have on loaner from the USA several dozen nuclear weapons under “dual control”, they have the weapons and the USA has the arming codes. That’s public. Germany has about 35 nuclear weapons. Russia 6000. BTW.
So we need a better deterrent than all or nothing mass suicide when we already have a crazy girlfriend threatening nuclear war.
This is a really interesting piece. Reminds me of Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press' The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence arguing that the rapid change in technology will be the end of MAD.
scorpions in a bottle
We walked back from MAD awhile ago, like Nixon …because mass suicide isn’t appealing. We as in both sides at the time the USA and USSR. We need defenses past a suicide pact, especially when the world was already destabilized the last 24 years.
Certainly MAD “stability” doesn’t make sense in a world where frightened politicians in Germany threaten to use nuclear weapons against Russia in 2022 prior to the start of the Ukrainian Russian war , Russia issued a demarche in response. That has only become public quite recently, although the demarche of 2022 was known publicly the backstory of Germany making nuclear threats wasn’t. For those who don’t know NATO countries have on loaner from the USA several dozen nuclear weapons under “dual control”, they have the weapons and the USA has the arming codes. That’s public. Germany has about 35 nuclear weapons. Russia 6000. BTW.
So we need a better deterrent than all or nothing mass suicide when we already have a crazy girlfriend threatening nuclear war.
Not that MAD wasn’t lunacy all along.