It's as if two private companies each building increasingly large nuclear bombs, both saying they'd love to stop but it would be unsafe to let any one company be in control of the nukes.

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Aeolun 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That's basically the reasoning behind MAD, and it checks out? See what happened to any nation that ever gave away their nukes.

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sharts 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Shouldn’t everyone have nukes then, for maximum peace?

	▲	philipallstar a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You want people with a lot to lose in a nuclear war to have nuclear weapons, and to make sure no-one else does.
	▲	AdamN 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's been proposed before btw and game theorists can justify that as being more stable in some ways. However it reduces the power of the incumbents (so why let it happen?) and the odds of having an irrational actor with nukes goes up.

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vidarh 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Does it check out? India and Pakistan both have nukes and keep semi-regularly fighting each other.

MAD "on paper" prevents either side from going far enough to provoke the other into using nukes, but even then it's fundamentally flawed because it works on the assumption that both sides are both rational and believes the other side to be rational, as well as that both sides understands the others red lines well enough.

Already Reagan realised that isn't necessarily true - after Able Archer '83, he realised that the Soviet leadership seemed to genuinely believe that the US might be prepared to carry out a first strike, and that Able Archer got dangerously close to convince them one might be imminent. It's one of the things he noted as a reason to get in the room with them and negotiate.

If you believe the other side is irrational (whether or not that is because you are irrational), and think they're about to strike, MAD turns from a deterrence into a reason to try to preempt to ensure you're the "least destroyed" by hitting harder, sooner.

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lumost 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

While simultaneously trying to own all economic activity derivable from labor... it's hard to see the argument as anything but disengenuous.