Absolutely.
There are two ways to make sure nuclear weapons are never used in war:
No one has any nukes
Everyone has nukes.
#1 is never going to happen. The US, Russia, and China are for sure never ever giving up their nuclear weapons.
So #2 it is, level the playing field and give everyone nuclear weapons. A nation is far less likely to use a nuclear weapon if they know they can and will get nuked back right away.
The MAD doctrine aims to make the intentional use of nukes in war unworkable, but in doing so makes their accidental use due to mishap, misunderstanding or miscommunication much more likely, and the more people that are party to the MAD doctrine the more likely accidents are.
You don’t need to look very hard to find examples of cases where billions of people would have been killed if not for people choosing to ignore doctrine even when the information they had at hand said that they should use their weapons
New MAD doctrine idea: all belligerents in any international conflict gets nuked. Thank you coming to my ted talk, I have a proof but it is too large to fit in the comments.
2 only works with countries that have something to lose. Don’t assume that a deterrence strategy that works with other major powers is going to work with some small, hellish Islamist dictatorship.
Absolutely.
There are two ways to make sure nuclear weapons are never used in war:
#1 is never going to happen. The US, Russia, and China are for sure never ever giving up their nuclear weapons.
So #2 it is, level the playing field and give everyone nuclear weapons. A nation is far less likely to use a nuclear weapon if they know they can and will get nuked back right away.
The MAD doctrine aims to make the intentional use of nukes in war unworkable, but in doing so makes their accidental use due to mishap, misunderstanding or miscommunication much more likely, and the more people that are party to the MAD doctrine the more likely accidents are.
You don’t need to look very hard to find examples of cases where billions of people would have been killed if not for people choosing to ignore doctrine even when the information they had at hand said that they should use their weapons
New MAD doctrine idea: all belligerents in any international conflict gets nuked. Thank you coming to my ted talk, I have a proof but it is too large to fit in the comments.
2 only works with countries that have something to lose. Don’t assume that a deterrence strategy that works with other major powers is going to work with some small, hellish Islamist dictatorship.
I don’t really want the taliban having nukes…
They probably won’t build them.