I was reading an article last year regarding the threat of nuclear weapons detonated by non-state actors in the Atlantic which advocated a policy of Assured Destruction against the state which produced the special nuclear materials. The idea was to dissuade nations such as North Korea from selling bombs to Al Qaeda and to force other nations to step up security on their arsenals to prevent them from being stolen. I don’t have a strong opinion on this matter, but Assured Destruction doesn’t really seem like the way to go to me. Let’s hear your reasoned arguments pro and con.
Thanks,
Rob
Assured Destruction (referred to derisively as Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD) is at best a marginally stable strategy with just two players of relative nuclear parity, and completely unstable with three or more players. What you are referring to, however, is not Assured Destruction which is an immediate deterrent policy which a particular set of assumptions (parity, counterforce, threat detection, presumptive attack/Launch on Warning), but another strategy called Confirmed (or Warranted) Reprisal; in essence, if we find that Party A is responsible for providing materiel or war implements that are used by Party B to make an attack upon us, we are ethically justified in responding in kind.
AD is strategic deterrence; it doesn’t seek to reduce proliferation or arsenal size as it does to provide a disincentive to usage. Paradoxically, it assumes that usage or presumed attack will result in massive retaliation and a “full on exchange”, resulting in essentially complete destruction of both or all players. CR, on the other hand, is intended specifically to limit proliferation by disincentivizing nations with nuclear capability from sharing information or materiel with nations or actors which may seek to use such weapons actively. It has a completely different set of assumptions (traceability, accountability, internal political stability) that predicate its successful implementation which work fine with major nations like China, Russia, Western Europe, and the United States, but don’t really apply to minor nations with little political accountability or stable transition of government between regimes.
Assuming that nuclear proliferation continues to increase at the currently projected rate, it approaches certainty that nuclear weapons will be used in a regional conflict (India versus Pakistan, Isreael versus Iran, et cetera). The likelihood of weapons falling into the hands of independent actors (terrorists, political extremists, Bond-esque villains holding the world hostage from their submarine lairs) increases in rough proportion to the access such parties have to relatively unsophisticated weapons that do not possess reliable Permissible Action Links or some similar multi-point security system. The most effective manner of addressing this is multifold, including reducing proliferation by reducing the size and destructive effect of nuclear arsenals, ensuring political continuity of nuclear-capable regimes, improving the security and fail-safe reliability of nuclear weapons themselves via technology sharing, and a system of independent controls and inspection that gives confidence to all parties that all weapons and delivery systems are accounted for. Post hoc threats of retributive action, while great for campaign speeches and Michael Bay films, don’t do much to actually secure nations and peoples against the threat of the use of nuclear weapons possessed by rogue parties.
Stranger
Well to be fair to the author of the article, mangling the meaning of Assured Destruction is probably my fault. From your reply, it seems that game theoreticians have given this a lot of thought which is comforting. Either that or policy makers should be reading your posts :).
BTW, for a mechanical engineer, you know a lot about game theory. Is it a hobby?
Thanks,
Rob