How would the US detect attempts to develop nuclear weapons before any tests took place? Should they have nuked the USSR on a well-founded suspicion?
I think from a rational perspective, the answer must be yes. Under this hypothetical policy, if the USSR didn’t want to be nuked, then it would have done whatever was necessary to dispel the US’s suspicion (which of course it would have voiced first).
Do you really prefer the alternative that actually happened? That is, allow the USSR and many other countries to develop nuclear weapons and then depend on MAD and luck to prevent world destruction? Even if you personally do prefer this, it’s hard to see how that was a rational choice for the US.
BTW, please stop editing so much! You’re making me waste all my good retorts. :)
It seems equally rational for the US to have renounced its own nuclear program, thereby rendering it immune to the nuclear attacks of other nations. That is what you’re saying, right? The only way for the USSR to be immune from nuclear attack would be to prove to the US that it didn’t have a program. Ergo, the US could be immune to nuclear attack if it proved to the USSR that it didn’t have a program. Of course, that wouldn’t ever deter the nuclear power from nuking the non-nuclear power. If the US prevented the USSR from developing nukes, it could hang the threat of nuclear war over them for as long as it liked in order to get what it wanted. Developing nuclear weapons was the only option the USSR had if it wanted to preserve its sovereignty. Therefore, threatening to nuke the USSR if it developed nukes would guarantee that you would nuke it if they didn’t (i.e. use the nuke threat in every scenario, because why not?), which would force the USSR to develop nukes. Expecting the USSR, a country every inch as nationalistic as the US, a country that just won a war against far worse odds than the US ever faced, to bend the knee is simply unrealistic.
Also, what would the long-term outcome be? Either the US rules the world through fear, or it nukes every country that ever inches toward nuclear weaponry and turns the planet into a smoky craphole. I’ll take MAD any day; despite its obvious risks, it proved pretty stable.
I think there is an equilibrium where the US promises not to use the threat of nukes for anything other than enforcing the no-nuclear-development policy and for obvious cases of self-defense, and it keeps this promise because to not do so would be to force other countries to start developing nukes.
Also, I note that many countries do not have nukes today nor enjoy protection by a nuclear power, and the US does not use the threat of nuclear war against them in every scenario.
I think that proposed equilibrium would have been extremely unlikely under circumstances where the US (a) had abandoned their pre-war isolationist policies and (b) were about to embark on a mission of bending other nations, often through military force, to their will. Nukes had just been used to end a war with Japan. Why wouldn’t the US use them to end the Korean war, for example? Or even to pre-empt it? Or to pre-empt any other conflict it had an interest in? The US acted incredibly aggressively when a single misstep could have sent Soviet missiles in their direction. How aggressive might it have been if there was no such danger? I think you underestimate how much of a show stopper nuclear weapons were in the 40s and 50s. There was no international terrorism or domestic activism that could exact punitive measures on those who threatened to use or used nukes.
Even though the cold war is long over, I am still disturbed by how many nuclear weapons there are in the world. Even so, I would much rather live in this climate than one in which only a single nation—a nation with a long history of interfering with other sovereign countries, a nation that is currently engaged in two wars of aggression—was the only nuclear power around.
Given that there is a nontrivial chance that the policy won’t be implemented reliably, and partially because of that the other side will fail to fear it properly, the expected utility of trying to implement this policy seems hideously negative (that is, there is a good chance a city will be nuked as a result, after which the policy crumbles under the public pressure, and after that everyone develops the technology).
Given that there is a nontrivial chance that the policy won’t be implemented reliably, and partially because of that the other side will fail to fear it properly, the expected utility of trying to implement this policy seems hideously negative
Ok, granted, but was the expected utility less than allowing everyone to develop nuclear weapons and then using a policy of MAD? Clearly MAD has a much lower utility if the policy failed, so the only way it could have been superior is if it was considered much more reliable. But why should that be the case? It seems to me that MAD is not very reliable at all because the chance of error in launch detection is high (as illustrated by historical incidents) and the time to react is much shorter.
The part you didn’t quote addressed that: once this policy doesn’t work out as planned, it crumbles and the development of nukes by everyone interested goes on as before. It isn’t an alternative to MAD, because it won’t actually work.
Well, you said that it had a “good chance” of failing. I see your point if by “good chance” you meant probability close to 1. But if “good chance” is more like 50%, then it would still have been worth it. Let’s say MAD had a 10% chance of failing:
EU(MAD) = .1 * U(world destruction)
EU(NH) = .5 U(one city destroyed) + .05 U(world destruction)
Then EU(MAD) < EU(NH) if U(world destruction) < 10 U(one city destroyed).
I’m not sure everything would have happened as you describe, and thus not sure I prefer the alternative that actually happened. But your questions make me curious: do you also think the US was game-theoretically right to attack Iraq and will be right to attack Iran because those countries didn’t do “whatever was necessary” to convince you they aren’t developing WMDs?
My understanding is that the Iraq invasion was done mainly to test the “spread democracy” strategy, which the Bush administration believed in, and WMDs were more or less an excuse. Since that didn’t work out so well, there seems to be little chance that Iran will be attacked in a similar way.
Game theoretically, physically invading a country to stop WMDs is much too costly, and not a credible threat, especially since lots of countries have already developed WMDs without being invaded.
I think from a rational perspective, the answer must be yes. Under this hypothetical policy, if the USSR didn’t want to be nuked, then it would have done whatever was necessary to dispel the US’s suspicion (which of course it would have voiced first).
Do you really prefer the alternative that actually happened? That is, allow the USSR and many other countries to develop nuclear weapons and then depend on MAD and luck to prevent world destruction? Even if you personally do prefer this, it’s hard to see how that was a rational choice for the US.
BTW, please stop editing so much! You’re making me waste all my good retorts. :)
It seems equally rational for the US to have renounced its own nuclear program, thereby rendering it immune to the nuclear attacks of other nations. That is what you’re saying, right? The only way for the USSR to be immune from nuclear attack would be to prove to the US that it didn’t have a program. Ergo, the US could be immune to nuclear attack if it proved to the USSR that it didn’t have a program. Of course, that wouldn’t ever deter the nuclear power from nuking the non-nuclear power. If the US prevented the USSR from developing nukes, it could hang the threat of nuclear war over them for as long as it liked in order to get what it wanted. Developing nuclear weapons was the only option the USSR had if it wanted to preserve its sovereignty. Therefore, threatening to nuke the USSR if it developed nukes would guarantee that you would nuke it if they didn’t (i.e. use the nuke threat in every scenario, because why not?), which would force the USSR to develop nukes. Expecting the USSR, a country every inch as nationalistic as the US, a country that just won a war against far worse odds than the US ever faced, to bend the knee is simply unrealistic.
Also, what would the long-term outcome be? Either the US rules the world through fear, or it nukes every country that ever inches toward nuclear weaponry and turns the planet into a smoky craphole. I’ll take MAD any day; despite its obvious risks, it proved pretty stable.
I think there is an equilibrium where the US promises not to use the threat of nukes for anything other than enforcing the no-nuclear-development policy and for obvious cases of self-defense, and it keeps this promise because to not do so would be to force other countries to start developing nukes.
Also, I note that many countries do not have nukes today nor enjoy protection by a nuclear power, and the US does not use the threat of nuclear war against them in every scenario.
I think that proposed equilibrium would have been extremely unlikely under circumstances where the US (a) had abandoned their pre-war isolationist policies and (b) were about to embark on a mission of bending other nations, often through military force, to their will. Nukes had just been used to end a war with Japan. Why wouldn’t the US use them to end the Korean war, for example? Or even to pre-empt it? Or to pre-empt any other conflict it had an interest in? The US acted incredibly aggressively when a single misstep could have sent Soviet missiles in their direction. How aggressive might it have been if there was no such danger? I think you underestimate how much of a show stopper nuclear weapons were in the 40s and 50s. There was no international terrorism or domestic activism that could exact punitive measures on those who threatened to use or used nukes.
Even though the cold war is long over, I am still disturbed by how many nuclear weapons there are in the world. Even so, I would much rather live in this climate than one in which only a single nation—a nation with a long history of interfering with other sovereign countries, a nation that is currently engaged in two wars of aggression—was the only nuclear power around.
Given that there is a nontrivial chance that the policy won’t be implemented reliably, and partially because of that the other side will fail to fear it properly, the expected utility of trying to implement this policy seems hideously negative (that is, there is a good chance a city will be nuked as a result, after which the policy crumbles under the public pressure, and after that everyone develops the technology).
Ok, granted, but was the expected utility less than allowing everyone to develop nuclear weapons and then using a policy of MAD? Clearly MAD has a much lower utility if the policy failed, so the only way it could have been superior is if it was considered much more reliable. But why should that be the case? It seems to me that MAD is not very reliable at all because the chance of error in launch detection is high (as illustrated by historical incidents) and the time to react is much shorter.
The part you didn’t quote addressed that: once this policy doesn’t work out as planned, it crumbles and the development of nukes by everyone interested goes on as before. It isn’t an alternative to MAD, because it won’t actually work.
Well, you said that it had a “good chance” of failing. I see your point if by “good chance” you meant probability close to 1. But if “good chance” is more like 50%, then it would still have been worth it. Let’s say MAD had a 10% chance of failing:
EU(MAD) = .1 * U(world destruction)
EU(NH) = .5 U(one city destroyed) + .05 U(world destruction)
Then EU(MAD) < EU(NH) if U(world destruction) < 10 U(one city destroyed).
Utility function fail?
I’m not sure everything would have happened as you describe, and thus not sure I prefer the alternative that actually happened. But your questions make me curious: do you also think the US was game-theoretically right to attack Iraq and will be right to attack Iran because those countries didn’t do “whatever was necessary” to convince you they aren’t developing WMDs?
My understanding is that the Iraq invasion was done mainly to test the “spread democracy” strategy, which the Bush administration believed in, and WMDs were more or less an excuse. Since that didn’t work out so well, there seems to be little chance that Iran will be attacked in a similar way.
Game theoretically, physically invading a country to stop WMDs is much too costly, and not a credible threat, especially since lots of countries have already developed WMDs without being invaded.