| I'd prefer not to gamble millions of lives on the theory that people or states (especially states that are effectively just one person) are going to act completely rationally. Here's one example where "rational self interest" doesn't seem to have worked out: - Kim Jong Un could rationally (in both his and his countrymen's self interest) live the rest of his days in a gloriously well appointed Chinese estate, albeit in exile, perhaps as part of a transition negotation that sees his dynasty exchange their power in Korea for both their own safety and the good of the country. - If rational action by people and states are as close to a physical law as is so frequently assumed, why has this not happened? Why does he not act rationally, and why do we imagine that he will act rationally in the future? Here's the fundamental problem with the MAD / game theory / self interest / rational actor tack: the model implies that there's a 0% chance of nuclear weapons ever being used (because it wouldn't be in the self interest of the state), and therefore, the appropriate policy response is effectively to ignore continued accumulation of greater and greater stockpiles of nuclear arms, as no conflict can ever be possible. The MAD theory leads to a political calculus that promotes the proliferation of ever more nuclear weapons, and as we're seeing, ever more nuclear weapons in the hands of ever more unstable actors. The MAD theory is unsound and fundamentally dangerous. Clearly, the chance of nuclear war is not 0% (a truly absurd idea), and so the policy response that MAD implies (perpetual deadlock) leads us down an even more dangerous road: perpetual stockpiling and proliferation, without any measured guarantees to stability. We're placing very, very large bets (right now our civilization, soon the human race, one day the entire planet, even the rocks and stones) on an idea that we can't falsify and have never tested. |