[kbenson]

The thing is, there's the time when nobody has nukes, the time when multiple people have nukes and keep each other in check, and the time where one party has nukes. We've got plenty of experience with no nukes and multiple groups with nukes, but had a very short period where one side had nukes. How confident are we that they wouldn't be used much if that period lasted much longer, and the US was less blindsided by the Russian development of nuclear weapons?

I worry less about a future with lots of planet-killer grade weapons than I do about the period where one group has access to them and the others do not. There are any number of ways to justify violence to yourself when you don't have to worry much about the response. For example, preemptively striking before the other side get the same capability because that might lead to another MAD situation which is arguably worse for the species overall...