[asdff]

I think it would depend on the context which often depends on what the real risk is. Building 5000 nuclear missiles? Overreaction. Overbuilding flood control systems such that the region has not experienced major flooding in 100 years? Justified preparation. The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decommissioned thousands of nukes and the sky didn't fall, so that goes to show all that preparation was useless. Take away flood control systems OTOH and that would probably result in thousands of lives lost before long given the odds of a bad storm in the area. Likewise with pandemic preparations (mentioned in the intro); what are the odds of a pandemic? High, so the preparations are justified.

[izabera]

>The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decommissioned thousands of nukes and the sky didn't fall, so that goes to show all that preparation was useless.

Bad example. It absolutely wasn't useless at the time to build those thousands of nukes. The whole concept of mutual assured destruction breaks down if the other side has 20x more nukes.

[asdff]

Wasn't it unclear for most of the cold war how many nukes were even in play? As far as I understand the U.S. early on overbuilt nukes, assuming the soviets had a lot more of them at the time when they had hardly any at all. Then the soviets had to play catch up with the americans as you state, but once again it was all for nothing in the end for those nukes that were built, sat idle in silos, then decommissioned without seeing any use at all. If you have nukes for ten targets that would probably be enough to make a nation nonfunctional. Once the enemy launches their nukes, you launch yours and the world ends in 7 minutes. I can't imagine any nation would rise from the ashes having its 10 largest population centers annihilated. Personally I think the U.S. MAD plans of the 1950s-60s are absolutely horrific. "Mr. Secretary, I hope you don't have any friends or relations in Albania, because we're just going to have to wipe it out." The russians were not thinking along the same terms as the americans in terms of destruction.

[mellavora]

Given the disregard for human life that the Russians have typically displayed in war, including the current conflict, what would you propose as a deterrent instead of MAD?

Second question. Let's say you want to negotiate a treaty in the case where neither side trusts the other, and where neither side really has any enforcement power over the other. What mechanism would you propose, to which both parties could agree, and to which both parties could be pretty sure the other side would respect?

MAD is indeed horrific. The authors of the policy thought so as well. Everyone would very much appreciate a better solution. Until now, none has been proposed.