James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️@provisionalidea
While I understand nuclear weapons are an increasingly appealing option for folks looking for silver bullets to our scary new national security situation, they are very much not that. Seen a lot of talk and a number of op-eds so probably a good time to discuss.
Logistically, it is an expensive and protracted project that is by no means an instant fix. In addition to producing (and testing!) warheads, they need delivery mechanisms that can serve as credible deterrent to potential threat actors, in sufficient volume to cause serious damage. We are not currently a nation with missile forces or capabilities, so those would need to be built from the ground-up, including infrastructure like bunkers, silos, nuclear-capable subs and/or bombers (both of which we also do not have), guidance/command/control systems, and so on, in ways that could bypass adversaries’ defences. That is by no means an easy task, nor a short-term one.
In addition to contributing to a vastly less stable world of total nuclear proliferation (that is counter to our interests), the pursuit of said weapons also instantly marks you as an imminent military threat to the increasingly-aggressive global hegemon, thereby accelerating the timeline to armed conflict and accomplishing the opposite of the intended purpose (Iran was attacked — nominally — for pursuing nuclear weapons!). As we are still the US’ primary partner in northern nuclear defence and the pretext for seizing Greenland is “nuclear defence against Russia and China”, us becoming a threat actor to consider would not be taken kindly.
Finally, I think a lot of people, particularly in the commentariat, believe (erroneously) that nukes are an ideal deterrent, with North Korea top-of-mind. Yet NK is the *only* country that has a formal mutual defence pact with China, which is itself a very significant deterrent that often goes unmentioned, and was obviously instrumental in granting them the room to pursue nuclear weapons to begin with. As the India-Pakistan conflict last year additionally showed (and proliferation experts often point out), nuclear nations also still go to war with each other, are a perpetual escalation risk, and create novel hybrid and conventional doctrines to pursue war goals while keeping the tenor of conflict subnuclear.
There is a weird tendency to take MAD as gospel, particularly from those on the left one would assume would be more skeptical of RAND reports. It is important to remember it is little more than a game theory toy problem in a world shaped by constant arms races seeking to break Nash equilibrium. The only winning move is not to play.
