My point was mainly that mutually assured destruction might not really work the way it is supposed to. I am sure a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time

My point was mainly that mutually assured destruction might not really work the way it is supposed to. I am sure a lot of smart people have spent a lot of time thinking about it but I am not convinced that it really works, at least not in all scenarios. If one side breaks out, screw it, we launch the nukes, the other side might suddenly not have good reasons to retaliate. They might of course still do it just because that is what the plan says or to prove to potential future attackers that they really mean it, but besides that there may actually not be any good reasons to retaliate, at least in some scenarios. But that will admittedly depend heavily on the actual scenario and I just provided one that seems rather unlikely or at least incomplete, only launching the nukes and nothing else.