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By coincidence, I just watched this again last week and it still holds up. I think it's interesting that Mutually Assured Destruction--which Kubrick thought "i

By coincidence, I just watched this again last week and it still holds up. I think it's interesting that Mutually Assured Destruction--which Kubrick thought "insane"--turned out to be a stable state in a game-theory sense. In fact, when Reagan tried to move away from MAD by building anti-missile defense, most analysts thought it would be MORE dangerous: If the US were to make Russian missiles "impotent and obsolete" then the Soviets would be tempted to use them or lose them. Good thing it failed. And if anti-nuclear activists had succeeded in ridding the world of nuclear weapons, we'd probably be sending US Marines to Ukraine, sparking another world war. Maybe it's only the continuation of MAD that kept the world safe. That's surely the kind of absurd irony that Kubrick would have approved of.

darkteflon 3y ago
This is such a great comment. It did, however, remind me of Zhou Enlai’s quip when asked about the impact of the French Revolution: “Too early to say.”
- j-bos 3y ago
  Seems he wasn't looking to far back/ahead: https://web.archive.org/web/20231114164905/https://www.scmp.com/article/970657/not-letting-facts-ruin-good-story https://web.archive.org/web/20231114164905/https://www.scmp....
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    I think most people consider it apocryphal - as is so often the way with these things. Its rhetorical force certainly doesn’t depend on intimate historical knowledge of competing political ideologies.
rurp 3y ago
I could not disagree more, and there are a great many experts and practitioners in this space that would agree with me. The history of the cold war is terrifying. MAD is incredibly flawed, but it stuck around because nobody could come up with a better option that could actually get adopted. A system that relies on near-perfect alert systems and requires leaders to always make calm rational decisions about the fate of the world with limited information and only minutes to decide is not a stable system. SDI wasn't an isolated case, there were a number of times when either the US or Soviets grew concerned about the other sides progress and seriously considered a preemptive nuclear strike. There will be more of these debates in the future and it only takes one misstep to blow up the world. If nukes had somehow been eliminated before 2022 Putin would almost certainly have not invaded Ukraine. NATO's conventional forces absolutely dwarf Russia's, but the threat of nuclear escalation has kept western support much more limited than it might otherwise have been. Putin is a lot of things, but he's not suicidal about risk. We're currently heading towards a world even less stable than the cold war. Back then there were only two major players. China is currently ramping up their nuclear forces, nuclear cooperation is breaking down with Russia, and our relations are becoming increasingly antagonistic with both countries. On top of that we have rogue actors like North Korea and possibly Iran in the near future. For folks interested in a this topic I highly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast. For anyone who needs more existential dread in their life, the book Command and Control by Schlosser has a great history of nuclear weapons and strategy.
- GMoromisato 3y ago
  The point about stable systems, from a game-theory perspective, is that they are hard to change. Any change ends up being worse. That's why MAD has lasted so long and why I called it "stable". I think you agree with me on that. I went too far in a counterfactual Ukraine war without MAD. If we had eliminated nuclear weapons, history would be so different that there's no way a similar Ukraine war would have happened. I agree with you about that. But I don't think it's too controversial to say that MAD prevented one or more conventional wars. Would a world without nukes be a safer world? Maybe. If nuclear weapons get used again and kill millions, then clearly it was a bad bet. But if we get to 2045--100 years after Hiroshima--without a nuclear exchange, then maybe MAD was the worst idea except for all the others.
sillywalk 3y ago
We survived/survive in spite of MAD. We're not "safe". There are still hundreds of warheads on 'launch on warning' alert. Trillions are being spent to create a new generation of nuclear weapons & delivery systems.

darkteflon 3y ago

This is such a great comment. It did, however, remind me of Zhou Enlai’s quip when asked about the impact of the French Revolution: “Too early to say.”

j-bos 3y ago
Seems he wasn't looking to far back/ahead: https://web.archive.org/web/20231114164905/https://www.scmp.com/article/970657/not-letting-facts-ruin-good-story https://web.archive.org/web/20231114164905/https://www.scmp....
- darkteflon 3y ago
  I think most people consider it apocryphal - as is so often the way with these things. Its rhetorical force certainly doesn’t depend on intimate historical knowledge of competing political ideologies.

rurp 3y ago

I could not disagree more, and there are a great many experts and practitioners in this space that would agree with me. The history of the cold war is terrifying. MAD is incredibly flawed, but it stuck around because nobody could come up with a better option that could actually get adopted. A system that relies on near-perfect alert systems and requires leaders to always make calm rational decisions about the fate of the world with limited information and only minutes to decide is not a stable system. SDI wasn't an isolated case, there were a number of times when either the US or Soviets grew concerned about the other sides progress and seriously considered a preemptive nuclear strike. There will be more of these debates in the future and it only takes one misstep to blow up the world. If nukes had somehow been eliminated before 2022 Putin would almost certainly have not invaded Ukraine. NATO's conventional forces absolutely dwarf Russia's, but the threat of nuclear escalation has kept western support much more limited than it might otherwise have been. Putin is a lot of things, but he's not suicidal about risk. We're currently heading towards a world even less stable than the cold war. Back then there were only two major players. China is currently ramping up their nuclear forces, nuclear cooperation is breaking down with Russia, and our relations are becoming increasingly antagonistic with both countries. On top of that we have rogue actors like North Korea and possibly Iran in the near future. For folks interested in a this topic I highly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast. For anyone who needs more existential dread in their life, the book Command and Control by Schlosser has a great history of nuclear weapons and strategy.

GMoromisato 3y ago
The point about stable systems, from a game-theory perspective, is that they are hard to change. Any change ends up being worse. That's why MAD has lasted so long and why I called it "stable". I think you agree with me on that. I went too far in a counterfactual Ukraine war without MAD. If we had eliminated nuclear weapons, history would be so different that there's no way a similar Ukraine war would have happened. I agree with you about that. But I don't think it's too controversial to say that MAD prevented one or more conventional wars. Would a world without nukes be a safer world? Maybe. If nuclear weapons get used again and kill millions, then clearly it was a bad bet. But if we get to 2045--100 years after Hiroshima--without a nuclear exchange, then maybe MAD was the worst idea except for all the others.

sillywalk 3y ago

We survived/survive in spite of MAD. We're not "safe". There are still hundreds of warheads on 'launch on warning' alert. Trillions are being spent to create a new generation of nuclear weapons & delivery systems.