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 terrifyin

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.