Was Mutual Assured Destruction A Good Strategy?

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You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst1 M A D A S NA S H EQUILIBRIUM 2 OF A NON ZER O SUM 3 GAME MAD is an artifact of the physics of fusion nuclear weaponry (the H bomb).4 In 1950, with the Soviets close to having access to this technology, John von Neumann and others argued for preventive war: First Use of the H Bomb and total annihilation of the Soviet Union. MAD is an alternative, No First Use strategy of deterrence. Since either side in a two-party war has nuclear weapons available that would effectively destroy the attacker in nuclear annihilation, why would anyone bother to attack first. This strategy has two primary assumptions: (1) approximate parity so that neither side has an advantage for First Use, and (2) the players in this game are rational.5 Provided these assumptions hold, MAD was thought to place the parties in a Nash Equilibrium where neither party would choose First Use. Thus, the world would be safe from nuclear holocaust, even as both parties proliferated the number of nuclear weapons.6 M A D A S P R I S O N ER’ S DI LEMMA 7 OF A NON ZER O SUM GAME By 1955, MAD may have become a prisoners dilemma with no Nash Equilibrium. Even though a nuclear exchange would potentially produce an unwinnable war,8 all parties had an incentive to cheat; to break the equilibrium state, gain an advantage, and launch a First Strike that would potentially be decisive. Instead of rationality defining the game, fear of the other side was driving decisions to continually escalate an advantage. Thus, an arms race ensued, with ever escalating choices that were supposed to produce an advantage to one player over the other. If the opposing player does not keep up, they fall behind and become vulnerable to a First Strike. Moving from a Nash Equilibrium game to a prisoners dilemma was expensive!

Italio Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979) in William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 53. 1

John Nash showed that John von Neumann’s minimax theorem (see footnote #5) also applied to non zero sum (see footnote #3), non cooperative games. Cooperative games means that players can form coalitions where each other knows the other’s strategy beforehand. Non cooperative games involve each player formulating their strategy without each player knowing the other’s strategy. Even though this is the case, there is a way of playing the game rationally where each player will have no regrets at the outcome. They would not do anything differently, given how the other party played the game (Poundstone, 96-99). 2

A zero sum game always has winners and losers as the size of the pie is fixed; one person’s gain is another’s loss. A non zero sum game is a game where either party’s interests are not completely opposed as one player’s optimal strategy may also benefit the opposing player. (Poundstone, 51-2, 97-99). 3

Nuclear fusion weapons even today remain potentially the most destructive weapons ever invented and the greatest threat to global security. See Lifting the nuclear shadow: Creating the conditions for abolishing nuclear weapons, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK. 4

This follows from von Neumann’s minimax theorem that as long as the two rational players’ interests are completely opposed, they can settle on a rational course of action going forward in a zero sum game. An equilibrium is forced by an interplay between self interest and mistrust (Poundstone, 97). 5

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At the height of the Cold War, parts and supplies for 75,000 fusion nuclear weapons existed.

A game defined by a strategy whereby one is rewarded for cheating, but if the other party also cheats, both players will be worse off than if they had cooperated (Poundstone, 120-1). 7

A game state where it is impossible for the player to win the game. The only options are restarting the game or stopping and deciding to play another game with different rules. Playing an unwinnable game is a zombie situation (Wikipedia). 8

LYLE A. BRECHT

DRAFT 410.963.8680 - - - C A P I T A L M A R K E T S R E S E A R C H - - - MARCH 9, 2009

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M A D : S M A RT STR ATEGY, WR ONG STR ATEGY, OR JUST PURE LUCK? Some historians of the Cold War (1950-91) like John Gaddis believe that MAD was a smart strategy.9 The argument goes that since no nuclear holocaust occurred during the fifty years of the Cold War, MAD worked. It was a smart strategy. But is absence of a bad an indicator of a good strategy or just plain dumb luck? 10 And, is the period of measurement reasonable? Should it be shorter or longer? If the consequences of a strategy increases the probabilistic forecast of an event occurring in the next period, does that suggest that the strategy is flawed? If MAD is really a prisoner’s dilemma and does not have a Nash Equilibrium, is there any optimal way to play this game? Might MAD constitute a strategy for an unwinnable game where the only objective is not to lose? But, if nuclear exchange produces a world destroyed, what does not losing look like? Could it be that MAD, as the basis for a national nuclear strategy is obsolete in a world with 8 nuclear states possessing 12,000 nuclear weapons, 40 states capable of going nuclear at anytime and nuclear proliferation with enough HEU (highly-enriched uranium) for building 240,000 nuclear weapons in the future, as may be necessary. W H Y M A D I S I MPORTANT TODAY AS BARRIER TO ECONOMIC RE COVERY, A D D R E S S I NG CLIMATE CHANGE, AND NONPR OLIFER ATION EFFORTS 11 One of the foundational policy decisions made at the end of and after WWII was to employ MAD as the nation’s nuclear strategy. The resulting nuclear deterrence might be considered a forcing function12 that resulted in the expenditure of $45,000 billion (in 2009 dollars) for defense by all the world’s economies.13 Today, we are at a similar crossroads of choice. We can choose strategies that lead to a sustainable economy or we can choose strategies that, instead, foster resource wars and nuclear terrorism and result in abrupt climate change hostile to the continuance of all life on earth. A reckoning is underway. The collapse of the normal functioning of global markets and international finance reflect this inflection (tipping) point.14 These strategic choices of whether to build a sustainable economy and how we continue to accomplish such ends, if that is the policy path we choose, may be the most critical choices for national security.

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John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: The Penguin Group, 2007).

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, MAD, as a game strategy, seems to have failed in that the strategy favored proliferation (the placing of nuclear warheads in Cuba at the doorstep of the U.S. and in Turkey, at the doorstep of the USSR.) One might argue that the breakthrough came because strategy was jettisoned as Bertrand Russell’s and others’ appeal to higher motivations of human survival were heard by both parties to the crisis (Poundstone, 206-11). 10

Nuclear war “cannot be won and cannot be fought” (President Ronald Reagan). Today it is conceivable for a poorly thought-out strategic policy choice, the result of which makes a nuclear terror attack more probable could produce circumstances whereby, for example, instead of global GDP going from $60 to $240 trillion (in $2005 purchasing power parity) by 2050, it declines to $6 trillion (global GDP estimate is from U.S. Central Intelligence Agency). 11

A forcing function is the process that moves a dynamical system from one state to another state. An interesting game theory question is whether this amount of capital was productively spent to avoid nuclear war between the USSR and the U.S. or was it instead necessary to spend this amount because the MAD strategy was inherently unstable? 12

Global military spending has averaged about $1,000 billion a year in constant dollars since WWII, give or take a few hundred billion dollars each year. The point is that this is a very, very large amount of capital allocated for the purpose of keeping the world safe from aggression, all the while starving investments in freshwater availability, wastewater treatment, soil conservation, food availability, climate change preparedness, development of renewable energy, etc. 13

All systems have a tipping point, a set of stresses (an overload beyond a threshold rate of change of inputs) beyond which they breakdown (loose complexity and cease to function within normal ranges) and sometimes collapse (recovery is uncertain). As failure proceeds, moments of contingency arise. 14

LYLE A. BRECHT

DRAFT 410.963.8680 - - - C A P I T A L M A R K E T S R E S E A R C H - - - MARCH 9, 2009

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