E13 Nuclear deterrence and strategic stability

Topic

Nuclear deterrence rests on a simple premise: no rational actor initiates an attack that guarantees a catastrophic retaliatory strike against itself. This premise depends entirely on the adversary retaining a "second-strike capability"—that is, the ability to respond even after having been attacked first. When both sides possess this capability, each knows that striking first does not eliminate the risk of suffering a devastating response; it is this certainty that sustains the balance known as Mutually Assured Destruction.

This balance can be assessed on two distinct levels that should not be conflated. "Crisis stability" asks whether, during a specific crisis, there are incentives to strike first before the adversary does; "arms race stability," by contrast, asks whether there are incentives to continue amassing weaponry during peacetime, even in the absence of an ongoing crisis. A single technological or doctrinal shift can simultaneously improve one form of stability while undermining the other, precisely because they rely on different mechanisms.

For this reason, the model—which begins with the premise that no rational actor seeks its own destruction—serves as the conceptual foundation for the escalation and de-escalation processes discussed later. It also allows for an assessment of how a new technology might disrupt this balance by further compressing the decision-making window already established by the previous model.

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