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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essential to retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people. If I were president, I would not hesitate.

OK, and it's the end of the world as we know it. Like, Game Over, the survivors are back to the Stone Age and the civilization can start from scratch with 99% less people. Sounds like a sound decision you'd make.

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This is well-trodden ground, though perhaps long enough ago that younger people have never heard it. A lot of stuff that sounds really sweet and nice and moral turns into nightmares if you play it out in the real world. Advertising to the world that you won't strike back even if you are wiped out is, over the long term, an invitation to be wiped out. Of course if you want to signal your morality to certain types by valuing your own people at zero that may sound better than striking back, but you're still in the end advocating for millions of deaths, whether you meant to or not. If nothing else, allow me to appeal to your own naked self-interest in pointing out you'd be one of them.

It is ironic, but by taking a strong "We will strike back" stance, you decrease the chances of ever having to strike.

On the flip side, some of the well-trod ground is now out of date, too. Arguments about how maybe we could try non-proliferation instead become irrelevant as nuclear weapons become relatively speaking easier and easier to acquire due to advancing and dispersing technological sophistication.

Anyhow, upshot, if you're serious about thinking through the issues this turns out to be a really challenging stage to get up and morally preen at people on. It's very easy to end up advocating a strategy that kills billions of people while preening. It may be unpleasant to you, but you do in fact have to think. Hard. With neither rose-tinted glasses nor excessive cynicism. The easy answers don't work. The sweet answers don't work.

Precisely. Tit-for-tat has always been the most effective strategy.

Assuming accurate information. It's far less useful in the real world.

Indeed given that in the real world a false alarm is far more likely than an actual inbound missile strike, maintaining a convincing illusion of willingness to carry out tit-for-tat" is a far better survival strategy than one which involves actually launching the nukes. If you're too late to retaliate, it doesn't really make much difference to your civilians' survival rates but it certainly does if you fire prematurely when the enemy wasn't* in the process of escalating the conflict

Even that is dangerous, because it means that an adversary who think they have inadvertently crossed a line will have every reason to go all out, because they'll expect a full scale retaliation.

Indicating a willingness to use nuclear weapons at all may also make an adversary more willing to believe you may deviate from policy and strike first, which again may lead them to believe an all out first strike is safer than holding back (e.g. I've mentioned Able Archer 83, where the Soviet leadership allegedly considered a first strike because they thought the US was planning one)

Part of the problem is that neither you nor the other side knows whether your opponent will stick to any given strategy, nor if they will behave rationally.

Parent was merely saying that you shouldn't actually launch missiles back, not that you shouldn't advertise that you're willing to do so. Deterrence is no longer relevant once missiles are in the air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox

Assuming accurate information. If people had followed true Tit for Tat we would have all died due to false alarms.

The correct action may be to back down from a full scale launch while saying that you will respond in kind.

PS: South Africa actually gave up nuclear weapons. Which is the extreme end of not shooting back scale.

I think the position you are presenting is wrong. You are essentially saying that it is irresponsible for a country to not have nuclear weapons because that invites other countries to wipe it out, after all there is no difference between not having nuclear weapons and convincingly asserting that you will not use them for retaliation strikes.

During Able Archer 83, the Soviet Union allegedly got close to launching a first strike against the US because they feared an imminent US attack because of what they picked up of the exercise.

Advertising to the world that you have a firm policy against nuclear attacks other than in very limited, clearly defined scenarios puts you at risk of the other side decides it is ok to strike you for their own gains, but it also protects you against potential adversaries who have no designs on you but who you might inadvertently scare.

Able Archer 83, and the realisation that it appears to have genuinely terrified the Soviet leadership is often credited with changing Reagans course and making him determined to sit down with the Soviet leadership.

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