From almost the beginning of the Iran war, the experts have complained that the Pentagon is running out of missiles, a supposed problem that says more about the nature of the national security debate than the state of the US military.
Deterrence Theory is an impossible mental rabbit hole with no clear answers for when it works and when it doesn't. Escalation Theory, which it more about how and when deterrence fails, is better studied because there are more clear cases to study. Prof. Robert Pape is an illuminating student of the failures of deterrence in the face of the logic of escalation, which he calls the Escalation Trap. See his substack at: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/ Fascinating and timely and scary!
Regarding nuclear missile defense (Star Wars, etc.): the argument is that building a missile defense system makes nuclear war more likely because:
1. If we did have a defense against Russian nukes, it would make us more likely to start a nuclear war because our civilian casualties would be minimal. If you're skeptical that an American president would ever be the first to launch nukes, consider that (a) we're the only nation to have used nukes in war (so far), (b) we have not formally adopted a No First Use policy, and (c) we've threatened to use nukes since WW II (e.g. Lyndon Johnson suggesting it to Henry Kissinger against N. Viet Nam).
2. Given that, Russia would be on a more of a hair-trigger to respond before our nukes take out theirs; this makes false-positives like the one Niklaus Petrov discounted more likely to be reported and result in an accidental nuclear war.
Mike waltz has the IQ of a peanut.
Reminiscent of that famous phrase “Offense wins championships”.
Deterrence Theory is an impossible mental rabbit hole with no clear answers for when it works and when it doesn't. Escalation Theory, which it more about how and when deterrence fails, is better studied because there are more clear cases to study. Prof. Robert Pape is an illuminating student of the failures of deterrence in the face of the logic of escalation, which he calls the Escalation Trap. See his substack at: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/ Fascinating and timely and scary!
Regarding nuclear missile defense (Star Wars, etc.): the argument is that building a missile defense system makes nuclear war more likely because:
1. If we did have a defense against Russian nukes, it would make us more likely to start a nuclear war because our civilian casualties would be minimal. If you're skeptical that an American president would ever be the first to launch nukes, consider that (a) we're the only nation to have used nukes in war (so far), (b) we have not formally adopted a No First Use policy, and (c) we've threatened to use nukes since WW II (e.g. Lyndon Johnson suggesting it to Henry Kissinger against N. Viet Nam).
2. Given that, Russia would be on a more of a hair-trigger to respond before our nukes take out theirs; this makes false-positives like the one Niklaus Petrov discounted more likely to be reported and result in an accidental nuclear war.