Nuclear War: A Scenario

The systems and ideas designed to make a nuclear war impossible are far more delicate than the public has been led to believe, or that even key decision-makers are willing to admit. The key assumption is that enemies will be deterred from using nuclear weapons because a sufficiently large nuclear arsenal, along with a complex bureaucracy dedicated to ensuring that it remains in a constant state of readiness, will ensure swift and devastating retaliation. There is evidence for this proposition in the many decades that have ensued since the development of the atomic bomb, as there has not been an exchange between two or more nuclear powers. As Jacobsen points out, this is in no small part due to luck rather than superior institutional design or widely agreed-upon norms. In 1979, “a simulation test tape mistakenly inserted into a NORAD computer deceived analysts into thinking the U.S. was under attack” (79), and only the added vigilance of the watch officer helped clarify the mistake. In 1983, a Soviet officer similarly surmised that Western forces were only conducting exercises when many of his colleagues feared an imminent attack.

Nor are accidents the only gap for networks of deterrence. In Jacobsen’s hypothetical scenario, the leader of North Korea (unnamed but implied to be Kim Jong Un) is described as a “nihilistic madman” who knowingly initiates a world-ending project.