Good you’re doing this! One suggestion concerning your argument: when assessing the impact of nuclear weapons, it’s helpful to think about their likely effects over the short and long term.
Nuclear war probably is ‘somewhat, but not extremely unlikely’ over the next few decades. If we retain nuclear weapons for centuries, on the other hand, it’s very likely indeed.
Similarly, I agree that it’s important to recognise that nuclear weapons have significant advantages for their possessors (as you mention in your ‘9 mistakes’), including increasing their security in the short term. But a state that tries to keep up nuclear deterrence forever is almost surely dooming itself to an eventual nuclear war.
Good you’re doing this! One suggestion concerning your argument: when assessing the impact of nuclear weapons, it’s helpful to think about their likely effects over the short and long term.
Nuclear war probably is ‘somewhat, but not extremely unlikely’ over the next few decades. If we retain nuclear weapons for centuries, on the other hand, it’s very likely indeed.
Similarly, I agree that it’s important to recognise that nuclear weapons have significant advantages for their possessors (as you mention in your ‘9 mistakes’), including increasing their security in the short term. But a state that tries to keep up nuclear deterrence forever is almost surely dooming itself to an eventual nuclear war.
I elaborate on these considerations in a recent paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.13142. Here, as elsewhere, we need to take the long view as well as the short one.