It's close calls like these that make me especially concerned that North Korea now has nuclear weapons. MAD works fine, as long as you assume both sides are perfectly rational and competent. But even when countries put great effort into safety and control, accidents happen. And sometimes the only thing that stops Armageddon is someone using common sense, and remembering that the other side is human too. North Korea is well known for cutting corners, and they have a population largely insulated from the outside world, under strict totalitarian rule. When their radar malfunctions and says a dozen nukes are inbound, how likely is it that some officer is going to realize that just doesn't make any sense, and go against orders trying to confirm it?
Yep. That MAD prevents nuclear strikes is an absolute article of faith at this point, used to reject unease outright; not an objective, practical calculus. Like all natural phenomena there will be exceptions and deviations. A nuclear incident is inevitable.
The real question to my mind is whether the benefit of nuclear deterrence suppressing non-nuclear conflict is greater than the cost that will be incurred from MAD failures/exceptions. But that's an almost impossible question to answer today. Still, it's a more honest perspective. I suspect we don't look at in this way because the public would almost certainly decide (perhaps irrationally) that they're far more afraid of a nuclear strike than the slow slaughter of conventional warfare, creating pressure to discard nuclear weapons entirely.
To be honest I think North Korea is less of a concern than Pakistan and Saudi. North Korea has nearly always shown itself to be rational actor. It's predicable in its unpredictability. Pakistan it's nuclear control is less so, especially if you adhere to the reality that Saudi has de facto nuclear weapons there also. In reality Pakistan nukes might be the only reason the US stays in Afghanistan.
NK has very limited arsenal, there's enough redundant sensors and monitoring systems to verify their launches + midcourse defense to intercept (for now). I hope planners have revisited doctoring to account for new detection tech - more comprehensive, redundant and rapid compared to the cold war - and have formulated different response models to different actors. Right now only Russia has enough nukes to threaten second strike that would warrant immediate retaliation.
IMO modern monitoring in general skews conservative responses, it would be pretty rare for malfunctions across multiple detectors to show multiple launces / full mad scenario that require immediate counter-strike. It's almost worth taking risk of hypothetical hit and then counterstrike with certainty then retaliate prematurely on false alarms.
Yeah with MADD it seems like only a matter of time when somethings fail (human(s) tech, combination) and a catastrophic mistake is made.
Too many situations started, and were saved simply by happenstance or imperfect information.
IIRC during the Cuban missile crisis local Russian commanders had the authorization to launch if they felt the US was invading. Because of course, you couldn't have a deterrent if you weren't able to launch during a communication blackout. Of course that also meant that any given accident or misunderstanding could lead to a launch and full scale response. Control of starting the war was now in the hands of folks with even less information...
MADD seems to guarantee a war as much as deter it.
