It is difficult to judge the human interest in the mutually assured destruction doctrine. The doctrine does seem to hold: despite many close calls we managed to avoid nuclear war in the course of the first cold war. A number of miracles given the pressure and circumstances certainly. Some semblance of self preservation does matter.
But that was, relatively speaking, a more economically prosperous time, as well as climatically more stable. With the motivated reasoning growing behind tactical nukes and more limited nuclear strikes, it is easy to see how things could once again spiral out of control, with the chaotic realities of a hot war blowing apart the theory and the special pleading altogether.
On a longer time scale, the recklessness of the industrial nations is no longer an open question. And I'm not talking about the breaking out of the World Wars, which was bad enough. In a manner of speaking, we've been living through another kind of MAD doctrine, one that plays out over a greater amount of time but which is no less consequential.
For at least half a century now we've known about the consequences of greenhouse gas emission for the climate, and now that we know much more about it, and the climate has become visibly unstable, and the voices of alarm have risen concurrently with it, we still manage to do very little about it collectively. Growth is still prized above all whatever the cost, and development and fossil fuel usage is only intensified.
We've seen how we prioritize such a problem as a given crisis surfaces and mounts: attention shifts almost entirely to the provincial aspects of the crisis, efforts are displaced, and the coordinates temporarily shift to a new locus of bitter division. How will this dynamic fare as the crises deepen and intensify and their frequency increases ever more? We are transported further away from effective collective action with each shock, ensuring future shocks; the conclusion is foregone.
We are capable of welcoming with open arms a longer term mutually assured destruction. How about a shorter term one? Slow cook or flash fry?
