Nuclear weapons have only been around for about 80 years or so but in that time we have seen a whole bunch of extremely critical decisions made, not by states, but by individuals. Realism tells us that individuals don’t matter, that we should ignore any internal politics or circumstances behind any given state’s actions and just trust that the state would have acted in exactly the same way no matter what it looked like internally.
But this is very hard to square with reality. There are plenty of times when the actions of a single person prevented a nuclear release. If the actions of a single person can prevent nuclear release then it stands to reason that the actions of a single person can also authorize nuclear release.
If that is the case then it is very hard to imagine that the State is the only actor that matters in the international system. People matter too. And if there is one thing we don’t need a Political Scientist to explain to us, it is that some people are panicky, hostile, frightened, insecure, and all manner of other things besides.
People panic. People assume the wrong thing. People make mistakes.
Every nuclear weapons system out there in the world represents a person or set of people with the ability to screw up. If they do, millions of people die. We can assign a probability — any probability you like — to them making the wrong decision.
1 in 100?
1 in 1000?
1 in 100,000?
Pick any number you like. It’s just a numbers game. The odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot in the United States are an astronomical 1 in 292,200,000 —— but someone wins it.
Throw the dice enough times, give fate enough spins of the roulette wheel, spin the cylinders and put the revolver to the temple of our entire species and eventually we get unlucky.
The house, as they say, always wins.
Prepper1cense 