Table of Contents for The War That Must Not Occur
Introduction
Application to the virtual war between Russia and NATO of the main concepts that will be introduced in the book. What are the chances that this conflict will turn nuclear?
1.One Minute from Apocalypse and Why (Almost) No One Gives a Damn
The danger of a major nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War, yet most people are blissfully unaware of this. They think only of a single scenario, in which nuclear weapons are deliberately employed—something they regard as impossible given the immense destructive power of these weapons. Many accidental chains of events almost leading to war ("near misses") have occurred, however. Several of them are considered.
2.MAD: The Birth of a Structure
Whereas the classic theory of war considers only defense and attack, nuclear war adds a third category: deterrence, which implies the renunciation of defense. From this there emerges a highly complex dialectic between deterrence and preemption (i.e., attacking first), where deterrence seems to be self-contradictory and preemption highly risky.
3.The Pure Theory of MAD
This chapter summarizes the huge literature that has grown up around the twofold problem of the rationality and the ethics of nuclear deterrence and that is marked by a number of apparently crippling paradoxes. It is shown that these paradoxes have a common source: the failure to distinguish between two metaphysics of time, one in which the paradoxes arise ("occurring time," where the future bifurcates) and the other in which they vanish ("projected time," characterized by a fixed but indeterminate future).
4.Metaphysical MAD
The added value of the book resides in this chapter, which reformulates long-standing disagreements about the value of nuclear deterrence in the light of the metaphysics of projected time. It is shown that it is indeed possible to demonstrate the effectiveness and rationality of deterrence. But there is a price to pay: one must conclude that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is a moral abomination.
Appendix
A rewriting of the argument of the final chapter in terms of game theory that leads to a radical reconstruction of this theory.