re: #175 lawhawk

Reagan’s trust-but-verify was a novel way to deal with the problem of verification of destroyed weapons between large nuclear powers where a small shift or number of weapons involved could provide one nation with the ability to carry out a devastating first strike and eliminate the possibility for reprisal.

Once numbers of weapons go below a certain point, there is an instability in outcomes; you can’t necessarily predict what would happen if let’s say Russia decides to attack out of the blue, because with so few US weapons remaining, the Russians could wipe out US weapons in the silo and not worry about a reprisal strike. It means that as countries approach zero weapons, they become even more susceptible to rogue regimes that have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a first-strike capacity. Snip

You made a lot of good points and I think reinforce the idea that elimination, even with a Reagan style trust and verify is not going to happen. As you point even close to zero, perhaps under 100 may not work for either side.