How Cold War Game Theory Can Resolve The Shutdown

But, actually, the whole point of a doomsday system isn’t lost if you keep it secret. Dead Hand, as two former Soviet military officials explained to me several years ago, when I was working on a book about the Cold War, wasn’t a deterrent against the United States. It was a way to sedate Soviet hard-liners, thus buying time. If America looked like it might attack, the Soviets had a bit longer to wait. A rogue commander might also hold off just a bit longer before taking out a nuclear-armed Stratofortress.  The idea was “to cool down all these hotheads and extremists,” Alexander Zheleznyakov, one of the former officials, told me. “No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.”