The introduction of MIRV led to a major change in the strategic balance. Previously, with one warhead per missile, it was conceivable that one could build a defense that used missiles to attack individual warheads. Any increase in missile fleet by the enemy could be countered by a similar increase in interceptors. With MIRV, a single new enemy missile meant that multiple interceptors would have to be built, meaning that it was much less expensive to increase the attack than the defense. This cost-exchange ratio was so heavily biased towards the attacker that the concept of mutual assured destruction became the leading concept in strategic planning and ABM systems were severely limited in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to avoid a massive arms race.
Some threats can't be countered, only controlled. And the country that first invented nuclear weapons seems to be in a position to help control its proliferation.
Besides, those interceptors are not cheap, they’re cutting edge while MIRV’ed warheads with dummies are old, proven tech. A live nuclear warhead is only expensive because of the physics package, so a convincing dummy is dirt cheap to make and deploy compared to an interceptor. It’s a losing proposition, and an extension of the truism that armor piercing tech inevitably beats armor in arms races.
That s not self-evident. You are free to abandon your society in favor of another even if you lose some ‘technologies’ such as slavery. Let alone that definitions of ‘ethical’ differ between societies.
> in the hopes that you can minimize the damage later.
Thats also false. The antidote to a ballistic nuclear head is any other means/missile that can destroy/neutralize the nuclear missile before it hits the ground. Countering offense with offense or relying on mutual deterrence is ethically inferior.
I believe the ethical stance is ‘assume the worst and prepare to counter it’