John von Neumann Interview [video]

If you're going to be a corrupt dictator, that perceived dead man's switch of succession chaos is a good way to die of old age?

The question (that we know the answer to as well) during that period is if they would pull the trigger, and from a few parties involved, they would have. Neumann was right in my opinion, and the Communists of the world at the time were absolutely a hazard to humanity, at the very least the humanity that lived in North America.

I truly think the only reason why we are here today is MAD.

Actually, Von Neumann coined and pushed for mutually-assured destruction, so it didn't matter if it wasn't in popular culture; He himself was possibly the most familiar with the concept of anyone. So it's not correct that he made these comments without proper context. He was wrong to be violently anti-communist, but MAD ended up being a crucial doctrine.

>As an example, it is within the realm of possibility that Israel or the United States use nukes on Iran, and there would be pretty strong logical/rational justifications for doing so.

Iran has promoted hostile rhetoric against Israel since the latter's inception as a state (with a brief thawing of relations during the Shah's time in power). You could reasonably say that its anti-Israeli stance is one of the two fundamental foreign policy positions of Iran, alongside containing the expansion of Saudi influence in the region.

Despite this (and despite having nearly 10x the population), Iran's ability to project power anywhere beyond its immediate borders has been limited to funding Islamic fundamentalist proxy groups. They have no functional nuclear weapons, and no capability to target Israel with a conventional land or sea attack. A real threat to Israel's sovereignty is neither credible nor imminent enough to warrant an Israeli preemptive nuclear strike (assuming such a justification can exist, as you're suggesting).

It's undeniable that the Soviet Union perceived the US to be an existential threat to its sovereignty. For some reason though, I find it unlikely that you would describe a preemptive Soviet nuclear strike on the US as "rational and reasonable" from their perspective, despite fulfilling many of the same criteria as your example: a hostile power outside of reach of a conventional attack, whose foreign policy is molded around precipitating your failure as a state (with the added qualification that such a power could actually deliver on this goal in a tangible way).

With an "imagination" like that, we can do nothing more than hope you're far from the reins of power.

And that isn't the bandy about the false equivocation that despotism is the answer - I think they've both stupid fucking ideas. Maybe we can make Platonic robot AI overlords, a la The Republic's Guardians (I say this mostly joking).

But no, democracy isn't clearly the answer at all, and for that matter I don't think it can work well in a multicultural society, where you just get tyranny of the majority anyway.