So we may get stability without cooperation, or we may not find it even with cooperation. Still, some kind of cooperation with the Russians, or mutual restraint, formal or informal, tacit or explicit, may prove to make a significant difference in the stability of the balance of terror; and the stakes of course are very high. So although we cannot be sure that a deliberate policy of collaborating to make each side’s retaliatory forces invulnerable would make any difference, we have to consider that it might and to ask ourselves whether in fact we should want a perfectly stable balance of deterrence if we had the option before us.

QUESTION: Author questions whether a perfectly stable balance of deterrence is even desirable. This is worth interrogating further — what would be lost with perfect stability?

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 581