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Yes. Quite a bit, but it starts with forgetting that nukes are controlled by people, and the people in half of this context are elected leaders of democracies, and the other half are leaders of polities as well, not the polity itself.
Democratically-elected politicians and parties like to be re-elected. They also like the idea of having a successful historical legacy even if they can't be re-elected. They also like being popular with their supporter base. They also like not dying in second-strike scenarios, but more relevant is that people who enjoy being popular, and the political prestige/esteem that comes with being popular, take being popular seriously. Even a 'successful' genocide tends to put a scupper in their support base opinion polls amongst people who don't like genocide but do put a lot of value in thinking of themselves as good people. Even if the elected leader is neither good nor shares that genocidal objection, their interest is being shaped by the third party reactions.
Similarly, no one 'thinks like' a multi-hundred year polity. This is because individual people don't live hundreds of years old. There are no ethnic gestalt consciousnesses that dominate decision-making. Even ideologues act according to their specific ideas as they understand them. This divide between the appeal to the mass consideration to the actual decisionmaker gets wider the more the political power differential is between elites and masses. Peasants don't dictate how aristocrats decide their own future- that's why one is a peasant and the other is an aristocrat in the first place.
As a result, the actor characterization stumbles over the rather basic question of- 'why?'
Nukes don't fire themselves. They are fired by people. People have motives. 'If I fire first, I could wipe the other side out with little to no response!' is not a motive. It is a literal statement, but not a serious statement. To be serious, it would have to deal with the consequences that actually shape decisionmaker- specific humans- behavior. It has to address 'why' that makes sense, not why it is mechanically possible.
Your misreading is also taking MAD elements literally, but not seriously. And this includes MAD itself.
The Mutual in MAD has never necessarily been mutually-received damage in scale or proportion. A for Assurance is not an assurance of any particular level of retaliatory destruction, and hasn't for as long as second-strike capability entered nuclear triads. The D of Destruction has likewise been 'too much of my own destroyed to be worth it,' rather than literal destruction of everyone and everything in internationally recognized borders of the aggressor.
None of these extreme measures are actually required for nuclear deterrence. All deterrence requires from the defender is enough of a cost to the attacker for the cost to outweigh the benefit to the attacker. This is true regardless of the outcome to the defender if the conflict actually occurs, because attackers choose to attack over their own prospects of success, not the defender's prospects of defeat. The two are not the same, and total target destruction does not make for total victory.
This matters to leaders because Republican President Name-not-Trumps-Alot is deterred even if retaliatory nuclear missiles 'only' wipe out a half-dozen Democratic-party cities. This is because the costs to President NNTA is greater than the political gain. In serious consideration, 'genocider of the Russian nation' or 'razed the swamp with nuclear weapons' aren't exactly Republican base applause lines when the nuclear weapons are kind of hurting them too, even if not as much directly. This cost is even greater for a Democratic President NNTA. They'd kind of like to keep winning, and it's kind of hard if your political machines and voter base are nuclear ash. The decision and incentive structure for rewarding such a decision to be serious rather than literal considerations have to be so extreme the scenario is no longer some ad-hoc out-of-the-blue alpha-strike scenario.
This literally versus seriously division continues with your decision on adopting certain positions.
Taking Russian claims on any sort of security, let alone nuclear, issue at face value is, uh, a way. But it's a take of taking them literally over seriously, given their historical rhetorical shifts on the subject. Similarly, it may be literally true that the Americans are capable of unspeakable hypocrisy and cruelty. However, it's not a particularly serious belief system that any given unspeakable act of cruelty and hypocrisy is a reasonable fear. Sincere if the holder is irrationally considering reality, perhaps, but not serious.
If you want to be serious about avoiding nuclear war, then you want to prioritize mitigating nuclear use risk, not mutually assured destruction. MAD is the distraction. Nuclear use is where it matters, because pre-emptive nuclear genocide is less relevant than someone thinking that tactical nuclear weapons won't have nuclear responses that could escalate.
Nuclear risk, in turn, is not minimized if you minimize nuclear fears at all costs.
This is because minimizing nuclear fears at all costs leads to directly incentivizing nuclear bluffs. Nuclear bluffs work by raising nuclear fears and inviting the other side to provide concessions in return for lowering the rhetoric/actions used to generate nuclear flear. Successful nuclear bluffs encourage incentivize further nuclear bluffs. Eventually, bluffs get called, which creates credibility tensions that incentivize actually using nuclear weapons. Nuclear use is what leads to nuclear retaliation.
You certainly don't want to work from an invented assumption that the nuclear opposites are desperate and failing as the starting status quo... especially if you have to simultaneously introduce irrationality to accept that starting premise.
Edit: And apparently this is the post dr_analog blocks me for?
Okay. And weird.
There’s also the unstated but very real issue that the entire thing hangs on the idea that those deciding to push the button have reason to care about their own country or anyone else’s still exist, and be horrified at the thought of billions of dead humans. There are all kinds of reasons why someone might not: mental illness, a belief in the eminent end of the world, being dying themselves, or fear that losing the current conflict would be worse than all of that, or a strong belief in killing enemies of God. The default assumption was and still kinda is that the person making decisions is rational.
The default assumption was and still kind of has to be that the other person making judgements off of you is also rational.
Nuclear deterrence modeling fundamentally does not work if either party is irrational. It's a common failure mode both of the madman theory and the precautionary-compromise-to-alleviate-fear paradigms. Neither actually works if the external observer is genuinely irrational, both are selective choies of 'but if we do this thing, then they will become rational actors.'
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Pakistan has had the bomb for years and even they have managed to keep normal rational people- who are a much smaller percentage of population in Pakistan than in places like France or Britain- in charge enough of the warheads not to have actually used one.
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