> If you attack someone, especially if you attack somebody stronger than you, then you attack with all force available to you, and maximum ferocity.
True, IF you attack someone. But if you see someone who is unassailably stronger than you, that you couldn't possibly defeat, then you don't even go there. And that is the point of MAD. An enemy with one nuke is scary, scary enough to make them worth attacking. But an enemy with thousands of nukes, scattered across the globe, in unknown locations, which will launch at their signal (or lack of signal)... You just don't attack them.
And that's an extremely dangerous assumption. You don't need to dive deep into history for good examples of the opposite.
And if you dive deeper, you will find examples far more suicidal disparities in between warring factions.
Second, you do not count in a possibility of your opponent not even trying to win. If wars were fought by rational people, we would've long had math PhDs for generals.
True, IF you attack someone. But if you see someone who is unassailably stronger than you, that you couldn't possibly defeat, then you don't even go there. And that is the point of MAD. An enemy with one nuke is scary, scary enough to make them worth attacking. But an enemy with thousands of nukes, scattered across the globe, in unknown locations, which will launch at their signal (or lack of signal)... You just don't attack them.