The losing move is using missile interceptors.

Whether it's high altitude drone swarms, terminally guided artillery munitions, hypersonic rail guns, or high energy laser defense, all are orders of magnitude cheaper than the interceptors and could be less than the cost of the (nuclear?) missile. It's true that generically defending against nukes is basically a fools errand, but if they're (also stupidly) limited to putting them on ICBMs with non-detonating fail safes, then it's probably economically doable and cheaper than the $10T forever war.

I'm sorry, the whole framing of this (OP) question/answer seems artificial and fundamentally silly.