Mutual assured destruction
The term "mutual assured destruction", commonly abbreviated "MAD", was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962.
[2] Brennan conceived the acronym cynically, spelling out the English word "mad" to argue that holding weapons capable of destroying society was irrational.
The theory of mutually assured destruction being a safe way to deter continued even farther with the thought that nuclear weapons intended on being used for the winning of a war, were impractical, and even considered too dangerous and risky.
[10] A study published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 2009 quantitatively evaluated the nuclear peace hypothesis and found support for the existence of the stability-instability paradox.
The study determined that nuclear weapons promote strategic stability and prevent large-scale wars but simultaneously allow for more low intensity conflicts.
[14] Likewise, after his 1867 invention of dynamite, Alfred Nobel stated that "the day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.
"[15] In 1937, Nikola Tesla published The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media,[16] a treatise concerning charged particle beam weapons.
However, with the development of aircraft like the American Convair B-36 and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-95, both sides were gaining a greater ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the interior of the opposing country.
His approach did not greatly change his foreign policy or military doctrine but is apparent in his determination to choose options that minimized the risk of war.
[citation needed] During periods of increased tension in the early 1960s, SAC kept part of its B-52 fleet airborne at all times, to allow an extremely fast retaliatory strike against the Soviet Union in the event of a surprise attack on the United States.
[27] During the height of the tensions between the US and the USSR in the 1960s, two popular films were made dealing with what could go terribly wrong with the policy of keeping nuclear-bomb-carrying airplanes at the ready: Dr. Strangelove (1964)[28] and Fail Safe (1964).
[4] The United States had achieved an early form of second-strike capability by fielding continual patrols of strategic nuclear bombers, with a large number of planes always in the air, on their way to or from fail-safe points close to the borders of the Soviet Union.
The tactic was expensive and problematic because of the high cost of keeping enough planes in the air at all times and the possibility they would be shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft missiles before reaching their targets.
It was only with the advent of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, starting with the George Washington class in 1959, that a genuine survivable nuclear force became possible and a retaliatory second strike capability guaranteed.
However, multiple scientific studies showed technological and logistical problems in these systems, including the inability to distinguish between real and decoy weapons.
[33] The multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) was another weapons system designed specifically to aid with the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine.
One of the largest US MIRVed missiles, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, could hold up to 10 warheads, each with a yield of around 300 kilotons of TNT (1.3 PJ)—all together, an explosive payload equivalent to 230 Hiroshima-type bombs.
SDI was criticized by both the Soviets and many of America's allies (including Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher) because, were it ever operational and effective, it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD.
If the United States had a guarantee against Soviet nuclear attacks, its critics argued, it would have first-strike capability, which would have been a politically and militarily destabilizing position.
Supporters also argued that SDI could trigger a new arms race, forcing the USSR to spend an increasing proportion of GDP on defense—something which has been claimed to have been an indirect cause of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
program will sweep the world into a new stage of the arms race and would destabilize the strategic situation.”[35] Proponents of ballistic missile defense (BMD) argue that MAD is exceptionally dangerous in that it essentially offers a single course of action in the event of a nuclear attack: full retaliatory response.
The study predicted that the debris burned in nuclear bombings would be lifted into the atmosphere and diminish sunlight worldwide, thus reducing world temperatures by “-15° to -25°C”.
[37] These findings led to theory that MAD would still occur with many fewer weapons than were possessed by either the United States or USSR at the height of the Cold War.
For example, if Russia feared a US nuclear attack, Moscow might make rash moves (such as putting its forces on alert) that would provoke a US preemptive strike.
The United States Air Force, for example, has retrospectively contended that it never advocated MAD as a sole strategy, and that this form of deterrence was seen as one of numerous options in US nuclear policy.
However, according to a declassified 1959 Strategic Air Command study, US nuclear weapons plans specifically targeted the populations of Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw for systematic destruction.
[46] MAD was implied in several US policies and used in the political rhetoric of leaders in both the United States and the USSR during many periods of the Cold War: To continue to deter in an era of strategic nuclear equivalence, it is necessary to have nuclear (as well as conventional) forces such that in considering aggression against our interests any adversary would recognize that no plausible outcome would represent a victory or any plausible definition of victory.
To this end and so as to preserve the possibility of bargaining effectively to terminate the war on acceptable terms that are as favorable as practical, if deterrence fails initially, we must be capable of fighting successfully so that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs that are unacceptable, or in any event greater than his gains, from having initiated an attack.The doctrine of MAD was officially at odds with that of the USSR, which had, contrary to MAD, insisted survival was possible.
[56][57][58] For example, it has been argued that it is inconsistent with the logic of rational deterrence theory that states continue to build nuclear arsenals once they have reached the second-strike threshold.
The document claims that the capacity of the United States, in exercising deterrence, would be hurt by portraying US leaders as fully rational and cool-headed: The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts in the minds of an adversary's decision makers.
