Mutual assured destruction |
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is the doctrine of a situation
in which any use of nuclear weapons by either of two opposing sides
would result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. The doctrine assumes that each side has enough weaponry to
destroy the other side and that either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate with equal or greater
force. The expected result is that the battle would escalate to the point where each side brought about the other's total and
assured destruction - and, potentially, those of allies as
well.
Assuming that neither side would be so irrational as to risk its own destruction, neither side would dare to launch a first strike as the other would launch on warning (also called fail deadly). The payoff of this doctrine was expected to be tense but stable
peace.
The primary application of this doctrine occurred during the Cold War (1950s to 1990s) between the United States and Soviet Union, in which MAD was
seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the two nations while they engaged in smaller proxy wars
around the world. MAD was part of U.S. strategic doctrine which believed that nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States could best be prevented if neither side could defend
itself against the other's nuclear missiles (see Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). The credibility of the threat being critical to such
assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in
weapons, even those not intended for use.
This MAD scenario was often known by the less frightening euphemism "nuclear
deterrence." (The term 'deterrence' was first used in this context after World War II; the previous definition of the word was
limited to its use in the juridical terminology.)
Critics of the MAD doctrine noted that the acronym MAD fits the word mad (meaning insane) because it depended on several challengable assumptions:
- Perfect detection
- No false positives in the equipment and/or procedures that must identify a launch by the other side
- No possibility of camouflaging a launch
- No alternate means of delivery other than a missile (no hiding warheads in an ice cream truck)
- The weaker version of MAD also depends on perfect attribution of the launch. (If you see a launch on the Sino-Russian border,
who do you retaliate against?) The stronger version of MAD does not depend on attribution. (If someone launches at you, end the
world.)
- Perfect rationality
- No rogue states will develop nuclear weapons (or, if they do, they will stop behaving as rogue states and start to subject
themselves to the logic of MAD)
- No rogue commanders will have the ability to corrupt the launch decision process
- All leaders with launch capability care about the survival of their subjects
- No leader with launch capability would strike first and gamble that the opponent's response system would fail
- Inability to defend
- No shelters sufficient to protect population and/or industry
- No development of anti-missile technology or deployment of remedial protective gear
The assumptions needed for MAD to work can be summarised by capability, credibility, communication and rationality.
The doctrine was satirized in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb. In the film, the Soviets have a doomsday machine which automatically detects any nuclear
attack on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on earth by fallout. The film also has the rogue commander who (ignorant of the Russian doomsday machine) orders his
wing on a (preemptive) nuclear strike, betting that the high command has to back him by launching all their nuclear arsenal to
survive the Russian counterattack. The film mirrored life in that the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn had actually contemplated such a machine as one strategy in ensuring mutual assured destruction. In
fact, the film represents an interesting phenomenon explored by certain theorists: contrary to the assumptions of MAD, a
threat fulfilling strategy --in which one promises to act on one's threats, regardless of the rationality of doing so--
could be used by one side to subdue the other. To have a chance of working, however, the strategy must be known by the enemy --a
condition that is not satisfied in Kubrick's film. It is not entirely
clear, though, whether adopting such a risky strategy can be classified as a rational act at all.
The fall of the Soviet Union has reduced tensions between Russia and the
United States and between the United States and China. MAD has been replaced as a model for stability between Russia and the
United States as well as between the United States and China. Although the administration of George W. Bush has abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the limited national missile defense system proposed by the
Bush administration is designed to prevent nuclear blackmail by a
state with limited nuclear capability and is not planned to alter the nuclear posture between Russia and the United States. MAD's
replacement (asymmetric warfare) is designed to take advantage of years of analysis that focussed on finding a concept for
stability that did not rely on holding civilian populations hostage.
The Bush administration has approached Russia with the idea of moving away from MAD to a different nuclear policy of total
weaponry escalation. Russia has thus far been rather unreceptive to these approaches largely out of fear that a different defense
posture would be more advantageous to the United States than to Russia.
Some argue that MAD was abandoned on 25 July 1980 when US President Jimmy Carter adopted the
countervailing strategy in Presidential Directive 59. From this date onwards US policy was to win a nuclear war. The
planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb Russian cities and assure their destruction. American nuclear weapons
were first to kill the Soviet leadership, then attack military targets, in the hope of a Russian surrender before total
destruction of the USSR (and the USA). This policy was further developed by President Ronald Reagan with the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars), aimed at destroying Russian missiles before they
reached the US. If SDI had been operational it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD.
See also
External link
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