a b Castella, Tom de (2012-02-15). "How did we forget about mutually assured destruction?". BBC News . Retrieved 2017-09-19. The goal of a MAD strategy is counter-intuitive: it is not to win a nuclear war, but actually to prevent one. The theory goes that if each side knows that there is no way it can survive a nuclear war, it will get too scared to start one. Unless one or more of the superpowers decides on Taking You with Me or is ruled by an Omnicidal Maniac, the idea is that knowing that "the only winning move is not to play" will keep either side from escalating matters to the point that mutual destruction becomes inevitable. What happens if someone gains control of nukes who sees the horrible death of themselves and all their subjects as desirable? Well... Let's just hope that never happens. Did these U.S. capabilities mean, to paraphrase the title of a famous article from the 1980s, that victory was possible? I think that the answer is more political than technical. On the technical side, Green and others have provided persuasive evidence that the United States could have limited significant damage to itself in a nuclear exchange. Given these improvements in counterforce capabilities, the United States likely could have avoided assured destruction without resorting to the absurd civilian defense schemes that were promoted by people like T.K. Jones. Finch, James P.; Steene, Shawn (2011). "Finding Space in Deterrence: Toward a General Framework for "Space Deterrence" ". Strategic Studies Quarterly. 5 (4): 10–17. ISSN 1936-1815. JSTOR 26270535. On the day in 1945 that Robert A Lewis, copilot of the B-29 Superfortress dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he wrote six agonizingly poignant words in his log book: “My God, what have we done?”

Nuclear Deterrence - Atomic Archive

Measures of civil defense, which could offer little protection to the civilian populace against nuclear explosions and, at best, only some chance of avoiding exposure to nuclear fallout, also appeared hopeless in the face of the overwhelming destructive power being accumulated by both sides. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 200, Defense Programs and Operations, LeMay's Memo to President and JCS Views, Box 83. Secret. This ironically is the peace solution at the end of the 2017 Korean thriller Steel Rain. North Korea agrees to hand over half their nuclear weapons to South Korea, so neither side can risk war without destroying themselves. The Manhattan Project was set up and researchers developed two types of atomic bomb. When Japan refused to surrender, the decision was made to use the new weapon on two major cities. It achieved the desired effect and the war was finally over. McNamara estimated that a nuclear strike force with the equivalent explosive power of 400 megatons of TNT — a "few hundred" missiles, as some military planners said — was needed to ensure an effective nuclear deterrence, according to the Brookings Institution.

The term "assured destruction" was first used in the 1960s by then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But according to Britannica, the longer phrase "mutual assured destruction" was coined by an opponent of the policy, American military analyst Donald Brennan, who argued that it did little to secure U.S. defense interests in the long-term. The M.A.D. tank from Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a suicide unit that can destroy anything that isn't infantry in three shots- including itself. This subsection needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this subsection. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Similarly, Nitze concluded that only superior nuclear forces would ensure international stability. The nuclear balance, in his view, influenced Soviet global ambitions. He warned, The Mountain and the Wolf: Tyrion thinks the arrival of the Red Priests will solve their problem since they can just kill the Wolf with their magic. The Red Priest has to tell him that doing so will turn the killer over to Chaos, and the last thing they want is a sorcerer leading the invasion. Not that it's entirely foolproof, since the Wolf is seen to use an Anti-Magic collar when gearing up for what he hopes will be a great battle.

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To go after cities, if deterrence should fail, to my mind would be suicidal. It wasn’t just a question of damage-limiting; I believed—and still do—that a counterforce doctrine and posture of sufficient scope would persuade the Soviet Union that it could not count on achieving a military victory in a nuclear exchange. This would assure effective deterrence.This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( May 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) However, other factors than the ones identified in The Revolution that Failed might have contributed to these shifting estimates. The perception of U.S. NATO allies of the credibility of the American deterrent, for example, seems to have also played an important role in shaping American policy. U.S. officials displayed great sensitivity to the concerns of Washington’s allies. They still do. Consider the following counterfactuals: Would U.S. nuclear weapons policy have looked the same if the United States had not attempted to extend deterrence to Europe? Would it have looked the same if Washington had tried to extend deterrence with conventional forces, instead of relying primarily on nuclear weapons? My hunch is that nuclear competition would have still taken place — contrary to the dictates of the theory of the nuclear revolution — but that the arms race would have developed with significantly less intensity.

2015 - Mutually Assured Destruction by Don Zolidis

Thankfully, we do not have a clear picture of the potential consequences of MAD playing out. We do have an idea of what they would be – a nuclear apocalypse. Although the concept of a nuclear apocalypse has become almost comical due to its prevalence in science fiction, it is important to understand that it remains a very real possibility. The Fallout series of games (which are Spiritual Successors of the Wasteland games) are based in the post-apocalyptic world created by the mutual destruction of a nuclear war between Red China and the United States. While the initial conflict was purely between China and America, virtually every country was involved with one side or the other to a heavy degree which escalated China's Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum into a global thermonuclear war that bathed the entire planet in atomic fire. Ironically, despite being the main target America came out of it better than everyone else ( even taking into account the fact that 99% of its population was wiped out) as much of the planet was rendered entirely uninhabitable, with the series taking the A World Half Full approach.Proponents of MAD as part of the US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state. Since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use. In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to adequately defend itself against the other's nuclear missiles. [ citation needed] This led both to the hardening and diversification of nuclear delivery systems (such as nuclear missile silos, ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear bombers kept at fail-safe points) and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Both sides must have a genuine reason and motivation to believe that the other would be willing to destroy them. Any doubt in this area is dangerous.

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Teller, Edward (1985). "Defense as a Deterrent of War". Harvard International Review. 7 (4): 11–13. ISSN 0739-1854. JSTOR 42762238. McDonough, David S. " Nuclear Superiority or Mutually Assured Deterrence: The Development of the Us Nuclear Deterrent." International Journal 60.3 (2005): 811-23. Print.On August 6th, 1945, an American pilot dropped the first ever deployed atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, immediately killing 80,000 people. Three days later, another atomic bomb was released over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 people. 6 Essentially, these events ended World War II – but at what cost? There are three implications that flow from this observation. First, the bargaining advantages that the United States gained by escaping MAD might not have been very large because the costs of war remained extremely high. As my old mentor Roger Molander used to say, “The threat of one nuclear weapon detonating over Washington, D.C. during working hours is probably enough of a deterrent to focus the mind.” Second, since America likely lives in a condition of mutually assured retaliation with many of its adversaries today — Russia included — Washington probably still does not possess much of a bargaining advantage in crises, even though it possesses superior nuclear forces. Finally, crisis instability poses more of a danger in a world of mutually assured retaliation. Under MAD, striking preemptively in a crisis is futile, since neither side can limit damage to itself. Striking first in conditions of mutually assured retaliation, however, might to a certain extent pay off, depending on the vulnerabilities of an adversary’s arsenal, something an opponent will also realize. If these three observations hold, then the nuclear future might prove as, or potentially more, competitive than the nuclear past that Green describes in The Revolution that Failed. No false positives (errors) in the equipment and/or procedures that must identify a launch by the other side. The implication of this is that an accident could lead to a full nuclear exchange. During the Cold War there were several instances of false positives, as in the case of Stanislav Petrov. Tesla, Nikola, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, System of Particle Acceleration for Use in National Defense, circa 16 May 1935. Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, "MAD, not Marx: Khrushchev and the nuclear revolution." Journal of Strategic Studies (2018) 41#1/2:208-233.