2 History

2.1 Early Cold War

Many historians argue that the United States began the Cold War by ending World War II with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Four years later, on August 9, 1949, the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear weapons. At the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use the nuclear devices against each other. However, with the development of aircraft like the B-36 Peacemaker, both sides were gaining more ability to deliver nuclear weapons effectively. The official nuclear policy of the United States was one of "massive retaliation", as coined by President Eisenhower, which called for massive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if they were to invade Europe.

It was only with the advent of ballistic missile submarines, starting with the George Washington class submarine in 1959, that a survivable nuclear force became anticipatable and that a second strike capability became credible. This was not fully understood until the 1960s when the strategy of mutually assured destruction was first fully described, largely by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

In McNamara's formulation, MAD meant that nuclear nations either had first strike or second strike capability. A nation with first strike capability would be able to destroy the entire nuclear arsenal of another nation and thus prevent any nuclear retaliation. Second strike capability indicated that a nation could promise to respond to a nuclear attack with enough force to make such a first attack highly undesirable. According to McNamara, the arms race was in part an attempt to make sure that no nation gained first strike capability.

Ballistic missile submarines established a second strike capability through their stealth and by the number fielded by each Cold War adversary—it was highly unlikely that all of them could be targeted and preemptively destroyed. (This is in contrast to, for example, a missile bunker which is fixed to a location and could be targeted during the first strike.) Given their long range and ability to carry many medium- and long-range nuclear missiles, they were a credible threat to an attacker's ability to completely protect itself from retaliation.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union truly developed an understanding of the effectiveness of the U.S. ballistic missile submarine forces and work on Soviet ballistic missile submarines began in earnest. For the remainder of the Cold War, although official positions on MAD changed in the United States, the consequences of the second strike from ballistic missile submarines was never in doubt.

The multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) was another weapons system designed specifically to aid with the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine. With a MIRV payload, one ICBM could hold many separate warheads. MIRVs were first created by the United States in order to counterbalance Soviet anti-ballistic missile systems around Moscow. Since each defensive missile could only be counted on to destroy one offensive missile, making each offensive missile have, for example, three warheads (as with early MIRV systems) meant that three times as many defensive missiles were needed for each offensive missile. This made defending against missile attacks more costly and difficult. One of the largest U.S. MIRVed missiles, the LG-118A Peacekeeper, could hold up to 10 warheads, each with a yield of around 300 kilotons. The multiple warheads made defense untenable with the technology available, leaving only the threat of retaliatory attack as a viable defensive option.

In the event of a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe, NATO planned to use tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union countered this threat by issuing a statement that any use of nuclear weapons against Soviet forces, conventional or otherwise, was grounds for a full-scale Soviet retalitory strike. In effect, if the Soviet Union invaded Europe, the United States would stop the offensive with tactical nuclear weapons. Then, the Soviet Union would respond with a full-scale nuclear strike on the United States. The United States would respond with a full scale nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. As such, it was generally assumed that any combat in Europe would end with apocalyptic conclusions.

2.2 Late Cold War

The original doctrine of U.S. MAD was modified on July 25, 1980 with U.S. President Jimmy Carter's adoption of countervailing strategy with Presidential Directive 59. According to its architect, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, "countervailing strategy" stressed that the planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb Russian population centers and cities primarily, but 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 modified version of MAD was seen as a winnable nuclear war, while still maintaining the possibility of assured destruction for at least one party. This policy was further developed by the Reagan Administration with the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (known derisively as " Star Wars"), the goal of which was to develop space-based technology to destroy Russian missiles before they reached the USA.

SDI was criticized by both the Soviets and many of America's allies (including Margaret Thatcher) because, were it ever operational and effective, it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD. If America 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. Critics further argued that it could trigger a new arms race, this time to develop countermeasures for SDI. Despite its promise of nuclear safety, SDI was described by many of its critics (including Soviet nuclear physicist and later peace activist Andrei Sakharov) as being even more dangerous than MAD because of these political implications.

2.3 Post Cold War

The fall of the Soviet Union has reduced tensions between Russia and the United States and between the United States and China. Although the administration of George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June 2002, the limited national missile defense system proposed by the Bush administration was 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. Russia and the United States still tacitly hold to the principles of MAD.

The George W. Bush administration approached Russia with the idea of moving away from MAD to a different nuclear policy of total weaponry escalation. Russia has thus far been unreceptive to these approaches largely out of fear that a different defense posture would be more advantageous to the United States than to Russia.

3 See also

• NUTS (Nuclear Utilization Target Selection)
• Cold War
• moral equivalence
• game theory
• nuclear disarmament
• nuclear strategy
• Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
• RAND Corporation
• weapon of mass destruction
• Balance of terror
• Nuclear missile defense
• , a famous 1964 Stanley Kubrick film that satirizes the MAD situation.
• Stanislav Petrov, Soviet colonel who averted World War III

4 External link

• Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine
• Excerpts of Gorbachev-Reagan Reykjavik Talks, 1986 (regards SDI as a threat to MAD)
• Robert McNamara's "Mutural Deterrence" speech from 1962

Nuclear strategies Nuclear weapons Nuclear warfare English phrases Military terms

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