M.A.D.: Mutual Assured Destruction (Modern Plays)

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Nuclear weapons are the culmination of this progress towards methods of wiping out huge numbers of people with minimal effort. Perhaps the views of the defense policy luminary Paul Nitze serve as a good snapshot of the Cold War consensus among policymakers about nuclear weapons. Nitze stands out as a unique player in the defense politics of the time, due to his four decades of experience in government under both Republican and Democratic administrations. After negotiating with him, the Soviets dubbed him the “Silver Fox,” and his biographer, Strobe Talbott, referred to Nitze as the “grey eminence of nuclear diplomacy.” 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.

2015 - Mutually Assured Destruction by Don Zolidis

Note that meteor drops can be stopped (either by shutting off/destroying the thrusters or by destroying the ship before it can tow in any asteroids), particularly if the defender has total space superiority. It's simply disproportionately difficult to do so unless the disparity in forces in capabilities is truly massive. In Mass Effect 3, Garrus casually suggests dropping a few planet-killing meteors on Geth-held Rannoch, and no one treats this suggestion as impossible even though the Geth held space superiority at the time and were winning the space battle against the Quarians. The only problem is that the Quarians spent the last three centuries trying to reclaim Rannoch as their homeworld, and nuking it with meteors would destroy any hope of making it habitable again. It's engaging, well designed and made with a passion for the period. It delivers as one of the best strategic level Cold War experiences...” As of 2016, 174,000 survivors of the bombing are still alive, living with the physical, psychological, and social consequences. The after effects spread far beyond Japan- indeed the ripples of the first use of nuclear weapons affect us all, even if not in an obvious way. An outline of current US nuclear strategy toward both Russia and other nations was published as the document " Essentials of Post–Cold War Deterrence" in 1995.Since the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union, and then Russia, have reached a series of arms control agreements that established the parameters of what reductions in strategic nuclear weapons can and cannot achieve. An entire class of particularly dangerous — because potentially first-strike capable — missiles was destroyed as a result of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2019, having accused Russia of repeatedly violating it and officials in both countries appear to see a role for such missiles. Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) This comes up as part of the Arcade ending for The Terminator in Mortal Kombat 11. While attempting to use the Hourglass to find a future where Skynet wins the Robot War, it discovers that in any timeline where the war starts, both humans and machines are rendered extinct at the end. Since its programming was to find the best possible outcome for Skynet, not to win the war, the Terminator instead sets the future as one where the two sides live in peace, erasing the war entirely. Danilovic, Vesna (2002). When the stakes are high :deterrence and conflict among major powers /. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p.10. hdl: 2027/mdp.39015056796371. ISBN 978-0-472-11287-6. Consider the video “ Two Tribes,” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The Eurodisco band's first hit, “Relax,” was released with so much edgy sexual imagery that the BBC banned it almost immediately.

Nuclear Deterrence - Atomic Archive

Time to re-assess mutually assured destruction". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 359. 2017. ISSN 0959-8138. JSTOR 26951722. Their ability to carry multiple MIRV warheads at once, useful for destroying a whole missile field or several cities with one missile.Despite these real arms control achievements, the United States and Russia continue to rely on mutually assured destruction. Political and technological developments over the past five years have increased the risk that a nuclear exchange could occur. The relationship between the United States and Russia, the two nuclear superpowers, has deteriorated into deep disagreement over inter alia arms control issues, cyber and other forms of interference in each other’s internal affairs, Ukraine, and the principles of international conduct. Strategic Air Command Declassifies Nuclear Target List from 1950s". nsarchive.gwu.edu . Retrieved 2016-01-06. Offensive systems are currently technologically superior to, and more easily and cheaply upgraded than, defensive systems because of the relative resources of wealth and talent devoted to them over the past six decades. However, in a system of defensive deterrence, investments in offensive systems would cease, allowing them to degrade slowly over time while cooperatively building more robust and effective defensive systems. In the end, while you should try to avoid situations of mutually assured destruction, they can promote good behavior between parties. However, it only takes one party in a situation to start a massive chain reaction with usually catastrophic outcomes. But one medium from the Cold War, more than any other, gets through to my students: MTV, Music Television, which cannonballed into America’s cable systems in August 1981. When I show them videos from the age of glitter and spandex that are filled with images of nuclear destruction, they finally grasp how much the threat of instant and final war was woven into the daily life of young Americans who thought they were turning on the television just to tune out the world.

Mutually Assured Destruction: 10 Plays About Brothers and

To illustrate, I recall watching former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld debate proponents of the nuclear revolution about the nature of deterrence at a meeting of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. Rumsfeld argued that nuclear deterrence was difficult and not guaranteed, not even in MAD, if such a thing existed. Even though this forum took place over two decades ago, I remember how Rumsfeld swayed many members of the audience to his position — especially the non-specialists — by turning to his opponents and asking: “And what if you are wrong about the power of MAD?” No fallout shelter networks of sufficient capacity to protect large segments of the population and/or industry. a b Richard Pipes (1977). "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" (PDF). Reed College. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 14, 2013 . Retrieved September 4, 2013. 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. One fact that clearly emerges from Green’s book is that policymakers seemed to correctly understand the dynamics of Cold War nuclear deterrence. This observation contradicts the consensus in the scholarly literature, which holds that the nuclear revolution made the arms race unnecessary (and not really all that dangerous). According to this view, which is still widely held today, the condition of MAD should have stabilized international politics, since the requirements of nuclear deterrence were easily met and nearly impossible to overturn. Because nuclear arsenals remained secure, the cost of war was too high to risk competition. The intense nuclear competition, therefore, was not caused by strategic circumstances, but rather by domestic pathologies, which prevented policymakers in both Washington and Moscow from learning to live with and love the bomb. Policymakers simply missed the boat when it came to how and why nuclear deterrence worked.After finishing this masterly work, I am left with three main thoughts. First, it seems like American policymakers got more right than wrong about the Cold War nuclear arms competition. Second, I wonder now if victory was in fact possible in a nuclear war. Finally, can Green’s theory explain competition and arms control before and after the groovy 1970s?