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

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The Cold War, born out of the aftermath of World War II, was characterized by a state of political and military tension between primarily the United States and the Soviet Union, breaking the former alliance between two superpowers strongly divided over economic and political ideologies. While the two nations never clashed directly on the battlefield throughout this time, their competition for nuclear supremacy resulted in the ever-present threat of an all-out nuclear war between the two nations and their allies. Brown, Andrew; Arnold, Lorna (2010-09-20). "The Quirks of Nuclear Deterrence". International Relations. 24 (3): 293–312. doi: 10.1177/0047117810377278. S2CID 143594540. The March 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum, the earliest technical exposition of a practical nuclear weapon, anticipated deterrence as the principal means of combating an enemy with nuclear weapons. [16] Early Cold War [ edit ] Aftermath of the atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima (August 6, 1945), to date one of the only two times a nuclear strike has been performed as an act of war The Coming Race is about a utopian underground society powered by vril. The invention of vril-based weapons ended all war because they're so powerful that a child could wipe out millions of enemy combatants in minutes. It also ended crime, because people can defend themselves so easily. The government can no longer impose its will on the people by force, so people live in loose societies that they move between at will, and the government's purpose is to attend to practical matters rather than enforce laws.

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DELPECH, THÉRÈSE (2012), "Introduction", Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century, Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy, RAND Corporation, pp.1–8, ISBN 978-0-8330-5930-7, JSTOR 10.7249/mg1103rc.5 , retrieved 2021-04-02 Find sources: "Mutual assured destruction"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2008) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)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?

New Paradigm: Mutually Assured Security - War on the Rocks A New Paradigm: Mutually Assured Security - War on the Rocks

All leaders with launch capability seem to care about the survival of their citizens. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that any strategy will not "cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of Hitler when he found himself in his final dugout." [62] This concept is basically what makes the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four so utterly horrible. There's three big superpowers that are all at war with each other but they have a gentleman's agreement to not seriously try to conquer or destroy each other: war is a great excuse to waste resources, keep the standard of living down and control the population through My Country, Right or Wrong. The leaders of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia can't take their sadistic tendencies out on each others' peoples, so they take it out on their own people instead. This deterrence strategy and the program have continued into the 21st century, with nuclear submarines carrying Trident II ballistic missiles as one leg of the US strategic nuclear deterrent and as the sole deterrent of the United Kingdom. The other elements of the US deterrent are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on alert in the continental United States, and nuclear-capable bombers. Ballistic missile submarines are also operated by the navies of China, France, India, and Russia.The concept of MAD had been discussed in the literature for nearly a century before the invention of nuclear weapons. One of the earliest references comes from the English author Wilkie Collins, writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870: "I begin to believe in only one civilizing influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace." [10] The concept was also described in 1863 by Jules Verne in his novel Paris in the Twentieth Century, though it was not published until 1994. The book is set in 1960 and describes "the engines of war", which have become so efficient that war is inconceivable and all countries are at a perpetual stalemate. [11] [ non-primary source needed] As Green’s theory would expect, however, American policymakers correctly believed that they inhabited a far more competitive world. In their view, too much uncertainty surrounded the requirements of nuclear deterrence, including the survivability of nuclear forces. They could also not know with enough certainty if the Soviets agreed about the virtues of MAD. The costs of war would be very high if they were wrong. 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?” Captain John W. Dorough Jr. "Soviet Civil Defense U.S.S.R. preparations for industrial-base war survival". Air University Review, March–April 1977. Archived from the original on 2013-12-17 . Retrieved 2013-09-04. The classic prisoner’s dilemma narrative is about two individuals who have been arrested and are being interrogated about a bank robbery. The authorities have only these two individuals as witnesses and will only be able to prove a case if one of them betrays the other and testifies as an accomplice. If both remain silent, the authorities will only be able to convict each of them on a charge of loitering (one year in jail each). If only one testifies, and the other stays silent, the one who testifies will go free while the other one will receive a three-year jail sentence. If both testify, each will receive a two-year sentence. 10

2015 - Mutually Assured Destruction by Don Zolidis

Prudent policymakers had to hedge and could not rely on MAD to promote peace. As Nitze reflected toward the end of the Cold War, “Although some argued that nuclear weapons would radically change the nature of warfare, responsible officials did not hold this view.” 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.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.