Mutual assured destruction
Mutual assured destruction
Mutually assured destruction or mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds
"Nations possessing nuclear weapons threaten each other with “Mutually Assured Destruction”, which has the very appropriate acronym MAD. What does this mean? Does it mean that civilians are being protected? Not at all. Instead they are threatened with complete destruction. Civilians here play the role of hostages in the power games of their leaders."
"The fact is that the two major nuclear powers have not gone to war against each other—because, I believe, nuclear weapons are achieving their purpose as a deterrent that makes the prospect of war too horrific. It is noteworthy that, since the last world war, there have been 140 conventional wars, fought with ordinary weapons, which are themselves horrific, and that nuclear weapons have been a deterrent to war. I therefore believe that we should keep them."
"The threat to retaliate massively in the event of a nuclear attack is not rationale...contrary to the usual wisdom, we have no good reason to believe that nuclear deterrence has worked in the past, or that if it has, it will continue to do so in the future...even if nuclear deterrence should be one hundred percent effective, it still increases the probability of nuclear war."
