MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION (MAD)

A relationship between two states in which each can destroy the

other’s society even after absorbing an all-out attack (or first strike) by
the other state. In short, each state has an invulnerable second-strike capability.
MAD is closely associated with the concept of deterrence. As
explained elsewhere in this book, deterrence refers to the ability of a
state to persuade its enemy not to attack because the enemy would
then suffer unacceptable losses. But deterrence cannot succeed unless
two conditions are present. First, the threat of retaliation has to be
credible. Second, a state must have the capability to retaliate once it is
attacked. The central question for policymakers during the cold war
was how to ensure that these conditions were achieved.
Broadly speaking, there were two competing approaches. Nuclear
utilisation theory (NUT) sought not only to use nuclear weapons to
deter the former Soviet Union, but also to develop such weapons into
a war-fighting instrument. According to defenders of NUT, a nuclear
war could be limited to a specific theatre and not necessarily degenerate
into a global nuclear war. They also suggested that it might be
possible to win a such a war. The alternative to NUT, and the one that
eventually came to dominate US nuclear thinking, was mutually assured
destruction (MAD).
MAD evolved over a number of years, but its implementation is
usually associated with Robert McNamara, John F. Kennedy’s Secretary
of Defence in the early 1960s. McNamara tried to determine
what level of damage the United States would have to inflict on the
Soviet Union to be sure that the latter would not contemplate a first,
or pre-emptive strike against the United States and its allies in Western
Europe. He believed that the US would need as few as 400
nuclear weapons to destroy one-third of the Soviet population and
over two-thirds of its industrial infrastructure. Out of these calculations,
McNamara developed the doctrine of ‘assured destruction’.
MAD is an extension of this logic and can be defined as a condition
where it is not rational to attack another state without being devastated
in return. The necessity for an invulnerable second-strike capability
explains why submarines were so important to the US defence
system during the cold war. They were extremely difficult to destroy in
an opening attack and since each submarine could carry 20 or more
nuclear missiles, they provided an invulnerable second strike capability.
With such a capability, the Soviets would know that even
if they launched a successful first strike against land-based nuclear
weapons, they would suffer unacceptable levels of damage from
other sources. The value of MAD, then, is that it delivers a stalemate.
During the cold war the superpowers were often compared to two
scorpions in a bottle.
Debates about the stability of MAD have been going on since the
1960s. Some writers argue that MAD is exceedingly dangerous and
fails to take the arms race into account, especially the development of
new weapons technologies. This argument was first made in the early
1980s when the Reagan administration began to talk about developing
an anti-ballistic missile system (ABM). A system such as the ‘star wars’
programme could conceivably protect its possessor against retaliation,
making it possible to start and ‘win’ a nuclear war. In the last few years
this debate has intensified, with Russia and China voicing their anger
 over US attempts to build an effective missile shield directed against
nuclear rogue states. The second debate has been whether or not
MAD actually kept the cold war from turning into a hot war. John
Mueller, for example, argues that the existence of nuclear weapons had
little to do with the lack of open warfare between the superpowers.
Among other things, the memory of the carnage of two conventional
world wars was enough to ensure that policymakers in the United
States and the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to keep the cold war
from exploding into a hot war.
There is no doubt that the end of the cold war has altered nuclear
thinking dramatically. With a reduction in the number of nuclear
weapons, the signing of a range of treaties, and the new spirit of
cooperation between the great powers, the primary concern for
policymakers today is that weapons of mass destruction may fall
into the hands of terrorists and rogue states. In this context, traditional
theories of deterrence are no longer applicable in quite the same
way as they were at the height of the cold war.