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

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Years Later, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Is Still an Unparalleled Marvel on the Big Screen". TVOvermind. 2018-08-31 . Retrieved 2018-09-15. What caused these oscillations between pessimism and optimism about the nuclear balance? American officials did not express confidence in MAD, as predicted by the theory of the nuclear revolution. Instead, these mood swings confirm Green’s theory about a delicate nuclear competition. The Revolution that Failed has persuaded me — albeit in an uneasy way — that the United States might have escaped Armageddon in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. However, I do not think the country would have emerged unscathed. The United States would have been better off than proponents of the theory of the nuclear revolution have claimed, but there would have still been plenty of pain to go around. Put another way, Washington might have broken out of MAD only to find itself still in the condition of mutually assured retaliation. A better place, to be sure, but still not free of grave danger. Leon Gouré Reviewed by John C. Campbell (1977). "War Survival in Soviet Strategy: USSR Civil Defense". Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs magazine (January 1977). This doctrine follows the “logic of deterrence,” which states that countries raise their opponent’s cost and the damaging consequences of a first strike. Guaranteed global annihilation would greatly outweigh any potential gains. Some theorists believe that this logic prevented the Cold War from becoming a “Hot” war. The Cold War - Uncertain Times

Mutually Assured Destruction: 10 Plays About Brothers and

The doctrine further assumes that neither side will dare to launch a first strike because the other side would launch on warning (also called fail-deadly) or with surviving forces (a second strike), resulting in unacceptable losses for both parties. The payoff of the MAD doctrine was and still is expected to be a tense but stable global peace. However, many have argued that mutually assured destruction is unable to deter conventional war that could later escalate. Emerging domains of cyber-espionage, proxy-state conflict, and high-speed missiles threaten to circumvent MAD as a deterrent strategy. [7] DEFCON is essentially a Mutually-Assured Destruction Simulator, directly inspired by the War Games example above.

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Kluth, Andreas (2020-11-29). "A Successful U.S. Missile Intercept Ends the Era of Nuclear Stability". Bloomberg.com . Retrieved 2020-11-30. Their ability to carry multiple MIRV warheads at once, useful for destroying a whole missile field or several cities with one missile.

Mutually Assured Destruction? - ThoughtCo What Is Mutually Assured Destruction? - ThoughtCo

A first strike must not be capable of preventing a retaliatory second strike or else mutual destruction is not assured. In this case, a state would have nothing to lose with a first strike, or might try to preempt the development of an opponent's second-strike capability with a first strike. To avoid this, countries may design their nuclear forces to make decapitation strike almost impossible, by dispersing launchers over wide areas and using a combination of sea-based, air-based, underground, and mobile land-based launchers. Measures of civil defense, which could offer little protection to the civilian populace against nuclear explosions and, at best, only some chance of avoiding exposure to nuclear fallout, also appeared hopeless in the face of the overwhelming destructive power being accumulated by both sides.By 1986, the Cold War was already winding down. “Future’s So Bright” dropped when Reagan and Gorbachev were talking peace, which may have obscured the message. When Morrissey released “ Everyday Is Like Sunday”—a 1988 ode to catastrophe inspired by On the Beach, in which he sings, “Come, come, come, nuclear bomb!”—the video showed a bored girl in a small town, and audiences could be forgiven for thinking the song was less about the end of the world and more about Morrissey just being Morrissey. The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic philosophical thought experiment that shows why acting in one’s own self-interest often results in worse consequences than working together with others. It provides evidence that mutually assured destruction should be considered when making decisions, as it can benefit both competing parties. Although mutually assured destruction is likely only a term familiar to military strategists, the phenomenon has important implications for regular people’s lives. Most simply, it helps keep us alive. Unfortunately, nations don’t seem to trust one another enough to live peacefully without the threat of weapons, which makes mutually assured destruction necessary. It is a unique brand of trust based on knowing the other nation will not do anything because they too will suffer in the end. When disagreements occur between political leaders, nuclear deterrence means that hopefully, no nation will choose to unleash the devastation weapon. This ironically is the peace solution at the end of the 2017 Korean thriller Steel Rain. North Korea agrees to hand over half their nuclear weapons to South Korea, so neither side can risk war without destroying themselves. By the late 1960s, Soviet nuclear forces began to approach parity with the American arsenal. Proponents of the nuclear revolution mark this as the moment when the superpowers began to live in a state of mutually assured destruction. Both countries possessed seemingly secure second-strike forces of such size that, no matter how well they executed a first strike, neither would escape a devastating retaliatory blow. Neither country could limit damage to itself in any appreciable way, no matter what combination of offensive or defensive counterforce capabilities it threw at the problem. For proponents of the theory of the nuclear revolution, this condition would provide the foundation for an uneasy peace, if only the superpowers would embrace it.

How did we forget about mutually assured destruction? - BBC News

From deterrence to disarmament and non-proliferation, keeping the nuclear threat at bay is a never-ending game of high stakes chess, a game we can never say we have finished playing.Do you think nuclear weapons should be available to every country to sustain the doctrine of MAD? Why or why not?