someone care to review "assured destruction" and make sure it fits well enough in context for those reaching it from this point?
Another murderously tough topic...
Also there is a big literature on multiparty standoffs in game theory, and peace and conflict, etc., and the role of the original two-party US/USSR MAD in developing this theory should probably be mentioned.
IGNORE THIS: evidently a refresh problem, now fixed. It works correctly.
When I go directly to mutually assured destruction, I get redirected here - to the proper name for the Cold War doctrine MAD - that's reasonable as long as we didn't have a generic definition. Now we do, I wrote it, and I linked multiparty assured destruction to it. To keep this clear:
Mutual Assured Destruction is a doctrine from the Cold War that no longer applies officially as the ABM Treaty has been abrogated (by Bush). Mutually assured destruction is a generic term to apply to similar situations. Since the role of third parties in containing the conflict, acting as mediators, etc., is now very broadly recognized, there is no value in distinguishing between multiparty and mutually assured destruction in the modern context.
So, I want to remove the redirect so that MAD goes to MAD, and the two ways to say "m.a.d." go to the right place.
If that's controversial, let's discuss it. But I can't figure out how to *do* it. JUST A REFRESH. SORRY.
What other premises apply to MAD in the cold war between the US and the Soviets? Was there the assumption that either side would launch a first strike if it dared? Was there a (perhaps related) assumption of moral equivalence? If so, who was making that assumption? Did the Soviets believe that we would launch a first strike -- to conquer them (for our profit) or to "liberate" their citizens (to end socialism) -- if we dared? Would the United States have gone so far as to conquer the USSR with a first strike, or have stopped only at the point where the Soviet arsenal no longer presented a level of threat leading to assured destruction?
Note that I'm not arguing for or against any of these points. I'm interested only in accurate presentation of history. Who thought (or said) what? That's what I want to know.
The term "multiparty assured destruction" does not give ANY hits on Google - are we sure it's not made up by 24.150.61.63?
I think the term has fallen out of use for the reasons I list: it just isn't separate from modern use of the term "mutually". Anyway it is just a redirect and helps to clarify the relationship to multiplayer or multiparty game theory.
If you want to remove it, remove it, but it just makes it harder to follow the related game theory, diplomacy, history, and military science of this topic.
If you can think of any other meaning that term could have, well... ?
Ad to Ed's answers.
The biggest and scariest assumption of MAD was that rogue acts could be contained. The fear and hatred on both sides was such that there were several cases much like the rogue general in Dr. Strangelove that both sides hushed up.
nothing that went that far, of course... so operational control became key to the doctrine - a big assumption.
The moral equivalence assumption was only made openly by third parties - which is outlined a bit in "mutually assured destruction" - that should be enough... there were analysts in the USSR who believed in capitalism's triumph, and others in the USA who believed in Marxism. But I think both side saw just how corrupt each other's implementations were - there was moral equivalence at that tactical and policy level at least. This was most obvious to Europeans who pursued mixed economy strategies all through that period, and often had Marxist and classic economics in the same departments of the same universities.
I believe all positions from "destroy the entire planet down to the algae" to the "only blow up the Kremlin and the White House" approaches were explored - both sides were doing a lot of scenarios...
Also, if you look up "multi-party assured destruction" you find quite a few links to this transition literature, none of it seemingly using the term quite the same way. It seems to have settled down 1980-1990 or so. For instance there is reference to BLIND - Britain's Little Independent Nuclear Deterrent, etc., which indicates some cracks in the MAD two-player mythos of US/USSR.
I don't think this literature or the history of how MAD became m.a.d. needs a separate explanation - the fact of the adjective versus adverb use is probably the single best indicator of mind-set, "war threat" versus "peace process".
Tried to fix link to ABM treaty, but still broken. I'll try again.
This statement is wrong
- After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a reduction of tensions in the 1990s, and as nuclear arms proliferation increased the number of parties involved, the proper term and doctrine of two-party MAD has fallen largely out of use, and is now usually confused with the generic usage. To distinguish the two in speech, especially diplomatic negotiation, the terms mutually assured destruction and multiparty assured destruction are now generally preferred.