Mutual assured destruction

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) is the theoretical outcome of a situation in which any use of nuclear weapons by either of two opposing sides would result in the certain destruction of both the attacker and the defender. It entails the willingness of both sides to retaliate with full force against any attack by the other side. This MAD scenario was often known by the less frightening euphemism "nuclear deterrence". The more generic term mutually assured destruction refers to any similar standoff situation involving weapons of mass destruction, e.g. those employed in biowar.

In international relations, MAD was part of U.S. strategic doctrine which believed that nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States could best be prevented if neither side could defend itself against the other's nuclear missiles (see ABM Treaty).

The primary application of this doctrine occurred during the Cold War (1950s to 1990s) between the United States and Soviet Union, in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the two nations while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world.

Critics of the MAD doctrine noted that the acronym MAD fits the word mad (meaning insane, as in "mad as a hatter"), and the doctrine was satirized in the film Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The generic term mutually assured destruction or multiparty assured destruction has come into use in part to preserve that acronym and the general reference to nihilism and futility of conflict that it represents.

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.