Mutual assured destruction, or MAD, is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender (see pre-emptive nuclear strike and second strike). It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
Theory
The MAD doctrine assumes that each side has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the other side and that either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate without fail with equal or greater force. The expected result is an immediate, irreversible escalation of hostilities resulting in both combatants' mutual, total, and assured destruction. The doctrine requires that neither side construct shelters on a massive scale, such as there are in Switzerland. If one side constructed a similar system of shelters, it would violate the MAD doctrine and destabilize the situation, because it would not have to fear the consequences of a second strike. The same principle is invoked against missile defense.
In military strategy, assured destruction is where behaviors or choices are deterred because they will lead to overwhelming punitive consequences. It was most often discussed as mutually assured destruction (MAD), assuming there are exactly two parties in the conflict. The concept of assured destruction occasionally arises also in the death penalty debate and biotechnology debate.
For an assured destruction strategy to be successful:
the threat must be known in advance,
the threat must be credible both in the opponent’s ability and moral willingness,
the target of the strategy must behave based on rational self-interest to the extent that the threat will be effective in preventing the behavior.
The examples of attempts to establish the conditions for assured destruction include:
Highly punitive criminal and civil punishments for drug possession.
When the concept of assured destruction is applied in the doctrine of law, it is often criticized by proponents of the restorative justice and transformative justice approaches, who point out that assured destruction doctrines are rarely implemented with rigor or integrity of due process. This contributes to the controversy of the death penalty debate.
Now we’re not so sure, and, more importantly, both our allies and the various rogue actors now find themselves looking at nuclear scenarios other than the Cold War’s MAD, or “Mutually Assured ...
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, the saying goes ...Matt Gaetz, is just the latest in a long line of politicians being revealed to be immoral deviants ... It’s mutually assured destruction, which produces a truce between politicians ... .
in a bind ... He must make sure the rule of law and civility is upheld at all times, but he must avoid any overreaction to anything that would drive any opponent of his against the wall and force him to adopt a policy of "mutually assured destruction.".
Amman has taken a pro-U.S ... * * *. Question ... Why?. Hassan bin Talal ... Q ... A commitment to mutually assured survival, instead of mutually assured destruction, is the beginning of any positive initiative that we would like to see in our region and in the world.
In the traditional nuclear lexicon, mutual assured destruction (MAD) would describe a stand-off condition in which an assured destruction capacity is possessed by both (or all) opposing sides.
It came up craps. ... In short, he began wigging out. He threatened to kill everyone on the train ... ... Advertisement ... AOC ... ... Maybe a sort of mutually-assured destruction atmosphere will develop, slowing down the frequency of using the tactic ... .
Despite various multilateral arms limitation treaties, the number of nuclear warheads held by the two most well-armed powers - the US and Russia - still sits well into the thousands, more than enough for total mutually assured destruction.
Feel free to play with any of those,” said the psychologist, gesturing to the games on the table ... I thought at any moment they would frown and say ... You find yourself absorbing the deranged logic of Domino Theory and Mutual Assured Destruction ... Share ... .
Uncannily, that is exactly how our world may well end—via deception, especially self-deception, about monkeying at the edges of Mutually Assured Destruction...Total destruction will follow.
... I think, the Cuban Missile Crisis, everybody was stunned into mutually assured destruction, which was a horrible way to live, but mutually assured destruction was assured, and everybody knew it.
He’s not the first person to sound the alarm ... The order of the day was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the idea that a nuclear attack by one country would provoke an overwhelming counterstrike, leading to the total annihilation of both sides ... .
It’s about to get "nuts" for retired U.S. ArmyLt. GeneralKeith Kellogg. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped him as his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia... But Kellogg is not ... In the 60s, it was called mutual assured destruction ... Petersburg ... Col ... ....
The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the Cold War era has been indefinitely scrapped ... No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
