(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
"George Z. Bush" writes:
Peter Stickney wrote:

BMEWS was the response to the threat of ICBMs coming over the Pole.
But, in some ways, we were still further along than the Soviets wer in
building and deploying useful ICBMs and SLBMs. Kruschev was great at
showing off spactacular feats of missilery, and veiled, and not so
veiled threats to use his missiles, but that wasn't backed up by what
was in the field. Consider, if you will, that if the Soviets had had
a viable ICBM or SLBM force in 1962, they wouldn't have tried putting
the short-range missiles in Cuba. That whole business grew out of the
Soviet's knowledge that they couldn't effectively strike. (Either First
Strike or Second Strike)

That was all very interesting, and certainly did much to refresh flagging
memories. However, it still didn't resolve the starting date for
MAD, because
it ignored the ongoing SAC airborne alerts and the nuclear armed subs roaming
the oceans. I personally have the feeling that the MAD doctrine evolved from
recognition of those SAC policies by the Soviets, which would place
the date at
or before construction of the DEW line.
All guesswork on my part. What do you think?

Well, just my opinion, of course, but I think that the MAD thinking
didn't occur until the mid '60s. It really didn't get set in stone
until it was decided to limit the deployment of the Spartan/Safeguard
ABM system, which occurred before the negotiation of the ABM Treaty
which occurred in 1972. The Soviets, of course, had been trying with
all possible strength to get systems in place to deliver their nukes
all through the 1950s. As I pointed out before, air-breathers -
Bombers and Cruise Missiles, weren't going to cut it, at least in our
mutual perceptions. (Since it never got tried for real) The Soviets
put more efforts into their ICBM projects than we did, but their
progress wasn't as fast as they wished, so they propagandized the hell
out of it, making themselves look much more powerful than they were,
and hoped that we either wouldn't find out, or wouldn't call the
bluff. (All that Missile Gap stuff in the 1960 election, for
example.)
So the Soviets had been trying to present a credible force for quite a
while, but weren't really there.

All through the 1950s, the Soviets didn't have any confidence in their
ability to put bombs on target, The idea of MAD, which is more a
Western conceit, rather than a bilateral policy, didn't come about
until the Soviets had a significant and reliable ICBM force. This
didn't happen until the mid '60s, at best, with their development of
storable-fuel ICBMs, and the Yankee Class Ballistic Missile Subs.
That feeling of inferiority, after all, was what drove Kruschev to try
to put the short and medium range missiles in Cuba in 1962. They knew
that they were going to come off second best against what we had, and
counted on holding the initialtive and being agressive to make the
differnece. It didn't work that way, and that's the main reason why
Khruschev was chucked out - he scared the Supreme Soviet more than he
scared us. (And mind you, he was plenty scarey)

There's no definite indication tha the Soviet Heirarchy ever really
bought into the idea of MAD. The Soviets, don't forget, were perfectly
willing to trade vast numbers of their population for their system's
survival. The communization of the Ukraine, and the scorched-earch
strategies used in WW 2 are ample examples of that.

But then, this is one of those things that is really a matter of
trying to nail Jello to the wall - since it was never a stated,
formal, policy, but more an attitude and set of perceptions.

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol09/91/91krep.pdf which argues MAD came
about after the various treaties had established offensive missiles
but prohibited defensive missiles. Everyone tries to put a date on MAD
but I would argue that once Herman Kahn starting having his little
briefings on winning thermonuclear war the idea was fertilized and the
gestation period a matter of how you determine whether an idea is born
in the brain or on paper.

and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Assured_Destruction
Mutual assured destruction
(Redirected from Mutual Assured Destruction)

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is the doctrine of a situation in
which any use of nuclear weapons by either of two opposing sides would
result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. The
doctrine assumes that each side has enough weaponry to destroy the
other side and that either side, if attacked for any reason by the
other, would retaliate with equal or greater force. The expected
result is that the battle would escalate to the point where each side
brought about the other's total and assured destruction - and,
potentially, those of allies as well.

Assuming that neither side would be so irrational as to risk its own
destruction, neither side would dare to launch a first strike as the
other would launch on warning (also called fail deadly). The payoff of
this doctrine was expected to be tense but stable peace.

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. 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 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty). The credibility of the threat being critical to such
assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in weapons,
even those not intended for use.

This MAD scenario was often known by the less frightening euphemism
"nuclear deterrence".

Critics of the MAD doctrine noted that the acronym MAD fits the word
mad (meaning insane) because it depended on several challengable
assumptions:

Perfect detection
No false positives in the equipment and/or procedures that must
identify a launch by the other side
No possibility of camoflaging a launch
No alternate means of delivery other than a missile (no hiding
warheads in an ice cream truck)
The weaker version of MAD also depends on perfect attribution of the
launch. (If you see a launch on the Sino-Russian border, who do you
retaliate against?) The stronger version of MAD does not depend on
attribution. (If someone launches at you, end the world.)
Perfect rationality
No rogue states will develop nuclear weapons (or, if they do, they
will stop behaving as rogue states and start to subject themselves to
the logic of MAD)
No rogue commanders on either side at any time with the ability to
corrupt the launch decision process
All leaders with launch capability care about the survival of their
subjects
While MAD does not depend on the assumption that the retaliatory
launch system will work perfectly, it does depend on the challengable
assumption that no leader with launch capability would strike first
and gamble that the opponent's response system would fail
Inability to defend
No shelters sufficient to protect population and/or industry
No development of anti-missile technology or deployment of remedial
protective gear
The doctrine was satirized in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In the film, the Soviets
have a doomsday machine which automatically detects any nuclear attack
on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on earth by
fallout. The film also has the rogue commander who (ignorant of the
Russian doomsday machine) orders his wing on a (preemtive) nuclear
strike, betting that the high command has to back him by launching all
their nuclear arsenal to survive the Russian counterattack. The film
mirrored life in that the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn had actually
contemplated such a machine as one strategy in ensuring mutual assured
destruction. In fact, the film represents an interesting phenomenon
explored by certain theorists: contrary to the assumptions of MAD, a
threat fulfilling strategy --in which one promises to act on one's
threats, regardless of the rationality of doing so-- could be used by
one side to subdue the other. To have a chance of working, however,
the strategy must be known by the enemy --a condition that is not
satisfied in Kubrick's film. It is not entirely clear, though, whether
adopting such a risky strategy can be classified as a a rational act
at all.

The fall of the Soviet Union has reduced tensions between Russia and
the United States and between the United States and China. MAD has
been replaced as a model for stability between Russia and the United
States as well as between the United States and China. Although the
administration of George W. Bush has abrogated the anti-ballistic
missile treaty, the limited national missile defense system proposed
by the Bush administration is designed to prevent nuclear blackmail by
a state with limited nuclear capability and is not planned to alter
the nuclear posture between Russia and the United States. MAD's
replacement (asymmetric warfare) is designed to take advantage of
years of analysis that focussed on finding a concept for stability
that did not rely on holding civilian populations hostage.

The Bush administration has approached Russia with the idea of moving
away from MAD to a different nuclear policy of total weaponry
escalation. Russia has thus far been rather unreceptive to these
approaches largely out of fear that a different defense posture would
be more advantageous to the United States than to Russia.

Some argue that MAD was abandoned on 25 July 1980 when US President
Jimmy Carter adopted the countervailing strategy in Presidential
Directive 59. From this date onwards US policy was to win a nuclear
war. The planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb
Russian cities and assure their destruction. American nuclear weapons
were first to kill the Soviet leadership, then attack military
targets, in the hope of a Russian surrender before total destruction
of the USSR (and the USA). This policy was further developed by
President Ronald Reagan with the announcement of the Strategic Defense
Initiative (aka Star Wars), aimed at destroying Russian missiles
before they reached the US. If SDI had been operational it would have
undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD.

The Bush administration also proposed the use of small nuclear weapons
to be used against terrorists in caves. The implication was that
nobody would militarily object to this preemptive usage of nuclear
weapons, as the US was the only superpower with both nuclear weapons
and strong world policy ambitions.