In article ,
(Jack Linthicum) wrote:

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



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.


Kahn wasn't the only one talking in that period. He published _On
Thermonuclear War_ in 1961, and the popularization _Thinking about the
Unthinkable_ in 1962, and _On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios_ in
1965.

Henry Kissinger had published _Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy_ in
1957, and there were various RAND Corporation and other publications
around then. Kissinger definitely raised the possibility of nuclear
warfighting in that book, which included discussion of tactical weapons.







A collection from the period is Klaus Knorr and Thornton Read (eds)
_Limited Strategic War_

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.

My recollection of Kahn's discussion of a doomsday machine was as a
reductio ad absurdum -- an extreme case to make people stop and look.
After one SAC targeting briefing, he is said to have commented "You
people don't have a war plan -- you have a wargasm." Indeed, one of the
rings of his 44-step ladder in _On Escalation_ is "spasm or insensate
war."

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.

While there are very clear psychological questions whether combatants
would keep nuclear war limited, there certainly were steps to stabilize
the environment, more in war prevention. These included the original
"hot line", and the US giving Permissive Action Link technology to the
Soviets.

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.

I agree PD-59 was am extremely important document, but I wouldn't say it
specifically set a goal of victory. What it did do was create a wider
range of nuclear options, and, in particular, focused on survivable
command, control and communications during the transattack period.


The planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb
Russian cities and assure their destruction.

As you probably know, that wasn't the early strategy. The first plans
had three major options, A, B and R. From memory, A targeted the Soviet
"atomic" infrastructure, B "blunted" conventional forces that could
attack Western Europe, and R "retarded" the economy by going after
industrial targets.


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.