Thursday, March 20, 2014
MAD
What is MAD? MAD stands for mutual assured destruction. The concept of MAD is the only way to have stable deterrence in the world is for both sides to be able to kill 25% to 50% of the others population. It seems silly now to have nuclear stable power but back then both sides needed to be confident to deter each other or MAD wouldn't have worked. In simpler terms if one side were to attack the other side, that side would be able to retaliate with equal or greater force. This led to more technology being built, the Soviets had built the ABMs which countered missiles that were coming to them. This troubled the US as they themselves were trying to make ABMs but were unsuccessful. Instead the US invented the MIRVs which were a warhead that included multiple missiles that countered the ABMs. I think MAD in a way complicated things for both sides but at the end made it that a nuclear war didn't happen. It made things complicated because both sides had to keep building missiles just to feel safe. They lost a lot of money as $30 million dollars was spent on making air missiles for each side. Both governments were stressing out because no one knew how many missiles each side had or if and when they would be attacked, it was just a problem of trusting each other. If both sides would have worked together, the war could of been over earlier. It seems weird to think but in a way MAD kept the peace.
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Do you think that without MAD that we would have been able to keep the peace? If you think about it, it actually was a big thing keeping both sides from striking at each other, but was it the only thing? With the continuation of both sides creating more powerful weapons to keep each other in check, it created this whole idea, so if, let's say, one of the countries just stopped, and the other country advanced way more, do you think that the more powerful country would have gone ahead and been able to just take out the other side, without fear of a counterattack? How do you think the Cold War would have played out differently? Was MAD really that influential?
ReplyDeleteI agree, MAD was very important in keeping the peace between the Soviet Union and the United States. There were many examples throughout the Cold War in which the elimination of MAD created a lot of tension and even brought about the idea of a nuclear war. For example, the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the Soviet Union had a nuclear advantage over the United States and deterred from MAD that was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. This example proves how important MAD was in the Cold War and demonstrated the effect that it had on the two countries.
ReplyDeleteCountries want to have nuclear weapons in order to look superior and stronger over those who are not able to withhold such weapon.Today nations just want to be prepared for any surprise attack that may happen. Hence, the nuclear bomb offers the mass destruction of humanity as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThe entire cold war was just a huge trust issue, both sides didn't trust each other and thus had a huge flexing contest in order to deter the other from coming over and punching them in the face, if both countries trusted each other then this entire thing would have been avoided. Yes MAD helped keep the peace but then again, why was there a need to keep a peace through such a dangerous method?
ReplyDeleteMAD definitely kept peace I agree, but I think it was a waste. USSR and the U.S. were working so hard with MAD and they ended up not fighting each other which made the treaty almost unneccesary, as if the two countries could have gotten along without MAD. But I won't ignore that it created peace in the Cold War.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone. MAD was the result of the nuclear arms race between these two nation and kept the peace. The tension was so high that Russia was pouring massive amounts of money into building up nuclear weapons. Money that they didn't have though. I think that this whole arms race was a waste on both sides
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone above. Fear of destroying both the United States and the Soviet Union convinced people that an atomic war was a bad idea because neither of the involved countries would gain. As technology got better, it made it harder and harder to have the first strike capability be in effect as each country would know if nuclear missiles were being send towards them and they could easily reply by sending missiles in return.
ReplyDeleteI think that the future of war is interesting. It's going to get to a point where no country will dare to attack another. Like that documentary said, it's starting to cost too much, and the toll of even small attacks are so catastrophic that no country can use them in good conscience. What if, in a hundred years, most of the countries in the world own atomic bombs? Who would dare to use them, for fear of being annihilated by everyone else? It's a weird idea to think that the road to global peace is paved with the most powerful weapons.
ReplyDeleteMAD did keep the peace because it was a theory that implied that in any nuclear war no one can win. Due to this, countries did restrain from going into any sorts of attack. This theory can be be a little flawed but it did keep the peace for many years so it was effective.
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