Nuclear Weapons by Siracusa Joseph M

Author:Siracusa, Joseph M. [Siracusa, Joseph M.]
Language: zho
Format: epub
Tags: #genre
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2008-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Mutual assured destruction (MAD)

The policy of massive retaliation was formally replaced in September 1967 by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s recognition that the Soviet nuclear build-up was approaching parity, thus creating a situation of ‘assured destruction’ (critic Donald Brennen added ‘mutual’ to get the acronym of MAD). The idea of MAD did not sit well with American military chiefs preaching peace through strength. The ‘first principle of deterrence’, General Thomas S. Powers wrote in 1965, was ‘to maintain a credible capability to achieve a military victory under any set of conditions or circumstances’. An angry air force General Curtis LeMay insisted, ‘The deterrent philosophy we now pursue has drained away our red military blood.’

Nonetheless, with their budgets at stake, the US military devised a formula (the triad) that provided each service with a strategic function. The air force possessed strategic bombers and nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the navy its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SSBMs), and the army its intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), nuclear artillery, and mines, as well as anti-missile defences. In theory, at least, the nuclear triad reduced the chances that an enemy could destroy all of a country’s nuclear forces in a first-strike attack, ensuring that a devastating second-strike response could be carried out.

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