[vertexFarm]

For all the evidence we have, MAD has worked. Still here. Still no WWIII. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time.

As best we can tell, nukes actually did end large-scale war. I would call that at least a partially mitigated disaster.

[projectileboy]

You're not wrong, but there were multiple incidents during the cold war where the US and Soviet Union came very, very, very close to a nuclear exchange, and it was only dumb luck (and sometimes the heroic actions of individuals who were in the right place at the right time) that saved us. We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.

[vertexFarm]

The unwillingness of people to start a nuclear exchange is exactly the plan. In the examples you speak of, common soldiers and technicians refused to launch the missiles. It's noteworthy that the idea of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange is so horrifying that even soldiers who assume they are already dead and have orders to launch still refuse. I think that speaks a lot about the inherent goodness of humanity, but that's a different story.

I know it came very close, but the assumption was that it would come to the brink yet nobody would want to go through with it and begin open aggression. Seems dubious and risky, but once again it worked. And let's not discount the negative risk--a conventional world war with the Soviet Union, China, the US and Britain would have been so terrible.

With such a small data set we should still be dubious, but I don't know if we can consign it merely to luck. I think it was a good plan. Terrible publicity, though. Nightmarish. But so is war.

[burfog]

I think that weapons range, combined with either precision targeting or large numbers, gets that job done. Picture a world without nukes, but with lots of highly accurate ICBMs and SLBMs. The attacker can expect to be attacked, with the destruction being stuff like the Kremlin or Whitehouse or parliament building.

In the days of WWII, an attacker could rightly feel confident that there could not be an immediate response that strikes anything of importance. The attacker might even believe that such a response could not be possible ever in the future. Poland could be invaded without any realistic worry that Berlin would be attacked that same day, and a bit of optimism turns that into Berlin being safe.

[vertexFarm]

Maybe so, I have no idea. I think they'd just hardened bunkers and go to war anyway. But really it doesn't matter; the genie is out of the bottle, so MAD is really the only plan available. Can't un-invent the bomb.

[rabidrat]

Actually, the bomb and its design and construction require so much tacit knowledge that we might be on the verge of uninventing it already.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230699

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1018881.pdf

http://public.lanl.gov/bsims/pdf/4S%20tacit%20knowledge.pdf

[fjsolwmv]

I don't see how that argument is justified. Maybe the Marshall Plan and the European Community saved Europe from war. Maybe Maybe globalization and general civilization-wide wealth creation made it so the elite's and xommonners businesses are less profitable in large scale war. (Note that even today, wars happen in poor countries, not rich countries). Maybe democratic evolution made the "send peasants to war" model obselete, and maybe modern communication made it harder to sell the fascist lies that motivated WWII. Nuclear Weapons didn't prevent Vietnam or Korea or the Middle East wars.

[forapurpose]

While my humble opinion is that MAD was effective, let's be careful not to infer causation from a sequence of events (the rooster crows and then the sun rises). And the events of 'MAD' and 'peace' are not in sequence: WWII ended in 1945. MAD wasn't an idea until the 1960s and not implemented in a treaty until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, AFAICT.[0]

It makes more sense if you remember that nuclear weapons and delivery technology didn't reach the 'assured destruction' stage for awhile. Remember that in the Korean War, in the 1950s, General MacArthur was pushing to use nuclear weapons (IIRC); it wasn't as taboo then. Finally, remember that MAD applied only to the Soviet Union and U.S. (or the Warsaw Pact and NATO), while major international wars ended worldwide, for the most part. Remember that WWI and WWII were fought between future NATO members; the later peace between them wasn't due to MAD.

> At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time.

The victors of WWII were very concerned about that, and began planning to prevent it before the war ended. That resulted in the UN, the institutions that became the EU, a rejection of nationalism (as a significant cause of war), the spread of democracy and universal human rights as a peace-making policy (democracies generally don't start wars with each other), and U.S. leadership in the international order to maintain those things and to provide stability. My understanding is that those are the reasons for the relative but extraordinary peace. Here's a Churchill speech about it in Zurich in 1946 (the speech focuses on the future EU; remember he also was one of the architects of the United Nations):

http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html

(I'll also note that they seemed to have worked so well that now people take the peace for granted and are tossing aside the things that make it happen.)

[0] The best credible source I can find quickly. If you hit a paywall, access it via a search engine: https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926

EDIT: Added a detail

[bambataa]

I partly agree with you but a less charitable interpretation is that we had a bipolar hegemony that prevented full-scale wars. Many regions experienced significant violence, often caused or abetted by Western powers that turned out to be less committed to democracy and human rights when they got in the way of power politics. (Edit - or other powers that barely bothered paying lip service to human rights)

Again, I broadly agree with you and would definitely prefer to see a continuation of the past 60 years over whatever’s on the horizon, but let’s not get too rose tinted about Weatern benevolence.

[forapurpose]

I agree. The reason I didn't go into the detail you did was that I just had to draw a line on the length of the comment, for my sake and for the sake of the reader. I'm glad you added your comment.

[graeme]

Your timeline is wrong. Bernard Brodie came up with Nuclear deterrence in 1946. The Soviets would have read his work or understood the implicatikns. There was a reason they raced to get the bomb.

[forapurpose]

> Bernard Brodie came up with Nuclear deterrence in 1946. The Soviets would have read his work or understood the implicatikns. There was a reason they raced to get the bomb.

Mutually Assured Destruction is not the same as Brodie's Nuclear Deterrence AFAIK (which admittedly isn't much). In 1946, neither side could come close to assuring destruction of the other; the Soviets didn't have any atomic bombs until 1949, the U.S. didn't have the H-bomb until 1954, and of course neither had ICBMs, The best production rocket was probably the V-2.

[graeme]

I haven't actually read Brodie, I'm just going on my memory from my strategic studies class. But my recollection is that he more or less fully fleshed out nuclear warfare theory in 1946. The tech wasn't there, but the logic of the weapons was.

MAD is less a strategy than a reality. As long as each side has weapons that can't be credibly destroyed in a first strike, you have MAD, whether theorists explicitly call for it or not.

Though of course submarines make this easier to achieve in practice.

I might be wrong about this though, perhaps there were significant differences between Brodie's 1946 theory and later MAD developments.

[forapurpose]

Thanks. A couple things I don't think are accurate, based on my limited knowledge:

> As long as each side has weapons that can't be credibly destroyed in a first strike, you have MAD

With the significant qualifier that you need enough weapons to survive to completely destroy the enemy.

> MAD is less a strategy than a reality

I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. It was and is a specific strategy and implementing it was the reason for the ABM treaty and others - defensive weapons would make destruction less "assured". See the source I linked above.

[graeme]

The thing with defense is that even without the ABM treaty, we don't have an effective defense. MIRVs will always be cheaper than single shot ABMs, and their reliability is too low to rely on in the event of a second strike. That's what I meant by it being a reality.

People do of course adopt it as a strategy as well. But if effective defense tech existed I don't think the strategy would hold. The US abandoned the ABM treaty even without such technology.

As for your first point, it's true that MAD didn't really conclusively come into force until submarines. But there were efforts before then to maintain a second strike capability, such as keeping a certain percentage of bombers in the air, preparing them for fast takeoff, etc

Maybe not 100% assured second strike, but the basic idea was the same

[7952]

Do we really have enough data to draw conclusions? A nuclear war could break out in ten years time and be orders of magnitude worse than WWII. That would invalidate MAD in an instant.

Nuclear weapons create a requirement that you safety depends on the pragmatism and sanity of leaders and government. Not only of your own country but your enemies.

[ghostsofhistory]

The patterns of history suggest we are heading for unclear war. Power (manifested as interest) has been present in every conflict - no exception. Every nation eventually gets the war it is trying to avoid - nuclear war too. Decision-makers delude themselves that the course they are on will not lead to annihilation, but it always does. World leaders are deluding themselves now. Read more at: http://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/