[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