MAD was the big acronym during the Cold War. For those who cannot remember, it stood for Mutually Assured Destruction.
The thinking behind the terrifying term was that the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers—America and the Soviet Union—would be maintained at such a level that neither could risk striking first for fear that the other power would be left with enough weaponry to launch a retaliatory strike that would leave planet Earth an irradiated cinder block.
It worked. Earth is still green and blue
But the political landscape has changed and is changing. There are new players and new threats. This would seem to indicate the need for a new strategy. All the reports are that this new strategy will be unveiled in the Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to be published next month with the term “low-yield” nuclear weapons entering the defence lexicon.
So what is different? Well for a start Moscow and Washington are not the only two countries with nuclear weapons. Throughout most of the Cold War France and Britain were also armed but their arsenals—especially Britain’s—was closely tied to America’s. China joined the club in 1964 and the basic structure of the East V West stand-off was established.
There were also regional nuclear powers. Israel is incredibly tight-lipped about its capabilities, but most experts agree that it has had the bomb since 1966, and its arsenal currently stands at about 80 warheads. The weapons, however, are clearly meant to be a deterrent against an overwhelming conventional attack from hostile Arab neighbours. Nowadays they are also concerned about a nuclear attack from Iran.
India detonated its first big bang in 1974 which confirmed New Delhi as South Asia’s sole super power until Pakistan arrived on the scene in 1998 with its nuclear test. India now has between 110 and 120 warheads and Pakistan 130. The MAD doctrine appears to be working reasonably well in the subcontinent.
The biggest change is North Korea. Rocket man Kim Jong-un has 15 warheads and, possibly, the means to deliver them to California.
And what about Iran? Will the deal to halt its weapons programme hold? What happens if it doesn’t? Will The Trump Administration supply nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia ?
Will the Trump Administration counter rocket man’s threats by supplying nuclear weapons to Japan and South Korea? Unthinkable? Not according to Donald Trump.
The big questions, however, still hang over the Russian and American arsenals. They have been reduced and restricted by a series of Cold War treaties—ABM, SALT I, Salt Two, INF and START. The result is that America now holds 6,800 warheads and Russia 7,000. Less than at the height of theCold War, but global destruction does not begin to describe their potential.
Over the past 18 months Russia has started moving away from the MAD doctrine and it is likely that it is breaching the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Concerned about NATO troops in the former Russian satellites of Eastern Europe, Putin has jettisoned the no first use policy which is the essential pillar of MAD. Quite simply, if both sides agree they will not strike the first blow then, ipso facto, neither side strikes. MAD is an added guarantee.
Unfortunately, Putin is now saying that he “may” use battlefield and intermediate range nuclear weapons if he believes that Russia’s vital interests are under threat
Putin’s position is worryingly vague. It has also lowered the threshold at which nuclear weapons can be used. This in turn has prompted US defence planners to push for a “low-yield” nuclear arsenal to counter the Russians, at least according to a number of leaked reports about the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review.
But then low yield weapons could have uses other than countering Russia’s strategic changes. Their deployment also raises the possibility of a low-yield nuclear attack on North Korea to stop rocket man before he goes any further while limiting the fallout. Low yield weapons could also be used against Iran and could it be argued that supplying such weapons to Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea is politically more palatable than sending them big bang high yield nuclear bombs.
If the Trump Administration is dispatching low-yield nuclear weapons to its allies does this change the policies of other nuclear weapobns states such as India, Pakistan and Israel? Such weapons would be cheaper and easier to develop maintain, deploy and deliver.
The possibility of a low-level, low-yield and—presumably—survivable nuclear exchange then becomes much more likely. But how do you keep it low-level? What happens when a high-yield nuclear power is facing defeat in a low-yield war? It all sounds a bit MAD.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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5 Comments
Very worrying. I was hoping to get to the good news at the end!
One point though: “the no first use policy which is the essential pillar of MAD” – NATO explicitly rejected a no first use policy during the Cold War (it was one of the key demands of the left in the 80s that that should change). They feared that the Warsaw Pact had superior conventional forces in Europe and would overrun NATO in the event of a non-nuclear war, so retained the option to use nuclear weapons in that event. MAD wasn’t the only aspect of nuclear deterrence: nuclear weapons (including “battlefield”, i.e. low-yield weapons: they haven’t just been invented!) were also explicitly intended to deter any military attack. And arguably, they worked.
I’m not saying it wasn’t mad…
Wasn’t the neutron bomb supposed to destroy people and not property? Nasty however you look at it. Whatever happened to that weapon?
Tom Arms (interesting surname?) paints a frightening picture and he is perfectly correct. However, the real thing for us to worry about is a jihadist with a small nuclear device in his (or her) rucksack.
Mad as it is, M.A.D. may still work in most cases. Could the apparent rapprochement between North and South Korea have anything to do with the fact that the present occupant of the White House appears to be as unpredictable (and unstable) as ‘Little Rocketman’? Both appear to be interested in putting their countries first rather than in
conquering the world, although spreading control to the end of the Korean Peninsula may still be on the mind of the latter. I don’t think Putin is wedded to the kind of doctrine his Soviet predecessors were. What he appears to want is respect. Give him that and he might well fall into line.
No, the real danger lies with those for whom death and life in paradise is the ultimate reward and who are quite prepared to cause unbelievable suffering in order to pursue their cause.
you are quite right about the neutron bomb which was referred to as “the capitalist bomb” as it exploded in the atmosphere and killed attacking conventional forces with radiation, leaving property intact. It was never deployed because it was judged to dangerously lower the nuclear threshold. As for no first use and MAD. Mad doesn’t really work unless there is an agreed no first use policy running alongside it. That is the reason why the 1972 ABM Treaty had to be negotiated in parallel with SALT I. SALT
and the MAD policy would have been useless if either side had deployed an effective defensive shield against a first strike capability.
I take the point about NATO deploying Intermediate range and battlefield weapons in response to the overwhelming Soviet conventional forces. In fact, many of the NATO battlefield weapons are still deployed, but they are fast becoming out of date.
The tables are now– to a certain degree– turned. NATO doesn’t have overwhelming conventional forces but the forces it has are a lot closer to Moscow, and the Russian conventional forces are a lot smaller, although they are growing.
As for the greatest threat being from a nuclear-armed Jihadist. Agreed. Experts say that the likelihood of this happening is 0.01 percent. I don’t know how they have come upwith this figure– must ask– but as low as it is, it is still too high.
The major point I was trying to make in my article is that the nuclear landscape has changed– is changing– since the end of the Cold War and yet our policies have remained more or less stagnant. MAD may still be relevant. More low-yield weapons maybe the answer. i don’t know. But I do know that the subject is not being properly debated.
My theory is that the public thinks that the end of the Cold War rendered nuclear weapons largely irrelevant. Ufortunately, that is not the case. But I do think it rendered some of the old policies irrelevant.
Might the risk of the use of nuclear weapons be lessened if the rulers of the USA stopped their efforts to dominate the world and accepted a multi-polar world?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-foreign-policy-hegemony-or-stability-not-both/5582758
Which is the only nation to have attacked another with a nuclear weapon?
Malcolm Todd is surely right—NATO has never had a “no first use” policy. Nuclear weapons are meant to be a deterrent against *any* attack, not just against nuclear attack.
Check this out, from 1990: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/06/28/nato-again-rejects-no-first-use-policy/6d45b865-4151-432e-ba1a-d63812156830/?utm_term=.51940b1cf75e
I can’t understand how Tom Arms disagrees with this.
I would’n’t be surprised if it were NATO policy only to use nuclear weapons defensively—not to use them to just attack another country. That pretty much follows from the UN Charter anyway. But “no first use” is different from that.