Flawed Notion About MAD

The idea that the world was safer having MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was flawed during the Cold War, but is now becoming far more erroneous and dangerously flawed.


Offensive weapons present the danger, not defensive systems. I don't think anyone would argue the hypothetical point about which would be a safer world: a world with guaranteed MAD for everyone or a world with perfect missile defense for all parties.


MAD actually did offer some degree of protection during the Cold War, as our main adversary was rational enough to be keenly interested in self-preservation. However let's envision a scenario many years in the future, where the spread of technology has made devices of great destructive power available to many countries and some of these countries are, let's say, under the governments which are religiously ands fanatically opposed to Western values. Many seemingly intelligent Arabs do subscribe to the views along these lines and further believe in martyrdom, paradise as reward for martyrs, jihad, etc. Thus it would be conceivable that an entire government (say Iran) at some point in the future would be willing to destroy the USA and themselves in the process. So what is the answer? Well the answers are very complex but one thing should be clear. Relying on the rationality of our adversaries will not work if they are not committed to self-preservation. If they view MAD as just one big chance at one great big suicide bombing, and have the means to carry it out, we could be in serious trouble to say the least. So it appears that defensive systems may indeed become more necessary in the future. This brings us to the next point. Critics of these types of systems claim defensive weapons would be de-stabilizing. However I believe that the power to destroy in the hands of everyone is the most destabilizing of all since everyone is not rational. Thus power to destroy on a great scale is best left in the hands of those who are most responsible and rational. Instead of the world being destabilized by power being concentrated in the hands of a few, the reverse is actually true. If NATO had a "perfect" missile shield, hypothetically speaking, the world would be a safer place right now. Some will argue that it wouldn't be as fair a place. I would counter that it is pretty unfair right now anyway and I don't see why we should be needlessly vulnerable to destruction, especially because destruction is more likely to eventually take place the longer the window of vulnerability exists.


There is also the argument that the period whhile we are developing a missile shield will be inherently destabilizing since nations such as China will perceive a future threat. Well they will perceive such a threat but there won't be anything they can do about it, just as the USSR couldn't do anything about their impending collapse and loss of status as the world's other superpower. Hopefully we can get a reasonably working shield in place before the REAL danger rears its ugly head...a fanatical government with nuclear ICBM's who won't care a whit about MAD, or a terrorist group who purchases a few such devices from North Korea or Saddam or Iran in say 5 years.


I know the debate about a missile shield is complex and perhaps is getting worn out on this forum...this post is not so much to debate the merits of a missile shield but rather to point out that MAD won't always work and will become increasingly less effective as a deterrent, and that if NATO had the only missile shield the world would actually be a safer (and hopefully better) place.

I don't think MAD was our true strategy in the Cold War. It was the result of our strategy and worked out well, but our goal was first strike capability and survivable nuclear war. Why missile shields are destabilizing in the Cold War context is because of this. Let's assume that we suddenly got a 100% perfect missile shield during the Cold War. Why would we not then simply nuke Moscow, Leningrad and maybe a few other cities? The Soviets would have expected us to do that. We could have won the war by only killing say 75 million people and suffering no damage of our own. They can imagine someone killing 75 million people. That's why it's destabilizing.


Also, since getting a shield is not instantaneous, it could encourage a first strike by the other side before the shield is complete.


But of course, no missile shield will be perfect. I think it makes more sense to have one now than it did then given how the Cold War turned out.

Good points and pretty much agreed.

"the governments which are religiously ands fanatically opposed to Western values"


Name one that it so opposed to our values that it refuses to do business with us, or refuses to sell us oil.


Nation-states are tens of thousands of years old. Modern nation-states trace to the end of the Middle Ages. (1) what makes you think that modern Islamic countries are more religiously fanatic then the ones that dominated Europe for hundreds of years (and please don't try to argue that martyrdom is some foreign islamic concept)? (2) can you name a single nation state in human history that has deliberatly elected to commit suicide?


What do you estimate the chances are that a country will develop the sophistication to create a system of ICBM's with nuclear weapons without being detected, and then use it for the purpose of committing suicide?


What do you estimate the chances are that, if the U.S. develops an effective weapons shield, that it will never (again) use nuclear weapons offensively?


If everything you say is true, doesn't this imply that humanity should do everything in its power to rid the world of nuclear weapons, instead of merely hoping that the U.S. can build a First Strike system will prove forever dependable but never use it?

Let's look at Iran. Iran is dominated by hard-line Islamic clerics. They will soon have ICBM's and nukes if they don't already. I don't think it is certain that the mullahs at some point in the future would not decide on a great big suicide bombing. Take Saudi Arabia. They are producing the most fanatical people of all due to the heavy teaching in the schools of Wahhabism, a form of Islamic Fundamentalism with a strong anti-Western slant. If the Saudi Royal Family were deposed, the government replacing it would be super-fundamentalist and anti-Western. They would be even more likely to embrace the idea of a great big suicide bombimg, so to speak. By that time nukes will be even more readily available on the black market if current trends continue. Other scenarios are also possible.


It would be great to rid the world entirely of nuclear weapons. However I do not believe this possible in the near future, and there are too many people and regimes which could not be trusted to uphold their end of the bargain.

What do you mean "I don't think it is certain" that Iran or fundamentalist muslims in Saudi Arabia will want to risk the immolation of God's people in God's land? Obviously, you think it is possible. Why? What is there about fundamentalist Islam that counsels in favor of self-destruction of this magnitude? Is there any precedent for it in the 1300 years of Islam? Is there some scriptural support? Where are you getting this from? Martyrdom doesn't have anything to do with auto-genocide.


Iran is not working on "ICBMs," but intermediate range baliistic missiles. Best estimates are that they are 10 years away from making one operational.


"there are too many people and regimes which could not be trusted to uphold their end of the bargain."


There's no "bargain" invovled, it's not an honor system. We can have satellites and in-country verification.


The most interesting contradiction in the propaganda is that these rogue states are supposedly building nukes at breakneck speed, but none of the First Strike advocates are pushing Bush to negotiate verifiable arms agreements with them. If the threat were even close to what's been advertised, we'd all be clammoring to impeach the court-appointed tyrant for risking the lives of generations on a pie-in-the-sky corporate welfare program instead of doing his job of trying to stem the threat.

The more you post, the more you implicate yourself. Keep it up!What a poor attorney you are.

You better not ever represent yourself.

This idea is much more pie-in-the-sky than any nuclear missile defense scheme. Any weapon is just the product of the human mind- from a heavy bone used to pound in the skull of another pre-human to an ICBM. Once the genie is out of the bottle its too late. This is the same misguided idea as gun control. You can never rid a country or the world of guns because someone somewhere can and will make more. I do support keeping nukes out of the hands of certain countries, but this involves the use of force based on military superiority. Chris might say oppressive arrogance too, and he could be right. But I still would keep Iraq in the dark as far as nukes go by the use of force.


It is almost a miracle of human history that nuclear weapons have not been used since Nagasaki. There were times when we probably had first strike capability against the Soviets and didn't use it. We could probably get away with using nukes against others but have not. I suppose if we have first strike capability we could decide to use nukes against someone though. Chris might have a point about "suicidal" nations as well however; for instance if Pakistan and India don't lob nukes at one another, there is a good chance other countries will avoid using them. However, some countries have shown a much more cavalier attitude about their own survival than most. I also don't implicitly trust countries like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and China. Time will tell what North Korea and China do with their weapons.

CA: What do you mean "I don't think it is certain" that Iran or fundamentalist muslims in Saudi Arabia will want to risk the immolation of God's people in God's land? Obviously, you think it is possible. Why? What is there about fundamentalist Islam that counsels in favor of self-destruction of this magnitude? Is there any precedent for it in the 1300 years of Islam? Is there some scriptural support? Where are you getting this from? Martyrdom doesn't have anything to do with auto-genocide.


M: There doesn't have to be a precedent for it to be a possibility at some point.


CA: Iran is not working on "ICBMs," but intermediate range baliistic missiles. Best estimates are that they are 10 years away from making one operational.


M: I don't think that is accurate but I will dig a little more.


M: "there are too many people and regimes which could not be trusted to uphold their end of the bargain."


CA: There's no "bargain" invovled, it's not an honor system. We can have satellites and in-country verification.


M: A Saddam could expel the in-country verification personnel (as he did with the UN weapons inspectors). Cheating is still possible even with satellites keeping an eye on things. Underground facilities and other hidden means can be used for the construction of such devices.


CA: The most interesting contradiction in the propaganda is that these rogue states are supposedly building nukes at breakneck speed, but none of the First Strike advocates are pushing Bush to negotiate verifiable arms agreements with them. If the threat were even close to what's been advertised, we'd all be clammoring to impeach the court-appointed tyrant for risking the lives of generations on a pie-in-the-sky corporate welfare program instead of doing his job of trying to stem the threat.


M: As above, arms agreements with them are unreliable and unenforceable. Hell, look at what Saddam thought of the 1991 cease-fire agreement and weapons inspectors. I mean c'mon. Push Saddam to sign an arms agreement? He won't even honor the one he is bound by or let inspectors in. What are you smoking? Arms agreements aren't going to help with rogue states and tyrants--it will just be another facet of their build, stall, deceive, stonewall, obfuscate, keep building scenario. Worthless scraps of paper with guys like Saddam.


And the threat is indeed as serious as Bush portays it to be: While Clinton was in office, reports from overseas intelligence services, including Germany, were right in line with what Bush is now saying about soon-to-come capabilities and dangers.

"Any weapon is just the product of the human mind-from a heavy bone used to pound in the skull of another pre-human to an ICBM."


I think this is dead wrong because I don't think ICBM's, in their current state of mutual deterrence, are "weapons" at all, although First Strike amounts to a system of turning them into weapons.


A military "weapon" is a tool to further a tactical military objective, which in turn furthers a strategic objective of obtaining some political advantage over an adversary. Using an ICBM, however, automatically creates the risk of destruction on such a massive scale that no political advantage can be worth it. So they're not "weapons" in the real sense of the word, like handguns or bones, but components of a machine that risks if not assures mutual destruction.


The problem is that we've turned these things over the people that persist in thinking of them as weapons, with instructions to use them as such at the direction of the civilian leadership. It's not a satisfactory solution for military establishment, military experts charged with little more than, when it comes to these "weapons," pushing a button and incinerating everything. (And I mean everything: at the height of the Cold War the U.S. could target 30,000 locations in the Soviet Union, and I suppose they at least had the ability to hit every population center in the U.S. with more than a few hundred thousand people).


As a result, for decades the Pentagon has been quietly perfecting the technology of making them usable, of being able to return to the "first strike" capability the U.S. enjoyed in the 1950's, and also to target them entirely on military sites for the purpose of destroying an enemy's ability to retalliate. You see this with continuing generations of smaller, more accurate "silo-busting" warheads and fast attack submarines on permanent "flypaper" ops shodowing Russian boomers undetected. "Missile defense" is the ultimate component of this system, designed to destroy what few missiles might get off after a U.S. first strike. If perfected, it gives the U.S. leadership the ability to dictate terms to the rest of the world, leaving everyone else with the hope that the axiom that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is a mere singsong phrase.


On the idea that nukes can't be controlled. Of course they can, they are every day. The officers in charge of launching nuclear weapons are kept in check by a series of safeguards, the same could be supplied to an international organization delegated with a monoploy over a small arsenal of nukes to deter any country attempting to build them. The reason this isn't being seiously discussed isn't because it's feasiblity has been exhaustively studied and rejected, but because power seeks it's own level, and not for the benefit of all.

'Time will tell what North Korea and China do with their weapons. '


chinese military leaders have been threatening to nuke (western) USA in their own newspapers. usually conditionally (if war breaks out in taiwan and US intervenes ...)


good thing clinton gave them all that missile technology (and bush said, aw, go ahead and export supercomputers to em). by the way china is a big foreign lobbyist too.


brad

A Chinese general said it to a former assistant secretary of defense. It was reported to the Clinton Adninistration who claimed the general (who was in charge of intelligence and dealing with the Pentagon) was a "low level" official. Of course in China low level officials in charge of secret military stuff have the freedom to say things contrary to government policy to Americans who will report it back to our government. Yeah. Every time you think maybe Clinton was OK, just read a little Gertz. I can't defend Bush's China policy either though.


I'm sure China says it in their papers too though. :-)

Sorry to be responding to my own post a la eLroy or others, but I don't get the whole "one China" bit that we play along with. As with Germany, the more Chinas the better I say.

not to mention that china controls all these ports right here in america (long beach naval station is one i think. there are others).


not a big deal though. getting us US citizens to get a national id card or even some sort of a high tech microchip, well, thats what we really need. (and to turn in our guns of course).


brad