Mutually Assured Destruction Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) emerged in the cold war era of bipolarity as the Soviet Union began to challenge the United States’ position as the world’s preeminent nuclear power. MAD was based on the assumption that two states possessing nuclear capabilities could forge a relatively stable relationship and thereby avoid the possibility of war. Decisions to go to war using conventional weaponry depend upon weighing the prospects and benefits of victory against the likelihood of suffering defeat. The presence of nuclear weapons, however, forces policy makers to make a different calculation. With the sheer destructiveness of an enemy’s nuclear weapons rendering one’s own annihilation a genuine possibility, employing force against that enemy would become a simply irrational decision. In this light, it would not even be necessary to achieve equality or parity of nuclear weapons with one’s opponent. Sufficient nuclear power to launch a retaliatory strike following an initial attack would be enough to prevent that first attack from ever occurring. For these reasons, advocates of MAD view the limited existence of nuclear weapons as an important stabilizer in global politics in their capacity to remove nuclear powers from the security dilemma of an anarchical world order.

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