Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a Cold War doctrine of nuclear strategy holding that a full-scale nuclear strike by one power against a nuclear-armed adversary with a survivable second-strike force would guarantee the total annihilation of both attacker and defender, and that this mutual guarantee is itself what deters either side from ever striking first.
Facts
Core ClaimA nuclear-armed adversary that launches a full-scale strike will suffer national annihilation in the guaranteed retaliatory strike that follows, so neither side can rationally attack without being destroyed in turn. 1 Origin YearMarks Donald Brennan's coining of the term 'mutually assured destruction' at the Hudson Institute; the underlying deterrence logic took shape gradually through the late 1950s as both superpowers built survivable retaliatory forces, and is not attached to a single earlier founding date. Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Mutual Assured Destruction
Wikipedialead paragraphQuote, lead paragraph
MAD is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.
1. Wikipedia: Mutual Assured Destruction
Wikipediaetymology/history sectionQuote, etymology/history section
The term 'mutually assured destruction', commonly abbreviated 'MAD', was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962.
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