Mutually assured destruction

Nuclear weapons are the only true WMD, as indicated in the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Just one weapon can kill hundreds of thousands, and a global nuclear war would imperil the human race and other species. And there is no defence against nuclear weapons. 

During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the deterrent effect of nudear weapons helped maintain their security, because nudear weapons threatened mutual assured destruction (MAD). Deterrence is no longer the principal means of... 

The evolution of ABM systems has been driven by politics and perceived need. In the 1960 s, the strategy of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, was articulated by U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara. If either side launched a first strike against the other, the nonaggressor would still have enough warheads left to devastate the aggressor. An effective ABM system would have upset this balance. 

It is widely believed that it was the Balance of Terror-the likelihood that a hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union would result in absolute mutually assured destruction (the MAD system)-that kept the peace between the two superpowers throughout the Cold War. Caught up in the optimism of the 1950 s atomic age, in 1958 the Ford Motor Company unveiled the design of its future Nucleon line of atomic cars, which were to be powered by small reactors in their trunks. 

And, as events would soon prove, the existence of atomic weapons would not make conventional warfare obsolete. Following World War II, the American military would be deployed to the Korean Peninsula and later Vietnam to counter Communist movements backed by the Soviet Union or its ally, China. With both sides armed with atomic weapons, now generally known as nuclear weapons, neither side dared use them. This polity was soon known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). In simple terms, the MAD policy ensured that if one side deployed nuclear weapons, the other side would unleash its own nuclear... 

The foundation of the current international regime for containing the spread of nuclear weapons is the nuclear NPT. It was a product, following the ugly Cold War race to mutually assured destruction, of a realization that WMDs were potentially highly unstable as a national policy tool. It was opened for signature in 1968 and came into force... 

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