Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)
None of these defensive measures were secure, and in the 1950s both the United States and Soviet Union had nuclear power to obliterate the other side. Both sides developed a capability to launch a devastating attack even after sustaining a full assault from the other side (especially by means of submarines), called a second strike. This policy was part of what became known as Mutual Assured Destruction: both sides knew that any attack upon the other would be devastating to themselves, thus in theory restraining them from attacking the other.
Both Soviet and American experts hoped to use nuclear weapons for extracting concessions from the other, or from other powers such as China, but the risk connected with using these weapons was so grave that they refrained from what John Foster Dulles referred to as brinkmanship. While some, like General Douglas MacArthur, argued nuclear weapons should be used during the Korean War, both Truman and Eisenhower opposed.
Both sides were unaware of the capacity of the enemy's arsenal of nuclear weapons. The Americans suffered from a lack of confidence, and in the 1950s they believed in a non-existing bomber gap. Aerial photography later revealed that the Soviets had been playing a sort of Potemkin village game with their bombers in their military parades, flying them in large circles, making it appear they had far more than they truly did. The 1960 American presidential election saw accusations of a wholly spurious missile gap between the Soviets and the Americans. On the contrary, the Soviet government exaggerated the power of Soviet weapons to the leadership and Nikita Khrushchev.
An additional controversy formed in the United States during the early 1960s concerned whether or not it was certain if their weapons would work if the need should occur. All of the individual components of nuclear missiles had been tested separately (warheads, navigation systems, rockets), but it had been infeasible to test them all combined. Critics charged that it was not really known how a warhead would react to the gravity forces and temperature differences encountered in the upper atmosphere and outer space, and Kennedy was unwilling to run a test of an ICBM with a live warhead. The closest thing to an actual test was 1962's Operation Frigate Bird, in which the submarine USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608) launched a Polaris A1 missile over 1,000 miles to the nuclear test site at Christmas Island. It was challenged by, among others, Curtis LeMay, who put missile accuracy into doubt to encourage the development of new bombers. Other critics pointed out that it was a single test which could be an anomaly; that it was a lower-altitude SLBM and therefore was subject to different conditions than an ICBM; and that significant modifications had been made to its warhead before testing.
| Year | Launchers | Warheads | Megatonnage | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Soviet Union | United States | Soviet Union | United States | Soviet Union | |
| 1964 | 2,416 | 375 | 6,800 | 500 | 7,500 | 1,000 |
| 1966 | 2,396 | 435 | 5,000 | 550 | 5,600 | 1,200 |
| 1968 | 2,360 | 1,045 | 4,500 | 850 | 5,100 | 2,300 |
| 1970 | 2,230 | 1,680 | 3,900 | 1,800 | 4,300 | 3,100 |
| 1972 | 2,230 | 2,090 | 5,800 | 2,100 | 4,100 | 4,000 |
| 1974 | 2,180 | 2,380 | 8,400 | 2,400 | 3,800 | 4,200 |
| 1976 | 2,100 | 2,390 | 9,400 | 3,200 | 3,700 | 4,500 |
| 1978 | 2,058 | 2,350 | 9,800 | 5,200 | 3,800 | 5,400 |
| 1980 | 2,042 | 2,490 | 10,000 | 7,200 | 4,000 | 6,200 |
| 1982 | 2,032 | 2,490 | 11,000 | 10,000 | 4,100 | 8,200 |
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Arms Race
Famous quotes containing the words mutual, assured and/or destruction:
“Nature’s law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Our Lamaze instructor . . . assured our class . . . that our cervix muscles would become “naturally numb” as they swelled and stretched, and deep breathing would turn the final explosions of pain into “manageable discomfort.” This descriptions turned out to be as accurate as, say a steward advising passengers aboard the Titanic to prepare for a brisk but bracing swim.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Helios makes all things right:
night brands and chokes
as if destruction broke
over furze and stone and crop.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)