User:PortobelloMushroom/Mutually assured destruction

India and Pakistan
MAD does not entirely apply to all nuclear-armed rivals. India and Pakistan are an example of this; because of the abject superiority of conventional Indian armed forces to their Pakistani counterparts, Pakistan may be forced to use their nuclear weapons on invading Indian forces out of desperation regardless of an Indian retaliatory strike. As such, any large-scale attack on Pakistan by India could precipitate the use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan, thus rendering MAD inapplicable. However, MAD is applicable in that it may deter Pakistan from making a “suicidal” nuclear attack rather than a defensive nuclear strike.

North Korea
Since the emergence of North Korea as a nuclear state, military action has not been an option in handling the instability surrounding North Korea because of their option of nuclear retaliation in response to any conventional attack on them, thus rendering non-nuclear neighboring states such as South Korea and Japan incapable of resolving the destabilizing effect of North Korea via military force. MAD may not apply to the situation in North Korea because the theory relies on rational consideration of the use and consequences of nuclear weapons, which may not be the case for potential North Korean deployment.

Proud Prophet
Proud Prophet was a series of war games played out by various American military officials. The simulation revealed MAD made the use of nuclear weapons virtually impossible without total nuclear annihilation, regardless of how nuclear weapons were implemented in war plans. These results essentially ruled out the possibility of a limited nuclear strike, as every time this was attempted, it resulted in a complete expenditure of nuclear weapons by both the United States and USSR. Proud Prophet marked a shift in American strategy; following Proud Prophet, American rhetoric of strategies that involved the use of nuclear weapons dissipated and American war plans were changed to emphasize the use of conventional forces.

TTAPS Study
In 1983, a group of researchers including Carl Sagan released the TTAPS study (named for the respective initials of the authors), which predicted that the large scale use of nuclear weapons would cause a “nuclear winter”. The study predicted that the debris burned in nuclear bombings would be lifted into the atmosphere and diminish sunlight worldwide, thus reducing world temperatures by “-15° to -25°C”. These findings led to theory that MAD would still occur with many less weapons than were possessed by either the United States or USSR at the height of the Cold War. As such, nuclear winter was used as an argument for significant reduction of nuclear weapons since MAD would occur anyway.

Terrorism
Furthermore, the doctrine of MAD has been critiqued in regard to terrorism and asymmetrical warfare. Critics contend that a retaliatory strike would not be possible in this case because of the decentralization of terrorist organizations, which may be operating in several countries and dispersed among civilian populations. A misguided retaliatory strike made by the targeted nation could even advance terrorist goals in that a contentious retaliatory strike could drive support for the terrorist cause that instigated the nuclear exchange.

Second Strike Capability
Another case of ensuring second strike capability is the Soviet (now Russian-operated) Dead Hand system, which is a semi-automatic “version of Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine”, which upon activation can launch a second strike without human intervention. The purpose of the Dead Hand system is to ensure a second strike even if Russia were to suffer a decapitation attack, thus maintaining MAD.