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Talk:Assured destruction

This is all of a piece with the same rambling mess about 'multiparty assured destruction'. Removed for the same reason: personal creative work is not an encylopedia article, however well intentioned.

A sample sentence:
 * Subtle distinctions apply between assertion or assurance and measures of insurance (compensation possibly motivating recovery or revenge, e.g. a bounty) and ensurance? (interlocking treaties causing destruction to ensue to any party who refuses to cooperate in revenge, e.g. [three man cells]? in "terrorist" organizations).

- This is not "creative". Those are the dictionary definitions of the terms "insurance" and "ensurance" as properly applied to "destruction". If you don't understand that, fine, legitimate criticism, I'll write up "three man cell" and "bounty hunter" and then it will be easy to understand why "ensured" and "insured" are different - and why both differ from "assured".

The sentence you quote is absolutely neutral. You just aren't familiar with the underlying theory of strike-back (e.g. submarines as employed in nuclear warfare) guiding the insurance, nor likely the three man cell structure that kept the IRA from being broken by the British. If that's my fault, fine, I can fix that to explain. But ther'es nothing "personal" or "creative" about it.

I'm tired of arguing with you. Re: the other article, "multi-party" turns up plenty, and there is more use of "mutually" than "mutual". If I were to apply your standard I'd be moving "Mutual Assured Destruction" to "talk" for not appealing to a Reagan voter's biases about its effectiveness, and for dropping the "ly".

There is a double standard in your edits. If it comes from some US history book, like "peace movement" or 'M.A.D.' as defined in 1950, you like it, even if the definition is totally useless in 2002 and only of historical interest.

If it makes any even-obvious connection or implication from the language chosen in multiple profession-specific terms, you consider it somehow non-neutral... Gandhi thinks "eye for an eye" describes riots, death penalty, and war all at once, but you don't.  What do you know that Gandhi doesn't?

Guess what: reality is not neutral. Current use of terms is slightly more controversial. Neutrality requires negotiation, and some willingness to learn.

This is your problem not mine. You may dislike the writing, fine, that can be fixed. But disregarding fundamental axioms of philosphy with names that recur in multiple phrases, or failing to make critical distinctions like 'insurance' versus 'assurance' versus 'ensurance' (which are made in one quote by an Air Force general in an in-context quote), is just a disservice to the reader.

If someone comes here to research a topic like MAD, they want some context, beyond history.

If this is a history book, fine, it's a history book. But that wasn't what it was claimed to be...

-

I agree. Distinctions between words are important. What I find interesting about that sentence is that it has a sing-song clanging tone to it that reminds me of things I recognise from other contexts.

Skip the amateur psychiatry - actually all psychiatry is amateur psychiatry.

Words have common suffixes for historical reasons or because they are or were deliberate constructions. "surance" means something - "making it sure" etc - which insurance, assurance, and ensurance all do in different ways to different standards of certainty.

An author who opposes escalating warfare and death penalties and assassination and bombing children on the same grounds is going to appear to be "preaching" or "clanging an alarm bell" to one who has different moral rationales for doing these things. That's a normal clash of views.

However, the sentence works just as well without the examples, or with them toned down somewhat. If you find two better words to contrast with "assured", do so.

Putting "terrorist" in quotes, or not using it at all, is BBC standard... they use the term only in quotes and will not use it in commentary at all.

So, perhaps you are reacting emotionally to things that aren't controversial but just difficult to discuss?

But, I wouldn't want to play psychiatrist...

-

I'm saying clanging is not a good thing to do in your text if you want to get taken seriously. It's a writing style thing.

By the way, I like the way you picked up on my use of 'clanging' and turned it into an auditory image in a different context ('clanging an alarm bell'); and then followed it up with the similar (and alliterative) 'clash' in the next sentence.

The Anome

- Understood and appreciated. In part it's a question of reasonable goals: Being "taken seriously" is one reasonable goal;  Being mnemonic and using phrases that are "easy to remember" (like the insurance/assurance/ensurance distinction) is another reasonable goal, and if you really aren't inventing anything new, and the mnemonic does no harm, then, it may be a more reasonable goal for an encyclopedia. A third goal is having fun, and I'm glad you like *something*.

The assured destruction of texts or edits - easily replaced - is not at all the same thing as the assured destruction of bodies or ecologies... each of which tends to be unique.

Accordingly, the mutually assured destruction of each other's work isn't a life-or-death deal in the sense that oh say Mutual Assured Destruction with some leftover arsenal is. There may be a reasonable method to de-escalate our conflict over this, whereas there may be no reasonable method to take apart 1000s of warheads and distribute the fissiles and brainpower that went into them so widely that no one assembles them again.

Anyway... you remind me of Richard Stallman. Once, when I tried to tell him that dangerous intellectual capital existed and would eventually have to be contained using some improved GPL type license, he argued for a while, then threw in 'the problem you are trying to solve, does not exist'. Which was before anyone got anthrax in the mail... or Dubya took the anthrax research and nuclear power plant plans off the net...

Very minor mod, generalizing away from just 'nuclear' - should probably mention all weapons of mass destruction with unacceptable strategic outcome. Nuclear and plague and nerve gas are tactics - forcing your opponent to the negotiating table no matter how much he hates you is the strategic purpose.

Everyone uses that Gandhi quote out of context...

I don't care how erudite its author may be, or how important he may perceive its goals, the sentence quoted does not bear even the slightest resemblance to an understandable English sentence capable of enlightening anyone about anything. If you really have something to say, I strongly suggest you find some trusted soul who understands you and knows how to write to do the communication for you--this stuff is just a rambling intellectual tone poem, not useful information. --LDC

- I don't accept that definition of "useful information" - the distinction between insurance, assurance, and ensurance is pretty damn useful once you know it... but I admit that sentence was not the ideal way to make it... more like pseudocode than a tone poem...

anyway, whatever, the general comment on writing style is not warranted. I think you will find the vast majority of my sentences well constructed, and only a few addressing very complex topics are quite as overworked as that one.

And those tend to get hacked out, anyway... thanks. -- Removed this nonsense. In international relations and nuclear strategy, assured destruction has a specific meaning and this ain't it.

 * More limited scenarios of assured destruction, e.g. in asymmetric warfare or biowar, assume that the weapons on each side may differ, and tactics may differ, but the strategic outcome and diplomatic imperative will be the same.

 * "abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature" - Gandhi

- Untrue. Most of the debate on this in recent years has focused on non-nuclear and asymmetric players. No serious military debate considers the strategic implications of "bottom up" weapons like suitcase nukes or biological agents to be fundamentally different - the new problem is knowing who to "strike back" at.

There is no longer any such field as "nuclear strategy", at least not since nuclear weapons have been proposed as a "solution" to other problems (deep caves, retaliation for biological attack, last ditch use against alife forms). Strategy is just strategy now.

As it is, you have defined the term into uselessness and irrelevance. Nice work.

As usual, sticking to the obsolete thing you do understand to avoid the scary thing you don't understand... Human Ostriches 101.

The original article may not have been so clear, but it generalized the notion of assured destruction from death penalty right up to global thermonuclear war and made a neat and correct distinction between tactics in actual use (assurance i.e. threat, insurance i.e. bounty, ensurance i.e. the last strike capability) in current asymmetric conflict.

You might not personally like that, but it's actually relevant to stuff on TV in a way your article isn't.

Keep working on it, though. You may get a clue someday.

Yeah, like you have a lot of credibility when you don't even have the balls to use a real name, and someone who spends time arguing definitions of words as if those were facts or even useful except within contexts narrower than any of reader is ever likely to be in. Yes, the times have changed from what "MAD" used to mean, but that doesn't change what the term meant when it was created, and that is what an encyclopedia should cover--when the term was created and why, and how it was really used by real people in the media of the time. Yes, that political environment might no longer exists. Fine--write a god damned dissertation on it and leave us the hell alone to write something that might actually be useful to someone. --LDC

23 October 2003 - Attempting a complete rewrite. Will attempt to keep all the flavors of 'assured destruction', not just the nuclear context. Comments on the neutrality and completeness of this version are encouraged. Rossami 20:33, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Assured destruction


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Talk:Responsible government

Untitled
The comment below is right - responsible government was indeed given to/gained by the colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada as they transitioned to dominions, but the term had an agreed meaning within the context of normal English practice - the government is responsible to the parliament (and in particular to the lower house).

Hmmm. I don't think the main article is correct. AFAICT, Responsible government describes the conventions at least partly followed by the governmental systems of the UK and the former colonies Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It describes the system where the monarch (or their representative) formally holds almost dictatorial powers, but uses them only on the advice of the parliament and more specifically the ministers, who are also chosen by the Parliament. It also describes the running of executive government and rules for the behaviour of ministers (ie they are responsible for the actions of their departments and should resign if their department does something seriously wrong, and they are obligated to publically support executive government decisions etc).

 * I agree. In all Westminster systems the head of state is theoretically independent of the houses of Parliament. Ministers, however, are collectively and personally responsible to Parliament, and specifically to the House of Commons. Andrew Yong 21:31, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * All responsible government really means is that:
 * there is an assumption of the separation of powers doctrine with separate legislative, judicial and executive arms;
 * however, the executive (PM, Cabinet, ministers etc) must be drawn from Parliament and by convention from the party of government (in Australia for example this is governed by s64 of the Constitution - similar provisions exist in other systems)
 * The system previously in place was with a Governor and an appointed Executive Council; this replaced the Executive Council with an elected one from the Parliament of the day and the Governor's near-absolute power was limited to accepting bills passed by Parliamet on advisement from Ministers. The idea is that ministers are accountable to the Cabinet, who in turn are accountable to the Parliament, who in turn are accountable to the citizens. In alternative mechanisms, the Cabinet is accountable either to the monarch or president (an appointed system), or to the citizens directly. The system has broken down over the years so the responsibility checks and balances within the system aren't what they were and most accountability mechanisms are extra-parliamentary (i.e. the media and interest groups). Orderinchaos 17:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

If it took them 60 years after the American Revolution to get sensitive -it doesn't seem to be sensitive at all. At least, it's not an aftereffect of the Revolution. --rmhermen
 * Indeed, it largely reflects the very non-revolutionary way in which the Australian states (formerly colonies) in particular gained self-government :) Orderinchaos 17:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

system and conception
Terms like "responsibility" and "accountability" are subjective notions, whereas a system of government is an objective affair, a thing. So if a government is responsible when it is "accountable", then we are dealing not with a system but with a conception or an ideal of one. --VKokielov 19:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

If I'm wrong and "responsible government" is a name for a system of government, then we must remark that fact; the subjectiveness of "responsible" and "accountable" remains. --VKokielov 19:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Responsible government is indeed the name used in the literature rather than a descriptive - even the authors of many of these texts acknowledge that the responsibility mechanisms within it have failed even while continuing to use the name to differentiate from other systems. I really hope I can improve the article, I've just done a course which dwelt somewhat on this so I have plenty of academic citations (although weighted somewhat towards an Australian view of the topic). Would welcome any assistance and source diversification from Canadian, South African and New Zealand editors. Orderinchaos 17:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The UK
So I take it that the UK itself still does not have "responsible government?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by ColDickPeters (talk • contribs) 16:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Query accuracy of Nova Scotia being the first colony to achieve responsible government
This statement appears inaccurate:

During this century, Nova Scotia was the first colony in British North America and in the British Empire to achieve responsible government in January–February 1848 and become self-governing through the efforts of Joseph Howe.

What is defined by "responsible government"? If a large degree of autonomy, or self-government, is meant, then how does this account for the assemblies in Virginia and Bermuda? Bermuda is acknowledged as having been self-governed since 1620, when the lower house of the Parliament of Bermuda, the House of Assembly of Bermuda, held its first session. Indeed, as parliament was suspended in England during the interregnum, and no other parliament that pre-dates Bermuda's has existed continuously, Bermuda's parliament is the oldest continuous parliament in the Commonwealth (although Bermuda is not a commonwealth state, it is part of the realm of the United Kingdom, which obviously is). Aodhdubh (talk) 09:59, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

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Other countries
The article is very confusing on Responsible government in countries that have not been UK colonies. It seems to me that, under the definition given in the introduction, a lot of counties operating under a parliamentary system also have responsible government. Currently Israel is briefly mentioned, and so is Germany, surely both countries now have Responsible government even though neither uses the Westminster system? Perhaps these countries should be listed at the end of the article instead of rather randomly?

Also: If they are to be listed surely then most European parliamentary governments meet the suggested criteria? Thomasfowl (talk) 18:30, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
 * First, Israel was a British mandate from 1920 to 1948, and it does use a form of Westminster parliamentary democracy. Secondly, the fact that other democracies have similar systems does not mean that it is necessarily an outgrowth of one particular form. Mediatech492 (talk) 18:46, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I just don't see any reason to classify the Israel as Westminster, it follows barely half of the characteristic described on Westminster system and has far more in common with the Western-European parliamentary systems (PR, Coalition governments, non-adversarial ect.). But if Responsible government is only a characteristic of the Westminster system, then surely it does not make sense to mention Germany in the way it is currently done? The article now implies that it has responsible government but also says that this can only be the case in Westminster systems, which it is absolutely not. Thomasfowl (talk) 10:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Responsible government


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Clanging

Clanging (or clang associations) is a symptom of mental disorders, primarily found in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This symptom is also referred to as association chaining, and sometimes, glossomania.

Steuber defines it as "repeating chains of words that are associated semantically or phonetically with no relevant context". This may include compulsive rhyming or alliteration without apparent logical connection between words.

Clanging refers specifically to behavior that is situationally inappropriate. While a poet rhyming is not evidence of mental illness, disorganized speech that impedes the patient's ability to communicate is a disorder in itself, often seen in schizophrenia.

Example
This can be seen by a section of a 1974 transcript of a patient with schizophrenia: "We are all felines. Siamese cat balls. They stand out. I had a cat, a manx, still around here somewhere. You'll know him when you see him. His name is GI Joe; he's black and white. I have a goldfish too, like a clown. Happy Halloween down. Down."

The speaker makes semantic chain associations on the topic of cats, to the colour of her cat, which (either the topic of colours/patterns, or the topic of pets) leads her to jump from her goldfish to the associated clown, a point she reaches via the word clownfish. The patient also exhibits a pattern of rhyming and associative clanging: clown to Halloween (presumably an associative clang) to down.

This example highlights how the speaker was distracted by the sound or meaning of her own words, and led herself off the topic, sentence by sentence. In essence, it is a form of derailment driven by self-monitoring.

As a type of Formal Thought Disorder
Formal Thought Disorders (FTD) are a syndrome with several different symptoms, leading to thought, language and communication problems, being a core feature in schizophrenia.

Thought disorders are measured using the Thought, Language and Communication Scale (TLC) developed by Andreasen in 1986. This measures tendencies of 18 subtypes of formal thought disorder (with strong inter-coder reliability) including clanging as a type of FTD.

The TLC scale for FTD sub-types, remains the standard and most inclusive - so clanging is officially recognised as a type of FTD.

There has been much debate about whether FTDs are a symptom of thought or language, yet the basis for FTD analysis is the verbal behaviour of the patients. As a result, whether abnormal speech among individuals with schizophrenia is a result of abnormal neurology, abnormal thought or linguistic processes - researchers agree that people with schizophrenia do have abnormal language.

Occurrences in mental disorders
Clanging is associated with the irregular thinking apparent in psychotic mental illnesses (e.g. mania and schizophrenia).

In schizophrenia
Formal Thought Disorders are one of five characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia according to the DSM-IV-TR. FTD symptoms such as Glossomania are correlated to schizophrenia spectrum disorders and to a family history of schizophrenia. In an analysis of speech in patients with schizophrenia compared to controls, Steuber found that glossomania (association chaining) is a characteristic of speech in schizophrenic patients - despite no significant difference between normal controls and individuals with schizophrenia.

In mania/bipolar disorder
Gustav Aschaffenburg found that manic individuals generated these "clang-associations" roughly 10–50 times more than non-manic individuals. Aschaffenburg also found that the frequency of these associations increased for all individuals as they became more fatigued.

Andreasen found that when comparing Formal Thought Disorder symptoms between people with schizophrenia and people with Mania, that there was greater reported incidence of clang associations of people with mania.

In depression
Research investigated by Steuber, found there was no significant difference of glossomania occurrences for patients with schizophrenia compared to patients with depression.

Disagreements in the literature
Being a niche area of symptoms of mental disorders, there have been disagreements in the definitions of clanging, and how it may nor may not fall under the subset of Formal Thought Disorder symptoms in schizophrenia. Steuber argues that although it is a FTD, that it should come under the umbrella of the subtype 'distractibility'.

Moreover, due to limited research there have been discrepancies in the definition of clanging used: an alternative definition for clanging is: "word selection based on phonemic relatedness, rather than semantic meaning; frequently manifest as rhyming". Here it is evident that the semantic association chains are not included as part of the definition seen at the start – even though it is the more widely used definition of clanging and glossomania (where the terms are used interchangeably).

Biological factors
Understanding of such language impairments and FTDs take a biological approach.

Candidate genes for such vulnerability of schizophrenia are the FOXP2 (which is linked to a familial language disorder and autism) and dysbindin 1 genes43,44. This distal explanation not only does not explain clanging specifically, but also fails to include other environmental influences on the development of schizophrenia. Moreover, if a person does develop schizophrenia, it does not guarantee they have the symptom of clanging.

Sass and Pienkos 2013 suggest that a more nuanced understanding of structural (neural changes) patterns that occur in a sufferer's brain may to understand the disorder firstly. However, more research is required into not only understanding the causes of such symptoms, but how it works.

title: Clanging


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Mutual assured destruction

Mutual assured destruction (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. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.

The result is nuclear peace, in which the presence of nuclear weapons decreases the risk of crisis escalation, since parties will seek to avoid situations that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Proponents of nuclear peace theory therefore believe that controlled nuclear proliferation may be beneficial for global stability. Critics argue that nuclear proliferation increases the chance of nuclear war through either deliberate or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, as well as the likelihood of nuclear material falling into the hands of violent non-state actors.

The term "mutual assured destruction", commonly abbreviated "MAD", was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962. Brennan conceived the acronym cynically, spelling out the English word "mad" to argue that holding weapons capable of destroying society was irrational.

Theory
Under MAD, each side has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the other side. Either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate with equal or greater force. The expected result is an immediate, irreversible escalation of hostilities resulting in both combatants' mutual, total, and assured destruction. The doctrine requires that neither side construct shelters on a massive scale. If one side constructed a similar system of shelters, it would violate the MAD doctrine and destabilize the situation, because it would have less to fear from a second strike. The same principle is invoked against missile defense.

The doctrine further assumes that neither side will dare to launch a first strike because the other side would launch on warning (also called fail-deadly) or with surviving forces (a second strike), resulting in unacceptable losses for both parties. The payoff of the MAD doctrine was and still is expected to be a tense but stable global peace. However, many have argued that mutually assured destruction is unable to deter conventional war that could later escalate. Emerging domains of cyber-espionage, proxy-state conflict, and high-speed missiles threaten to circumvent MAD as a deterrent strategy.

The primary application of this doctrine started during the Cold War (1940s to 1991), in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world. MAD was also responsible for the arms race, as both nations struggled to keep nuclear parity, or at least retain second-strike capability. Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the MAD doctrine continues to be applied.

Proponents of MAD as part of the US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state. Since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use. In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to adequately defend itself against the other's nuclear missiles. This led both to the hardening and diversification of nuclear delivery systems (such as nuclear missile silos, ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear bombers kept at fail-safe points) and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

This MAD scenario is often referred to as rational nuclear deterrence.

Theory of mutually assured destruction

When the possibility of nuclear warfare between the United States and Soviet Union started to become a reality, theorists began to think that mutual assured destruction would be sufficient to deter the other side from launching a nuclear weapon. Kenneth Waltz, an American political scientist, believed that nuclear forces were in fact useful, but even more useful in the fact that they deterred other nuclear threats from using them, based on mutually assured destruction. The theory of mutually assured destruction being a safe way to deter continued even farther with the thought that nuclear weapons intended on being used for the winning of a war, were impractical, and even considered too dangerous and risky. Even with the Cold War ending in 1991, deterrence from mutually assured destruction is still said to be the safest course to avoid nuclear warfare.

A study published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 2009 quantitatively evaluated the nuclear peace hypothesis and found support for the existence of the stability-instability paradox. The study determined that nuclear weapons promote strategic stability and prevent large-scale wars but simultaneously allow for more low intensity conflicts. If a nuclear monopoly exists between two states, and one state has nuclear weapons and its opponent does not, there is a greater chance of war. In contrast, if there is mutual nuclear weapon ownership with both states possessing nuclear weapons, the odds of war drop precipitously.

Pre-1945
The concept of MAD had been discussed in the literature for nearly a century before the invention of nuclear weapons. One of the earliest references comes from the English author Wilkie Collins, writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870: "I begin to believe in only one civilizing influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace." The concept was also described in 1863 by Jules Verne in his novel Paris in the Twentieth Century, though it was not published until 1994. The book is set in 1960 and describes "the engines of war", which have become so efficient that war is inconceivable and all countries are at a perpetual stalemate.

MAD has been invoked by more than one weapons inventor. For example, Richard Jordan Gatling patented his namesake Gatling gun in 1862 with the partial intention of illustrating the futility of war. Likewise, after his 1867 invention of dynamite, Alfred Nobel stated that "the day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops." In 1937, Nikola Tesla published The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, a treatise concerning charged particle beam weapons. Tesla described his device as a "superweapon that would put an end to all war."

The March 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum, the earliest technical exposition of a practical nuclear weapon, anticipated deterrence as the principal means of combating an enemy with nuclear weapons.

Early Cold War
In August 1945, the United States became the first nuclear power after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Four years later, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its own nuclear device. At the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use nuclear devices against each other. However, with the development of aircraft like the American Convair B-36 and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-95, both sides were gaining a greater ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the interior of the opposing country. The official policy of the United States became one of "Instant Retaliation", as coined by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, which called for massive atomic attack against the Soviet Union if they were to invade Europe, regardless of whether it was a conventional or a nuclear attack.

By the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, both the United States and the Soviet Union had developed the capability of launching a nuclear-tipped missile from a submerged submarine, which completed the "third leg" of the nuclear triad weapons strategy necessary to fully implement the MAD doctrine. Having a three-branched nuclear capability eliminated the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack; this, in turn, ensured the credible threat of a devastating retaliatory strike against the aggressor, increasing a nation's nuclear deterrence.

Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko argue that Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet leader 1953 to 1964) decided that policies that facilitated nuclear war were too dangerous to the Soviet Union. His approach did not greatly change his foreign policy or military doctrine but is apparent in his determination to choose options that minimized the risk of war.

Strategic Air Command
Beginning in 1955, the United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) kept one-third of its bombers on alert, with crews ready to take off within fifteen minutes and fly to designated targets inside the Soviet Union and destroy them with nuclear bombs in the event of a Soviet first-strike attack on the United States. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy increased funding for this program and raised the commitment to 50 percent of SAC aircraft.

During periods of increased tension in the early 1960s, SAC kept part of its B-52 fleet airborne at all times, to allow an extremely fast retaliatory strike against the Soviet Union in the event of a surprise attack on the United States. This program continued until 1969. Between 1954 and 1992, bomber wings had approximately one-third to one-half of their assigned aircraft on quick reaction ground alert and were able to take off within a few minutes. SAC also maintained the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP, pronounced "kneecap"), also known as "Looking Glass", which consisted of several EC-135s, one of which was airborne at all times from 1961 through 1990. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the bombers were dispersed to several different airfields, and sixty-five B-52s were airborne at all times.

During the height of the tensions between the US and the USSR in the 1960s, two popular films were made dealing with what could go terribly wrong with the policy of keeping nuclear-bomb-carrying airplanes at the ready: Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Fail Safe (1964).

Retaliation capability (second strike)
The strategy of MAD was fully declared in the early 1960s, primarily by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In McNamara's formulation, there was the very real danger that a nation with nuclear weapons could attempt to eliminate another nation's retaliatory forces with a surprise, devastating first strike and theoretically "win" a nuclear war relatively unharmed. The true second-strike capability could be achieved only when a nation had a guaranteed ability to fully retaliate after a first-strike attack.

The United States had achieved an early form of second-strike capability by fielding continual patrols of strategic nuclear bombers, with a large number of planes always in the air, on their way to or from fail-safe points close to the borders of the Soviet Union. This meant the United States could still retaliate, even after a devastating first-strike attack. The tactic was expensive and problematic because of the high cost of keeping enough planes in the air at all times and the possibility they would be shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft missiles before reaching their targets. In addition, as the idea of a missile gap existing between the US and the Soviet Union developed, there was increasing priority being given to ICBMs over bombers.

It was only with the advent of ballistic missile submarines, starting with the  George Washington class in 1959, that a genuine survivable nuclear force became possible and a retaliatory second strike capability guaranteed.

The deployment of fleets of ballistic missile submarines established a guaranteed second-strike capability because of their stealth and by the number fielded by each Cold War adversary—it was highly unlikely that all of them could be targeted and preemptively destroyed (in contrast to, for example, a missile silo with a fixed location that could be targeted during a first strike). Given their long-range, high survivability and ability to carry many medium- and long-range nuclear missiles, submarines were credible and effective means for full-scale retaliation even after a massive first strike.

This deterrence strategy and the program have continued into the 21st century, with nuclear submarines carrying Trident II ballistic missiles as one leg of the US strategic nuclear deterrent and as the sole deterrent of the United Kingdom. The other elements of the US deterrent are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on alert in the continental United States, and nuclear-capable bombers. Ballistic missile submarines are also operated by the navies of China, France, India, and Russia.

The US Department of Defense anticipates a continued need for a sea-based strategic nuclear force. The first of the current Ohio-class SSBNs are expected to be retired by 2029, meaning that a replacement platform must already be seaworthy by that time. A replacement may cost over $4 billion per unit compared to the USS Ohio's $2 billion. The USN's follow-on class of SSBN will be the Columbia class, which began construction in 2021 and enter service in 2031.

ABMs threaten MAD
In the 1960s both the Soviet Union (A-35 anti-ballistic missile system) and the United States (LIM-49 Nike Zeus) developed anti-ballistic missile systems. Had such systems been able to effectively defend against a retaliatory second strike, MAD would have been undermined. However, multiple scientific studies showed technological and logistical problems in these systems, including the inability to distinguish between real and decoy weapons.

MIRVs as counter against ABM
The multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) was another weapons system designed specifically to aid with the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine. With a MIRV payload, one ICBM could hold many separate warheads. MIRVs were first created by the United States in order to counterbalance the Soviet A-35 anti-ballistic missile systems around Moscow. Since each defensive missile could be counted on to destroy only one offensive missile, making each offensive missile have, for example, three warheads (as with early MIRV systems) meant that three times as many defensive missiles were needed for each offensive missile. This made defending against missile attacks more costly and difficult. One of the largest US MIRVed missiles, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, could hold up to 10 warheads, each with a yield of around 300 ktonTNT—all together, an explosive payload equivalent to 230 Hiroshima-type bombs. The multiple warheads made defense untenable with the available technology, leaving the threat of retaliatory attack as the only viable defensive option. MIRVed land-based ICBMs tend to put a premium on striking first. The START II agreement was proposed to ban this type of weapon, but never entered into force.

In the event of a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe, NATO planned to use tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union countered this threat by issuing a statement that any use of nuclear weapons (tactical or otherwise) against Soviet forces would be grounds for a full-scale Soviet retaliatory strike (massive retaliation). Thus it was generally assumed that any combat in Europe would end with apocalyptic conclusions.

Land-based MIRVed ICBMs threaten MAD
MIRVed land-based ICBMs are generally considered suitable for a first strike (inherently counterforce) or a counterforce second strike, due to:
 * 1) Their high accuracy (low circular error probable), compared to submarine-launched ballistic missiles which used to be less accurate, and more prone to defects;
 * 2) Their fast response time, compared to bombers which are considered too slow;
 * 3) Their ability to carry multiple MIRV warheads at once, useful for destroying a whole missile field or several cities with one missile.

Unlike a decapitation strike or a countervalue strike, a counterforce strike might result in a potentially more constrained retaliation. Though the Minuteman III of the mid-1960s was MIRVed with three warheads, heavily MIRVed vehicles threatened to upset the balance; these included the SS-18 Satan which was deployed in 1976, and was considered to threaten Minuteman III silos, which led some neoconservatives to conclude a Soviet first strike was being prepared for. This led to the development of the aforementioned Pershing II, the Trident I and Trident II, as well as the MX missile, and the B-1 Lancer.

MIRVed land-based ICBMs are considered destabilizing because they tend to put a premium on striking first. When a missile is MIRVed, it is able to carry many warheads (up to eight in existing US missiles, limited by New START, though Trident II is capable of carrying up to 12 ) and deliver them to separate targets. If it is assumed that each side has 100 missiles, with five warheads each, and further that each side has a 95 percent chance of neutralizing the opponent's missiles in their silos by firing two warheads at each silo, then the attacking side can reduce the enemy ICBM force from 100 missiles to about five by firing 40 missiles with 200 warheads, and keeping the rest of 60 missiles in reserve. As such, this type of weapon was intended to be banned under the START II agreement; however, the START II agreement was never brought into force, and neither Russia nor the United States ratified the agreement.

Late Cold War
The original US MAD doctrine was modified on July 25, 1980, with US President Jimmy Carter's adoption of countervailing strategy with Presidential Directive 59. According to its architect, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, "countervailing strategy" stressed that the planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb Soviet population centers and cities primarily, but first to kill the Soviet leadership, then attack military targets, in the hope of a Soviet surrender before total destruction of the Soviet Union (and the United States). This modified version of MAD was seen as a winnable nuclear war, while still maintaining the possibility of assured destruction for at least one party. This policy was further developed by the Reagan administration with the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, nicknamed "Star Wars"), the goal of which was to develop space-based technology to destroy Soviet missiles before they reached the United States.

SDI was criticized by both the Soviets and many of America's allies (including Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher) because, were it ever operational and effective, it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD. If the United States had a guarantee against Soviet nuclear attacks, its critics argued, it would have first-strike capability, which would have been a politically and militarily destabilizing position. Critics further argued that it could trigger a new arms race, this time to develop countermeasures for SDI. Despite its promise of nuclear safety, SDI was described by many of its critics (including Soviet nuclear physicist and later peace activist Andrei Sakharov) as being even more dangerous than MAD because of these political implications. Supporters also argued that SDI could trigger a new arms race, forcing the USSR to spend an increasing proportion of GDP on defense—something which has been claimed to have been an indirect cause of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev himself in 1983 announced that “the continuation of the S.D.I. program will sweep the world into a new stage of the arms race and would destabilize the strategic situation.”

Proponents of ballistic missile defense (BMD) argue that MAD is exceptionally dangerous in that it essentially offers a single course of action in the event of a nuclear attack: full retaliatory response. The fact that nuclear proliferation has led to an increase in the number of nations in the "nuclear club", including nations of questionable stability (e.g. North Korea), and that a nuclear nation might be hijacked by a despot or other person or persons who might use nuclear weapons without a sane regard for the consequences, presents a strong case for proponents of BMD who seek a policy which both protect against attack, but also does not require an escalation into what might become global nuclear war. Russia continues to have a strong public distaste for Western BMD initiatives, presumably because proprietary operative BMD systems could exceed their technical and financial resources and therefore degrade their larger military standing and sense of security in a post-MAD environment. Russian refusal to accept invitations to participate in NATO BMD may be indicative of the lack of an alternative to MAD in current Russian war-fighting strategy due to the dilapidation of conventional forces after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

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 fewer 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.

Post-Cold War

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation emerged as a sovereign entity encompassing most of the territory of the former USSR. Relations between the United States and Russia were, at least for a time, less tense than they had been with the Soviet Union.

While MAD has become less applicable for the US and Russia, it has been argued as a factor behind Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Similarly, diplomats have warned that Japan may be pressured to nuclearize by the presence of North Korean nuclear weapons. The ability to launch a nuclear attack against an enemy city is a relevant deterrent strategy for these powers.

The administration of US President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June 2002, claiming that the limited national missile defense system which they proposed to build was designed only to prevent nuclear blackmail by a state with limited nuclear capability and was not planned to alter the nuclear posture between Russia and the United States.

While relations have improved and an intentional nuclear exchange is more unlikely, the decay in Russian nuclear capability in the post–Cold War era may have had an effect on the continued viability of the MAD doctrine. A 2006 article by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press stated that the United States could carry out a nuclear first strike on Russia and would "have a good chance of destroying every Russian bomber base, submarine, and ICBM." This was attributed to reductions in Russian nuclear stockpiles and the increasing inefficiency and age of that which remains. Lieber and Press argued that the MAD era is coming to an end and that the United States is on the cusp of global nuclear primacy.

However, in a follow-up article in the same publication, others criticized the analysis, including Peter Flory, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, who began by writing "The essay by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press contains so many errors, on a topic of such gravity, that a Department of Defense response is required to correct the record." Regarding reductions in Russian stockpiles, another response stated that "a similarly one-sided examination of [reductions in] U.S. forces would have painted a similarly dire portrait".

A situation in which the United States might actually be expected to carry out a "successful" attack is perceived as a disadvantage for both countries. The strategic balance between the United States and Russia is becoming less stable, and the objective, the technical possibility of a first strike by the United States is increasing. At a time of crisis, this instability could lead to an accidental nuclear war. For example, if Russia feared a US nuclear attack, Moscow might make rash moves (such as putting its forces on alert) that would provoke a US preemptive strike.

An outline of current US nuclear strategy toward both Russia and other nations was published as the document "Essentials of Post–Cold War Deterrence" in 1995.

In November 2020, the US successfully destroyed a dummy ICBM outside the atmosphere with another missile. Bloomberg Opinion writes that this defense ability "ends the era of nuclear stability".

India and Pakistan
MAD does not entirely apply to all nuclear-armed rivals. India and Pakistan are an example of this; because of the 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.

Official policy
Whether MAD was the officially accepted doctrine of the United States military during the Cold War is largely a matter of interpretation. The United States Air Force, for example, has retrospectively contended that it never advocated MAD as a sole strategy, and that this form of deterrence was seen as one of numerous options in US nuclear policy. Former officers have emphasized that they never felt as limited by the logic of MAD (and were prepared to use nuclear weapons in smaller-scale situations than "assured destruction" allowed), and did not deliberately target civilian cities (though they acknowledge that the result of a "purely military" attack would certainly devastate the cities as well). However, according to a declassified 1959 Strategic Air Command study, US nuclear weapons plans specifically targeted the populations of Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw for systematic destruction. MAD was implied in several US policies and used in the political rhetoric of leaders in both the United States and the USSR during many periods of the Cold War:

"To continue to deter in an era of strategic nuclear equivalence, it is necessary to have nuclear (as well as conventional) forces such that in considering aggression against our interests any adversary would recognize that no plausible outcome would represent a victory or any plausible definition of victory. To this end and so as to preserve the possibility of bargaining effectively to terminate the war on acceptable terms that are as favorable as practical, if deterrence fails initially, we must be capable of fighting successfully so that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs that are unacceptable, or in any event greater than his gains, from having initiated an attack."

The doctrine of MAD was officially at odds with that of the USSR, which had, contrary to MAD, insisted survival was possible. The Soviets believed they could win not only a strategic nuclear war, which they planned to absorb with their extensive civil defense planning, but also the conventional war that they predicted would follow after their strategic nuclear arsenal had been depleted. Official Soviet policy, though, may have had internal critics towards the end of the Cold War, including some in the USSR's own leadership:

"Nuclear use would be catastrophic."Other evidence of this comes from the Soviet minister of defense, Dmitriy Ustinov, who wrote that "A clear appreciation by the Soviet leadership of what a war under contemporary conditions would mean for mankind determines the active position of the USSR." The Soviet doctrine, although being seen as primarily offensive by Western analysts, fully rejected the possibility of a "limited" nuclear war by 1975.

Criticism
Deterrence theory has been criticized by numerous scholars for various reasons. A prominent strain of criticism argues that rational deterrence theory is contradicted by frequent deterrence failures, which may be attributed to misperceptions. Critics have also argued that leaders do not behave in ways that are consistent with the predictions of nuclear deterrence theory. For example, it has been argued that it is inconsistent with the logic of rational deterrence theory that states continue to build nuclear arsenals once they have reached the second-strike threshold.

Additionally, many scholars have advanced philosophical objections against the principles of deterrence theory on purely ethical grounds. Included in this group is Robert L. Holmes who observes that mankind's reliance upon a system of preventing war which is based exclusively upon the threat of waging war is inherently irrational and must be considered immoral according to fundamental deontological principles. In addition, he questions whether it can be conclusively demonstrated that such a system has in fact served to prevent warfare in the past and may actually serve to increase the probability of waging war in the future due to its reliance upon the continuous development of new generations of technologically advanced nuclear weapons.

Second-strike capability

 * A first strike must not be capable of preventing a retaliatory second strike or else mutual destruction is not assured. In this case, a state would have nothing to lose with a first strike or might try to preempt the development of an opponent's second-strike capability with a first strike. To avoid this, countries may design their nuclear forces to make decapitation strike almost impossible, by dispersing launchers over wide areas and using a combination of sea-based, air-based, underground, and mobile land-based launchers.
 * Another method of ensuring second strike capability is through the use of dead man's switch or "fail-deadly:" in the absence of ongoing action from a functional command structure—such as would occur after suffering a successful decapitation strike—an automatic system defaults to launching a nuclear strike upon some target. A particular example is the Soviet (now Russian) Dead Hand system, which is a semi-automatic "version of Dr. Strangelove's Doomsday Machine" which, once activated, 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.

Perfect detection

 * No false positives (errors) in the equipment and/or procedures that must identify a launch by the other side. The implication of this is that an accident could lead to a full nuclear exchange. During the Cold War there were several instances of false positives, as in the case of Stanislav Petrov.
 * Perfect attribution. If there is a launch from the Sino-Russian border, it could be difficult to distinguish which nation is responsible—both Russia and China have the capability—and, hence, against which nation retaliation should occur. A launch from a nuclear-armed submarine could also be difficult to attribute.

Perfect rationality

 * No rogue commanders will have the ability to corrupt the launch decision process. Such an incident very nearly occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis when an argument broke out aboard a nuclear-armed submarine cut off from radio communication. The second-in-command, Vasili Arkhipov, refused to launch despite an order from Captain Savitsky to do so.
 * All leaders with launch capability seem to care about the survival of their citizens. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that any strategy will not "cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of Hitler when he found himself in his final dugout."

Inability to defend

 * No fallout shelter networks of sufficient capacity to protect large segments of the population and/or industry.
 * No development of anti-missile technology or deployment of remedial protective gear.

Inherent instability
Another reason is that deterrence has an inherent instability. As Kenneth Boulding said: "If deterrence were really stable... it would cease to deter." If decision-makers were perfectly rational, they would never order the largescale use of nuclear weapons, and the credibility of the nuclear threat would be low.

However, that apparent perfect rationality criticism is countered and so is consistent with current deterrence policy. In Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, the authors detail an explicit advocation of ambiguity regarding "what is permitted" for other nations and its endorsement of "irrationality" or, more precisely, the perception thereof as an important tool in deterrence and foreign policy. The document claims that the capacity of the United States, in exercising deterrence, would be hurt by portraying US leaders as fully rational and cool-headed:

"The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts in the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona we project to all adversaries."

Terrorism

 * The threat of foreign and domestic nuclear terrorism has been a criticism of MAD as a defensive strategy. Deterrent strategies are ineffective against those who attack without regard for their life. 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.

However Robert Gallucci, the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, argues that although traditional deterrence is not an effective approach toward terrorist groups bent on causing a nuclear catastrophe, "the United States should instead consider a policy of expanded deterrence, which focuses not solely on the would-be nuclear terrorists but on those states that may deliberately transfer or inadvertently lead nuclear weapons and materials to them. By threatening retaliation against those states, the United States may be able to deter that which it cannot physically prevent."

Graham Allison makes a similar case and argues that the key to expanded deterrence is coming up with ways of tracing nuclear material to the country that forged the fissile material: "After a nuclear bomb detonates, nuclear forensic cops would collect debris samples and send them to a laboratory for radiological analysis. By identifying unique attributes of the fissile material, including its impurities and contaminants, one could trace the path back to its origin." The process is analogous to identifying a criminal by fingerprints: "The goal would be twofold: first, to deter leaders of nuclear states from selling weapons to terrorists by holding them accountable for any use of their own weapons; second, to give leaders every incentive to tightly secure their nuclear weapons and materials."

Space weapons

 * Strategic analysts have criticized the doctrine of MAD for its inability to respond to the proliferation of space weaponry. First, military space systems have unequal dependence across countries. This means that less-dependent countries may find it beneficial to attack a more-dependent country's space weapons, which complicates deterrence. This is especially true for countries like North Korea which have extensive ballistic missiles that could strike space-based systems. Even across countries with similar dependence, anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) have the ability to remove the command and control of nuclear weapons. This encourages crisis-instability and pre-emptive nuclear-disabling strikes. Third, there is a risk of asymmetrical challengers.  Countries that fall behind in space weapon advancement may turn to using chemical or biological weapons. This may heighten the risk of escalation, bypassing any deterrent effects of nuclear weapons.

Entanglements

 * Cold-war bipolarity no longer is applicable to the global power balance. The complex modern alliance system makes allies and enemies tied to one another. Thus, action by one country to deter another could threaten the safety of a third country. “Security trilemmas” could increase tension during mundane acts of cooperation, complicating MAD.

Emerging hypersonic weapons

 * Hypersonic ballistic or cruise missiles threaten the retaliatory backbone of mutual assured destruction. The high precision and speed of these weapons may allow for the development of "decapitory" strikes that remove the ability of another nation to have a nuclear response. In addition, the secretive nature of these weapons' development can make deterrence more asymmetrical.

Failure to retaliate

 * If it was known that a country's leader would not resort to nuclear retaliation, adversaries may be emboldened. Edward Teller, a member of the Manhattan Project, echoed these concerns as early as 1985 when he said that "The MAD policy as a deterrent is totally ineffective if it becomes known that in case of attack, we would not retaliate against the aggressor."

title: Mutual assured destruction


text:
Nuclear strategy

Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.

As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addition to the actual use of nuclear weapons whether in the battlefield or strategically, a large part of nuclear strategy involves their use as a bargaining tool.

Some of the issues considered within nuclear strategy include:

 * Conditions which serve a nation's interest to develop nuclear weapons
 * Types of nuclear weapons to be developed
 * How and when weapons are to be used

Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of military strategy. The immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use, in seeking victory in a traditional military sense, impossible.

Perhaps counterintuitively, an important focus of nuclear strategy has been determining how to prevent and deter their use, a crucial part of mutually assured destruction.

In the context of nuclear proliferation and maintaining the balance of power, states also seek to prevent other states from acquiring nuclear weapons as part of nuclear strategy.

Nuclear deterrent composition
The doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) assumes that a nuclear deterrent force must be credible and survivable. That is, each deterrent force must survive a first strike with sufficient capability to effectively destroy the other country in a second strike. Therefore, a first strike would be suicidal for the launching country.

In the late 1940s and 1950s as the Cold War developed, the United States and Soviet Union pursued multiple delivery methods and platforms to deliver nuclear weapons. Three types of platforms proved most successful and are collectively called a "nuclear triad". These are air-delivered weapons (bombs or missiles), ballistic missile submarines (usually nuclear-powered and called SSBNs), and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), usually deployed in land-based hardened missile silos or on vehicles.

Although not considered part of the deterrent forces, all of the nuclear powers deployed large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons in the Cold War. These could be delivered by virtually all platforms capable of delivering large conventional weapons.

During the 1970s there was growing concern that the combined conventional forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact could overwhelm the forces of NATO. It seemed unthinkable to respond to a Soviet/Warsaw Pact incursion into Western Europe with strategic nuclear weapons, inviting a catastrophic exchange. Thus, technologies were developed to greatly reduce collateral damage while being effective against advancing conventional military forces. Some of these were low-yield neutron bombs, which were lethal to tank crews, especially with tanks massed in tight formation, while producing relatively little blast, thermal radiation, or radioactive fallout. Other technologies were so-called "suppressed radiation devices," which produced mostly blast with little radioactivity, making them much like conventional explosives, but with much more energy.

Early texts

 * Brodie, Bernard. The Absolute Weapon. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1946.
 * Brodie, Bernard. Strategy in the Missile Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.
 * Dunn, Lewis A. Deterrence Today – Roles, Challenges, and Responses Paris: IFRI Proliferation Papers n° 19, 2007.
 * Kahn, Herman. On Thermonuclear War. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961.
 * Kissinger, Henry A. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. New York: Harper, 1957.
 * Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.
 * Wohlstetter, Albert. "The Delicate Balance of Terror." Foreign Affairs 37, 211 (1958): 211–233.

Secondary literature

 * Baylis, John, and John Garnett. Makers of Nuclear Strategy. London: Pinter, 1991. ISBN 1-85567-025-9.
 * Buzan, Barry, and Herring, Eric. "The Arms Dynamic in World Politics". London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1-55587-596-3.
 * Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. ISBN 0-333-97239-2.
 * Heuser, Beatrice. NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (London: Macmillan, hardback 1997, paperback 1999), 256p., ISBN 0-333-67365-4
 * Heuser, Beatrice. Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Belief Systems in Britain, France and the FRG (London: Macmillan, July 1998), 277p., Index, Tables. ISBN 0-333-69389-2
 * Heuser, Beatrice. "Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies", Contemporary European History Vol. 7 Part 3 (November 1998), pp. 311–328.
 * Heuser, Beatrice. "Warsaw Pact Military Doctrines in the 70s and 80s: Findings in the East German Archives", Comparative Strategy Vol. 12 No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1993), pp. 437–457.
 * Kaplan, Fred M. The Wizards of Armageddon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983. ISBN 0-671-42444-0.
 * Rai Chowdhuri, Satyabrata.  Nuclear Politics: Towards A Safer World, Ilford: New Dawn Press, 2004.
 * Rosenberg, David. "The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960." International Security 7, 4 (Spring, 1983): 3–71.
 * Schelling, Thomas C. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
 * Smoke, Richard. National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw–Hill, 1993. ISBN 0-07-059352-3.

title: Nuclear strategy


text:
Cloaking device

A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Fictional cloaking devices have been used as plot devices in various media for many years.

Developments in scientific research show that real-world cloaking devices can obscure objects from at least one wavelength of EM emissions. Scientists already use artificial materials called metamaterials to bend light around an object. However, over the entire spectrum, a cloaked object scatters more than an uncloaked object.

Fictional origins
Cloaks with magical powers of invisibility appear from the earliest days of story-telling. Since the advent of modern Science fiction, many variations on the theme with proposed basis in reality have been imagined. Star Trek screenwriter Paul Schneider, inspired in part by the 1958 film Run Silent, Run Deep, and in part by The Enemy Below, which had been released in 1957, imagined cloaking as a space-travel analog of a submarine submerging, and employed it in the 1966 Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror", in which he introduced the Romulan species, whose space vessels employ cloaking devices extensively. (He likewise predicted, in the same episode, that invisibility, "selective bending of light" as described above, would have an enormous power requirement.) Another Star Trek screenwriter, D.C. Fontana, coined the term "cloaking device" for the 1968 episode "The Enterprise Incident", which also featured Romulans.

Star Trek placed a limit on use of this device: a space vessel cannot fire weapons, employ defensive shields, or operate transporters while cloaked; thus it must "decloak" to fire—essentially like a submarine needing to "surface" in order to launch torpedoes.

Writers and game designers have since incorporated cloaking devices into many other science-fiction narratives, including Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Stargate.

Scientific experimentation
An operational, non-fictional cloaking device might be an extension of the basic technologies used by stealth aircraft, such as radar-absorbing dark paint, optical camouflage, cooling the outer surface to minimize electromagnetic emissions (usually infrared), or other techniques to minimize other EM emissions, and to minimize particle emissions from the object. The use of certain devices to jam and confuse remote sensing devices would greatly aid in this process, but is more properly referred to as "active camouflage". Alternatively, metamaterials provide the theoretical possibility of making electromagnetic radiation pass freely around the 'cloaked' object.

Metamaterial research
Optical metamaterials have featured in several proposals for invisibility schemes. "Metamaterials" refers to materials that owe their refractive properties to the way they are structured, rather than the substances that compose them. Using transformation optics it is possible to design the optical parameters of a "cloak" so that it guides light around some region, rendering it invisible over a certain band of wavelengths.

These spatially varying optical parameters do not correspond to any natural material, but may be implemented using metamaterials. There are several theories of cloaking, giving rise to different types of invisibility. In 2014, scientists demonstrated good cloaking performance in murky water, demonstrating that an object shrouded in fog can disappear completely when appropriately coated with metamaterial. This is due to the random scattering of light, such as that which occurs in clouds, fog, milk, frosted glass, etc., combined with the properties of the metamaterial coating. When light is diffused, a thin coat of metamaterial around an object can make it essentially invisible under a range of lighting conditions.

Active camouflage
Active camouflage (or adaptive camouflage) is a group of camouflage technologies which would allow an object (usually military in nature) to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of changing color or luminosity. Active camouflage can be seen as having the potential to become the perfection of the art of camouflaging things from visual detection.

Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage in which one wears a fabric which has an image of the scene directly behind the wearer projected onto it, so that the wearer appears invisible. The drawback to this system is that, when the cloaked wearer moves, a visible distortion is often generated as the 'fabric' catches up with the object's motion. The concept exists for now only in theory and in proof-of-concept prototypes, although many experts consider it technically feasible.

It has been reported that the British Army has tested an invisible tank.

Plasma stealth
Plasma at certain density ranges absorbs certain bandwidths of broadband waves, potentially rendering an object invisible. However, generating plasma in air is too expensive and a feasible alternative is generating plasma between thin membranes instead. The Defense Technical Information Center is also following up research on plasma reducing RCS technologies. A plasma cloaking device was patented in 1991.

Metascreen
A prototype Metascreen is a claimed cloaking device, which is just few micrometers thick and to a limited extent can hide 3D objects from microwaves in their natural environment, in their natural positions, in all directions, and from all of the observer's positions. It was prepared at the University of Texas, Austin by Professor Andrea Alù.

The metascreen consisted of a 66 micrometre thick polycarbonate film supporting an arrangement of 20 micrometer thick copper strips that resembled a fishing net. In the experiment, when the metascreen was hit by 3.6 GHz microwaves, it re-radiated microwaves of the same frequency that were out of phase, thus cancelling out reflections from the object being hidden. The device only cancelled out the scattering of microwaves in the first order. The same researchers published a paper on "plasmonic cloaking" the previous year.

Howell/Choi cloaking device
University of Rochester physics professor John Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi have announced a scalable cloaking device which uses common optical lenses to achieve visible light cloaking on the macroscopic scale, known as the "Rochester Cloak". The device consists of a series of four lenses which direct light rays around objects which would otherwise occlude the optical pathway.

Cloaking in mechanics
The concepts of cloaking are not limited to optics but can also be transferred to other fields of physics. For example, it was possible to cloak acoustics for certain frequencies as well as touching in mechanics. This renders an object "invisible" to sound or even hides it from touching.

title: Cloaking device


text: Talk:Stock exchange

title: Talk:Stock exchange


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Analytic language

An analytic language is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers, using affixes very rarely. This is opposed to synthetic languages, which synthesize many concepts into a single word, using affixes regularly. Syntactic roles are assigned to words primarily by word order. For example, by changing the individual words in the Latin phrase fēl-is pisc-em cēpit "the cat caught the fish" to fēl-em pisc-is cēpit "the fish caught the cat", the fish becomes the subject, while the cat becomes the object. This transformation is not possible in an analytic language without altering the word order. Typically, analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio, especially with respect to inflectional morphemes. No natural language, however, is purely analytic or purely synthetic.

Background
The term analytic is commonly used in a relative rather than an absolute sense. The most prominent and widely used Indo-European analytic language is Modern English, which has lost much of the inflectional morphology that it inherited from Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic and Old English over the centuries and has not gained any new inflectional morphemes in the meantime, which makes it more analytic than most other Indo-European languages.

For example, Proto-Indo-European had much more complex grammatical conjugation, grammatical genders, dual number and inflections for eight or nine cases in its nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, participles, postpositions and determiners, Standard English has lost nearly all of them (except for three modified cases for pronouns) along with genders and dual number and simplified its conjugation.

Latin, Spanish, German, Greek, and Russian and a majority of the Slavic languages, characterized by free word order, are synthetic languages. Nouns in Russian inflect for at least six cases, most of which descended from Proto-Indo-European cases, whose functions English translates by instead using other strategies like prepositions, verbal voice, word order, and possessive .

Modern Hebrew is much more analytic than Classical Hebrew with both nouns and verbs. This shift towards a more analytical language reflects broad changes in linguistic trends overtime. Classical Hebrew relies heavily on inflectional morphology to convey grammatical relationships, while in Modern Hebrew, there has been a significant reduction of the use of inflectional morphology.

Isolating language
A related concept is that of isolating languages, which are those with a low morpheme-per-word ratio (taking into account derivational morphemes as well). Purely isolating languages are by definition analytic and lack inflectional morphemes. However, the reverse is not necessarily true, and a language can have derivational morphemes but lack inflectional morphemes. For example, Mandarin Chinese has many compound words, which gives it a moderately high ratio of morphemes per word, but since it has almost no inflectional affixes at all to convey grammatical relationships, it is a very analytic language.

English is not totally analytic in its nouns since it uses inflections for number (e.g., "one day, three days; one boy, four boys") and possession ("The boy's ball" vis-à-vis "The boy has a ball"). Mandarin Chinese, by contrast, has no inflections on its nouns: compare 一天 yī tiān 'one day', 三天 sān tiān 'three days' (literally 'three day'); 一個男孩 yī ge nánhái 'one boy' (lit. 'one [entity of] male child'), 四個男孩 sì ge nánhái 'four boys' (lit. 'four [entity of] male child'). Furthermore English is considered to be weakly inflected and comparatively more analytic than most other Indo-European languages.

Persian has features of agglutination, making use of prefixes and suffixes attached to the stems of verbs and nouns, thus making it a synthetic language rather than an analytic one. Persian is an SOV language, thus having a head-final phrase structure. Persian utilizes a noun root + plural suffix + case suffix + postposition suffix syntax similar to Turkish. For example: Mashinhashunra niga mikardam meaning 'I was looking at their cars'. Breaking down mashin+ha+shun+ra (car+s+their+at) we can see its agglutinative nature and the fact that Persian is able to affix a given number of dependent morphemes to a root morpheme (in this example, car).

List of analytic languages

 * Indo-European languages
 * Germanic languages
 * Afrikaans
 * Dutch (partially)
 * Danish
 * English (mostly)
 * Norwegian
 * Swedish
 * Others
 * French (partially)
 * Kalto
 * Austronesian languages
 * Hawaiian
 * Māori
 * Sino-Tibetan languages
 * Burmese
 * Sinitic languages (including Mandarin and Cantonese)
 * Classical Chinese
 * Austroasiatic languages
 * Vietnamese
 * Khmer
 * Kra-Dai languages
 * Thai
 * Lao
 * Hmong-Mien languages
 * Hmong
 * Maybrat
 * Mixtec
 * Sango
 * Yoruba
 * Haitian Creole

title: Analytic language