Putin recently put his country’s nuclear powers on alert. Of course, this does not mean that it will activate nuclear bombs, but it is clear as daylight that it is an unsettling move. Likewise, “Anyone who thinks about interfering from the outside should know, if you do this, you will pay a greater price than anything you have experienced in your history.” He made a threatening statement.
Putin is a person whose left and right are uncertain. That’s why he fears the possibility of pressing the nuclear button. Theories about what will happen if he succeeds are frequently discussed in the media, but an old military doctrine that “at least ensures that this bad idea does not happen with a very quick decision or will never happen” is very effective in keeping the balance of Putin and those like him.
The Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine is a military strategy and national security policy implemented to prevent two or more nuclear-armed parties from completely eliminating each other.
This doctrine is based on the “Nuclear Deterrence Theory”, which states that the threat of using a weapon of the same strength against an enemy who may use powerful weapons prevents the use of these weapons. Thus, neither side dares to attack nor attempt to disarm.
- If you’ve noticed, the English abbreviation for the term, MAD, stands for “crazy.”
This is a kind of “Nash Equilibrium”, one of the most important tools of the famous mathematician John Nash’s Game Theory.
Nash Equilibrium is the name given to the strategy choices of the players with certain characteristics. Let’s assume that every player makes the same action/choice in a game. If the action chosen for a player is the best action (in terms of payoff) that can be played considering the action chosen by the other players, and this is true for all other players, it can be said that this situation creates a Nash Equilibrium.
Nuclear deterrence emerged during the Cold War and helped prevent the Cold War from escalating.
II. After World War II, the Truman administration was ambivalent about the use of nuclear weapons, viewing them as weapons of terror rather than as part of a military arsenal.
The US air force initially wanted to continue using nuclear weapons against additional threats from communist China. The US Eisenhower administration implemented this policy throughout his tenure, increasing its gun stock from 1,000 in 1953 to 18,000 in 1961.
When it was understood that nuclear armament could not be prevented and it was realized that there could be an unimaginable destruction, the parties agreed that MAD was the best way to achieve peace. One of the most unsettling pragmatic ideas ever put into practice worked, and the parties were convinced of the irrationality of attacking each other.
But the parties still remained skeptical. Could one of them develop a very effective attack technique and destroy it at such a speed that his enemy could not even respond?
MAD supporters feared that this ability might have been acquired. Things changed when Ronald Reagan became the head of the USA. Reagan decided to build a missile defense system to protect his country against a possible nuclear danger.
There was a lack of missile defense in part due to the impact of MAD. Even the US’s allies thought it was dangerous and would destabilize the peace brought by MAD. At that time, while the USA was able to invest in technology, the USSR was having a hard time keeping up.
This is cited as a reason for Gorbachev’s decision to end the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War, MAD turned into a background threat rather than an active policy, yet it continues to make itself felt even in these days.
However, the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent remains controversial.
Although this doctrine strikes an important balance, Putin has done what is said to “never do that”: annex Crimea, start a war in the Donbas, Ukraine Don’t invade. That’s why nobody says “Never resort to nuclear” anymore, instead they say “Hopefully never goes nuclear”.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
So what will we experience if a nuclear bomb is dropped? The answer is in our video here:
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