Playing with Fire: Anti-Ballistic Missiles in the Age of Mutually Assured Destruction
With the introduction of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, the balance of militarily power altered radically. The nuclear arms race became an essential part of many nations’ military doctrine.
Nuclear weapons came about as a result of the United States’ famous Manhattan Project during World War II. The first atomic test, called Trinity , took place in New Mexico on July 16, 1945 with an explosive yield of 19 to 21 kilotons. In the course of the next seventy years, the Bomb appeared in the arsenals of many nations on virtually every continent: Russia (USSR), France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
The concept of mutually assured destruction soon became clear, especially following the use of atomic bombs against Japan in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Commonly identified with the initials MAD, it summarizes the consequences of a nuclear exchange between nuclear powers. The calculus of MAD implies the assured destruction of both protagonists in a hypothetical nuclear exchange.
The MAD theory, presented throughout the course of the Cold War, shaped international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two nuclear superpowers. From 1945 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Washington and Moscow continued to base their military strategy on two fundamental factors, both intrinsically linked to the concept of MAD: a race to produce more nuclear weapons than their direct adversaries, and the high importance given to the diplomatic effort to never use them. Curiously, these were two diametrically opposed strategies, where on the one hand there was the production and accumulation of nuclear warheads with the clear intention of intimidating the enemy with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, while on the other hand effort was expended towards always providing a diplomatic solution. Although the accuracy of the MAD proposition was never disputed, this did not prevent the manufacture of thousands of nuclear weapons (at the height of the nuclear race, the United States and the USSR altogether possessed about 60,000 nuclear weapons) of various sizes (the US MK-17 had a capacity of about 25 megatons; the Soviet Tsar of about 50 megatons).
Diplomacy between the two superpowers became an essential break against such a destructive trajectory. During the Cold War, Moscow and Washington faced complex and potentially catastrophic scenarios potentially involving nuclear exchanges. Former Soviet and American military personnel have repeatedly told of how they foiled at least nine possible nuclear exchanges that turned out to be false alarms, literally saving the world from assured destruction. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the telephone contacts between Moscow and Washington remained open in the interests of diplomacy, ultimately resulting in a telephone conversation between Kennedy and Khrushchev that reduced the tension and avoided a potentially lethal nuclear exchange between the two superpowers.
During the 1970s, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) was ratified by the US and USSR in May 1972. Its main purpose was to limit the anti-missile defenses of both nations in order to curb nuclear proliferation. The treaty was part of a strategy by both sides of pursuing strategic parity in nuclear weapons. According to the treaty, each side had the ability to install two anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) complexes, each of which was to be limited to 100 anti-ballistic missiles. Another key aspect of the Treaty prohibited the development of a system capable of covering and shielding the entire national territory from incoming threats. The treaty was aimed at strengthening MAD by limiting the ability of one party to defend itself from a devastating nuclear attack. In this way, the idea of a “first nuclear strike” became pointless. Whoever attacked first would still remain at the mercy of the inevitable and massive response from the opponent, suffering terrible nuclear destruction in the process.
The ABM Treaty represented a phase of the Cold War during which both the United States and the Soviet Union were convinced that they could not win a strategic nuclear war. The Americans focused on ensuring a high “second strike” capability to buttress their deterrence posture. The second option for nuclear strategists in the Pentagon was to deal a crippling “first blow” on the Soviets and then absorb their retaliatory strike by reducing losses with the help of anti-missile systems. It was this second strategy that prompted Reagan to set out on his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars. The course set by Reagan would serve to render meaningless the ABM Treaty by providing total missile-defense coverage over American soil, spelling the beginning of the end of this strategic balance…..more here