Imagine the leader of Slobovia announces that he has nuclear
weapons, and if the leader of any Nation engages in a policy
that sufficiently offends the leader of Slobovia, he is prepared
to annihilate hundreds of thousands or even millions of innocent
non-combatant civilians in that Nation.
We should all agree that the leader of Slobovia is a madman,
and should be deposed even for threatening such mass murder.
But that has been the policy of the United States federal
government for decades. The U.S. has threatened to nuke any
nation that strikes the U.S. first. The theory is that this
threat would deter a first strike, by promising "Mutually
Assured Destruction."
This is Not Defense.
This does not prevent the first strike by shooting
ballistic missiles out of the sky before they explode.
This is retaliation for a first strike;
retaliation that wipes out millions of innocent non-combatant
civilians who probably didn't like the leader of Slobovia any
more than we do.
"Mutual Assured Destruction" (MAD) is a strategy
based on the concept that neither the United States nor its
enemies will ever start a nuclear war because the other side
will retaliate massively and unacceptably. MAD is a product of
the 1950s’ US doctrine of massive retaliation, and despite
attempts to redefine it in contemporary terms like flexible
response and nuclear deterrence, it has remained
the central theme of American defense planning for well over
three decades. (Col.
Alan J. Parrington, USAF)
In San Francisco, on September 18, 1967, Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara outlined the theory of
"Mutual Deterrence":
The cornerstone of our strategic policy continues to be to
deter nuclear attack upon the United States or its allies. We
do this by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict
unacceptable damage upon any single aggressor or combination
of aggressors at any time during the course of a strategic
nuclear exchange, even after absorbing a surprise first
strike. This can be defined as our assured-destruction
capability.
It is important to understand that assured destruction is
the very essence of the whole deterrence concept. We must
possess an actual assured-destruction capability, and that
capability also must be credible. The point is that a
potential aggressor must believe that our assured-destruction
capability is in fact actual, and that our will to use it in
retaliation to an attack is in fact unwavering. The
conclusion, then, is clear: if the United States is to deter a
nuclear attack in itself or its allies, it must possess an
actual and a credible assured-destruction capability.
In other words, if the Soviet Union attacked the United
States with nuclear weapons, killing millions of innocent
American civilians, the United States would retaliate with equal
or greater strength, killing millions of innocent non-combatant
Russian civilians involuntarily enslaved under communism.
Obviously "MAD" is mad; an insane policy for a
Christian nation to have.
Gen Henry H. “Hap” Arnold reminds us that
modern equipment is but a step in time and that “any Air
Force which does not keep its doctrines ahead of its
equipment, and its vision far into the future, can only delude
the nation into a false sense of security.”3
Furthermore, nuclear weapons did not keep the peace in Korea,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, or
Latin America, even though one side in those wars often
possessed “the Bomb” and theoretically should have coerced
the other side into submission.4 By one estimate,
125 million people have died in 149 wars since 1945.5 (Parrington)
3. Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic
Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, 1984, 4–7.
4. Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic
Thinking of the United States Air Force , vol. 2, 1961–1984
(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1989), 99.
5. This is the estimate of John Otranto, executive director,
Global Care, Munich, Germany.
In order for nuclear deterrence to work, it is likely that
there would have to be periodic and regular use of nuclear
weapons, killing millions of innocent, non-combatant civilians,
just to send the message to potential enemies that "We
really mean it."
Obviously "MAD" is mad; an insane policy for a
Christian nation to have.