One thing about MAD is that it makes you never want to use nukes. You start talking about smaller and smaller target groups, you become more and more likely to use the things (like Bush and his talk about maybe using tactical nukes)

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Wow. Amazing quote. Sobering to say the least. Every time I read Kissinger I hear his voice in my head and get the biggest kick out of his accent. Does that happen to anyone else? I cen be reading the most serious passage but always get a chuckle out of it.

That might be true, and I don't doubt that some at the time favored the theory for that very reason. I think the article addresses that, actually. The disturbing thing is that according to Kissinger, there were people who favored the option just because it would cost more to come up with better alternatives.

It would be interesting to see the casualty estimates for an American first strike, too.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

I wonder if another issue at play was the belief that any attack on Russia would only result in a full scale couter attack? Not much reason to throttle your attack if you think they will go full scale.

I'm not sure I understand it. Is the military saying they favor MAD because they believe it'll prevent it completely, or just because that's what they've already set up for?

And is Nixon being amazingly naive or cavalier by suggesting one can fight a limited nuclear engagement without having the whole thing spiral out of control. It strikes me as one of those scenarios where the war planning might not be terribly useful as the inevitable unintended consequences or unknowable factors have fatal consequences.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

Kissinger and others favored it because there were no other options, either more expensive or otherwise, and because it worked.

MAD worked very well at the time because it was extremely difficult to build nuclear weapons so that only a substantial society could make them. Leaders of such a society were predisposed to being responsible so as not to risk losing all they had.

MAD doesn't work against many of our enemies today since countries like North Korea have absolutely nothing and therefore nothing to lose.

Is the military saying they favor MAD because they believe it'll prevent it completely, or just because that's what they've already set up for?

It seems to me that Kissinger is accusing some elements in the government- not necessarily the military- of favoring MAD not because it worked, but because that's what they've paid for already, and they don't want to pay for another solution.

And is Nixon being amazingly naive or cavalier by suggesting one can fight a limited nuclear engagement

I think you're doing Nixon an injustice. I hardly think we can attribute naivete to Nixon, of all people. As for being cavalier, I think the article shows just the opposite. It seems to me that accepting MAD as the only available option, and not wracking one's brain for an alternative, would be appallingly callous.

It's true that we were never able to come up with a viable alternative, and even if we had, it might not have worked, and any nuclear exchange might have led to mutual destruction after a more limited response spun out of control. But that's a mix of hindsight and speculation. At the time, I think failure to at least attempt to devise an alternative would have lived up to Kissinger's characterization of the height of immorality.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that MAD was more than an acronym- it was descriptive. And it carried no guarantees, either. One has to wonder about whether or not a president would have the level of commitment necessary to carry it out, and whether the Soviets believed he would, etc etc.

My father and grandfather both flew for SAC. My dad just left after a 10 day visit, and was telling us stories over Thanksgiving about it- how tense it was waiting for the ground crew to load the nuke onto the plane, and things like that. I don't think he had the same sense of certainty about MAD at the time that we do now.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Fair enough.

It's been awhile since I took world politics (from Ken Lieberthal, of all people), so I don't remember all of the intricacies of MAD, other than the its bumper sticker simplicity. It's ironic that years afterward, we found out that the Soviet systems were not so reliable, perhaps putting a wrinkle in MAD.

As for Nixon, it's safe to say he wasn't naive - paranoid and politically amoral, but not naive. It just strikes me that the theory of limited engagement is either a think-tank abstraction (like some engagements we may be/have fighting) or overhyped military bravado (sure, we can take out their CCC before they even know it). And unfortunately, being wrong in this situation doesn't leave you with a lot of shades of grey - you either lose big or you lose all, not a lot in between.

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"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." - Alvy Singer, "Annie Hall"

It just strikes me that the theory of limited engagement is either a think-tank abstraction (like some engagements we may be/have fighting) or overhyped military bravado (sure, we can take out their CCC before they even know it).

Yes, but Nixon wasn't asking for an alternative to MAD so that he could safely engage in some form of limited nuclear war, at least as I read the article. He was asking for an alternative to MAD that served the same purpose without the madness. Seems to me a noble endeavor, even if not successful.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."