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Originally posted by Adder
I am not sure that MAD is as dead as you suggest. Obviously, it is no deterrent to stateless terrorists, but it is alive an kicking to pretty much every state in the world. Which is why the ones that we don't like are all so busy trying to get nukes.
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I'm not sure how much life MAD has in it, but nuclear strategy has not been a big focus of mine (conventional warfare is so much more fun!).
But it strikes me that Russia's dilapidated, rotting carcasses of ICBMs probably aren't a sufficient deterent to, on their own, keep the US from launching a strike against them if we decided they were the evil empire and had to go. The fact that Russia doesn't have much we want, has little remaining influence in the world, and is a nice tourist destination probably has more to do with us letting them live. That and, of course, the fact that we're a democracy not given to pushing buttons for the sake of building large, frozen, radioactive empires.
Yes, MAD may have some meaning to a North Korea, or within a regional theatre, like the Middle East, but I don't think it has that much meaning to the US per se.
