nuclear deterrence
Mutually assured destruction
Nuclear deterrence is the strategy of preventing nuclear attack by maintaining the capability to retaliate with devastating force.
The logic holds that no rational adversary would strike first knowing their own destruction would follow.
During the Cold War, this produced the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD): Nuclear deterrence kept the superpowers from direct conflict.
The concept extends to conventional military threats deterred by nuclear arsenals.
- arms raceEscalating weapons accumulation between nations
- brinkmanshipPushing conflicts to disaster's threshold
- red buttonUrgent action trigger
- Cold WarProlonged East-West standoff
- balance of terrorStability through reciprocal threat
second strike · existential risk · doomsday clock · proxy wars · Cuban Missile Crisis · intercontinental ballistic missile · missile silos · rogue state · United Nations Security Council · NATO · military alliances · Warsaw Pact · retaliation · missiles · warheads · arsenal · bunker · fallout
- strategystrategy, grand strategy, tactics, tactic, tactical
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis
- Nuclearatomic bomb, atomic bombs, uranium, reactors, fission
- nuclear waratomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, ICBM, mushroom cloud, first strike
- Soviet EraUSSR, Soviet Union, Soviet rule, CCCP, Eastern Bloc
- Cold War EraSoviet Union, Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iron Curtain, Warsaw Pact
nuclear deterrencenuclear disarmament
Reducing atomic weapon stockpiles
denuclearization · disarmament · pacifism · arms reduction · nonproliferation
nuclear deterrencenuclear war
Armed conflict using fission weapons
first strike · nuclear holocaust · preemptive strike · preventive war · Hiroshima
nuclear, nucleus, deterrent, deterring, deterrence, deterred, deters, undeterred, deterrents