The Illogical Defense of MAD

MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction was a phrase born from the highly dangerous times of the Cold War. Between the late 1950s right up to the late 1980s, the world was left wondering whether it was going to end up as a pile of atoms, blown to smithereens in a chain reaction of mushroom clouds. Thankfully, there are a few reasons why it didn’t happen.

Kennedy and Khrushchev were either cowards or smart enough to pull back in 1962.
NATO and the WARSAW pact both spent so much time planning each other’s destruction that they didn’t have time to carry those plans out
The MAD theory worked
Obviously, the first two are just playful reasons given to signify how crazy global geopolitics was at the time. But the third does hold much weight.

Don’t be MAD

Essentially, it means that both sides or any side in a multi-lateral confrontation will not pull the trigger because it means destruction for all. As a perverse form of self-preservation, it actually worked to keep everyone in line as each knew that launching one’s missiles to the other side would guarantee an equal and immediate response, thus destroying everyone. The face of war had changed forever; it was no longer possible to "win" and this reality adverted everyone from trying.

MAD became so vital, that soon, whole efforts were in place to ensure it’s perpetuity; rather than try to make friends, the world tried it’s hardest to ensure that it would be impossible to kill one another without dying themselves. Thus, the arms race was born. That particularly folly has been on a decline for a long time – but one other practice born out of MAD(ness) is the theory of shallow defense.

A shallow defense – safety in danger

The shallow defense theory advocated a lack of defense as being a guarantee that MAD would work. Take for the example, the ambitious "Star Wars" or Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) plan hatched by Reagan. If it were to succeed, it would virtually guarantee that the US would be safe from the thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at it. And that’s why it failed: because it would have destabilized the MAD theory. The US would have been able to strike anyone with impunity – thereby encouraging attempted pre-emptive strikes against the US before it would be able to get it’s SDI going.

And now, the same MAD logic is resurfacing between China, Taiwan and the US.

MAD resurfaced

Taiwan wants to buy the Aegis anti-missile cruiser from the US. At USD$1 billion each, they are expensive items but very effective at defending a limited area against nearly all sorts of missile and air attack. With enough of them, the Chinese missile threat will largely be neutralized. China cannot let this happen as it will then enable the Taiwanese to do whatever they want, including declaring independence if they so wish. And why shouldn’t they? The Chinese retaliatory hammer would be a paper hammer without the missile and air support the Aegis cruisers are capable of neutralizing. Qian Qichen, China’s foreign policy mandarin made this absolutely clear to President Bush during his visit last week: don’t sell the Aegis to Taiwan or bad things may happen.

The paradoxical logic in the whole arrangement is pretty amazing: in order to remain peaceful, buy as many weapons as you want (although the usual grumbling do take place, China doesn’t blink an eyelid when Taiwan buys a couple of tanks or a squadron of F-16s from the US), remain on an aggressive footing, but don’t do anything that will help you defend yourself. Try to defend yourself and you’ll get hurt.

No matter how illogical it seems, it does have an ounce of truth in it, truth enough to make President Bush reconsider his decision to do business with the Taiwanese. With the US economy and, by extension, the global economy very uncertain at this point in time, it would be a very bad situation to have to deal with any possible conflagration between China and Taiwan. Sell the Taiwanese all the bullets that they want, but refrain from giving them a shield.

Appearing www.renungan.com 22 March 2001