Editing Mutual assured destruction (section)

===Late Cold War===
The original US MAD doctrine was modified on July 25, 1980, with US President [[Jimmy Carter]]'s adoption of ''countervailing strategy'' with [[Presidential Directive 59]]. According to its architect, Secretary of Defense [[Harold Brown (Secretary of Defense)|Harold Brown]], "countervailing strategy" stressed that the planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb Soviet population centers and cities primarily, but first to kill the Soviet leadership, then attack military targets, in the hope of a Soviet surrender before total destruction of the Soviet Union (and the United States). This modified version of MAD was seen as a winnable nuclear war, while still maintaining the possibility of assured destruction for at least one party. This policy was further developed by the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan administration]] with the announcement of the [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] (SDI, nicknamed "Star Wars"), the goal of which was to develop space-based technology to destroy Soviet missiles before they reached the United States.

SDI was criticized by both the Soviets and many of America's allies (including Prime Minister of the United Kingdom [[Margaret Thatcher]]) because, were it ever operational and effective, it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD. If the United States had a guarantee against Soviet nuclear attacks, its critics argued, it would have first-strike capability, which would have been a politically and militarily destabilizing position. Critics further argued that it could trigger a new arms race, this time to develop countermeasures for SDI. Despite its promise of nuclear safety, SDI was described by many of its critics (including Soviet nuclear physicist and later peace activist [[Andrei Sakharov]]) as being even more dangerous than MAD because of these political implications. Supporters also argued that SDI could trigger a new arms race, forcing the USSR to spend an increasing proportion of GDP on defense—something which has been claimed to have been an indirect cause of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. [[Mikhail Gorbachev|Gorbachev]] himself in 1983 announced that “the continuation of the S.D.I. program will sweep the world into a new stage of the arms race and would destabilize the strategic situation.”<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Webb|first1=Rachel|last2=Connolly|first2=Erin|last3=Gott|first3=Jessica|last4=Hadfield|first4=Zach|last5=Hamel|first5=Michael|last6=Heimer|first6=Brandon W.|last7=Kattan|first7=Ari|last8=Kirkegaard|first8=Marie C.|last9=Kuhns|first9=Ryan|last10=Maloney|first10=Jillian|last11=Mascaro|first11=Anthony D.|date=2019|title=Defensive Satellites:: Who Will Shoot First?|journal=On the Horizon|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep22545.20|pages=190–199}}</ref>

Proponents of [[ballistic missile defense]] (BMD) argue that MAD is exceptionally dangerous in that it essentially offers a single course of action in the event of a nuclear attack: full retaliatory response. The fact that [[nuclear proliferation]] has led to an increase in the number of nations in the "[[nuclear club]]", including nations of questionable stability (e.g. [[North Korea]]), and that a nuclear nation might be hijacked by a [[Despotism|despot]] or other person or persons who might use nuclear weapons without a sane regard for the consequences, presents a strong case for proponents of BMD who seek a policy which both protect against attack, but also does not require an escalation into what might become [[World War III|global nuclear war]]. Russia continues to have a strong public distaste for Western BMD initiatives, presumably because proprietary operative BMD systems could exceed their technical and financial resources and therefore degrade their larger military standing and sense of security in a post-MAD environment. Russian refusal to accept invitations {{Citation needed|reason=who and when invited Russia to join BMD?|date=January 2021}} to participate in NATO BMD may be indicative of the lack of an alternative to MAD in current Russian war-fighting strategy due to the dilapidation of conventional forces after the breakup of the [[Soviet Union]].

==== Proud Prophet ====
[[Proud Prophet]] was a series of war games played out by various American military officials. The simulation revealed MAD made the use of nuclear weapons virtually impossible without total nuclear annihilation, regardless of how nuclear weapons were implemented in war plans. These results essentially ruled out the possibility of a limited nuclear strike, as every time this was attempted, it resulted in a complete expenditure of nuclear weapons by both the United States and USSR. Proud Prophet marked a shift in American strategy; following Proud Prophet, American rhetoric of strategies that involved the use of nuclear weapons dissipated and American war plans were changed to emphasize the use of conventional forces.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bracken|first=Paul|title=The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics|pages=81–90}}</ref>

==== TTAPS Study ====
In 1983, a group of researchers including [[Carl Sagan]] released the TTAPS study (named for the respective initials of the authors), which predicted that the large scale use of nuclear weapons would cause a “[[nuclear winter]]”. The study predicted that the debris burned in nuclear bombings would be lifted into the atmosphere and diminish sunlight worldwide, thus reducing world temperatures by “-15° to -25°C”.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Turco|first1=R. P.|last2=Toon|first2=O. B.|last3=Ackerman|first3=T. P.|last4=Pollack|first4=J. B.|last5=Sagan|first5=Carl|date=1983-12-23|title=Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions|url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283|journal=Science|language=en|volume=222|issue=4630|pages=1283–1292|doi=10.1126/science.222.4630.1283|issn=0036-8075|pmid=17773320|bibcode=1983Sci...222.1283T|s2cid=45515251|url-access=subscription}}</ref> These findings led to theory that MAD would still occur with many fewer weapons than were possessed by either the United States or USSR at the height of the Cold War. As such, nuclear winter was used as an argument for significant reduction of nuclear weapons since MAD would occur anyway.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Plous|first=Scott|date=1984|title=Will Deterrence Survive a Nuclear Winter?|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1693566|journal=Science|volume=225|issue=4659|pages=268|doi=10.1126/science.225.4659.268-a|jstor=1693566|pmid=17749541|issn=0036-8075|url-access=subscription}}</ref>