"The Day MAD Became a Global Strategy: Eisenhower's Gamble for Peace" by John Scott Wren and ChatGPT

On January 12, 1955, during the Cold War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his cabinet unveiled a new global strategy called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The strategy aimed to prevent nuclear war by relying on the fear of mutual annihilation. The idea was that if both the US and the Soviet Union knew that a nuclear war would lead to their own destruction, they would refrain from initiating such a catastrophic conflict. However, MAD faced skepticism and criticism from some prominent figures, including Admiral Arthur W. Radford, who doubted the Soviet Union's rationality in the face of mutual annihilation and feared that the strategy would only escalate the arms race. Despite the criticism, MAD proved to be an effective deterrent. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev recognized the consequences of pushing the button and opted for diplomacy over destruction, preventing a nuclear war. Similarly, in 1983, a Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, chose not to report a false alarm of an incoming American nuclear attack, likely averting a nuclear exchange. MAD was born out of the need to prevent the unthinkable and evolved into a cornerstone of global stability during the Cold War. It reminds us of the power of diplomacy and the importance of avoiding the path of mutual destruction in our ever-evolving world.