Nuclear Principles Applied to Recent/Modern Day History

 Within the realm of international politics, there is a mutual understanding in regards to how to handle the most destructive and deadly weapon created in history: the nuclear bomb. The term that defines this shared theorem is referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. The MAD principle explains why we have never had a nuclear war in the last century due to the Second Strike Capability that countries possess when nuclear weapons are used against them. When a country is attacked by nuclear weaponry, before annihilation, they may use their own nuclear arsenal against the country that attacked them first, thus the reason why the term is known as the Second Strike Capability. There are other strategies that prevent this destructive war and these strategies are indicated as Deterrence and Compellence. The act of deterrence refers to preventing another party from undertaking an action through coercion. On the other hand, compellence is the act of forcing another party to undertake an action through coercion. Throughout history, countries have used a variety of deterrence strategies such as the ability to use force when required. Another strategy is the indirect utilization of a country’s reputation where the prior use of nuclear weapons deters other countries, such as the United States in the latter half of WWII. While MAD has been the main theorem that prevents the outbreak of nuclear war, there are also many critiques to the principle itself. For example, MAD entails the spread of nuclear weapons across the international community. Not only does it create more weapons but irrational countries may disregard the principle and use the weapons which could result in the destruction of multiple countries, or create a domino effect of nukes that would destroy our planet. An example of these principles applied to recent history would be the Cold War, specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. To contextualize the historical situation, the major superpowers of the world, the United States and the USSR were at an arms race, building up the military, including their nuclear arsenals. Because the USSR did not have long-range ballistic missiles, and because the US had missiles stationed in Turkey, the Soviet Union decided to station their nuclear missiles in Cuba. In this instance, the United States utilized compellence, forcing the USSR to migrate their own arsenal in case of a sudden surprise attack. If the USSR did not move their own nukes to a communist country neighboring the United States, then they would be left at a disadvantage with an absence of the second strike capability. Another example in the Cold War where the United States and the Soviet Union were forced to compromise was the Salt and Start agreements. Because both international influencers kept building their nuclear weapon capacities, there was increased fear of MAD, and both countries had no other choice to compromise in order to prevent a clash involving weapons of mass destruction. These conjunctions were in place in order to prevent deterrence and compellence strategies, which would like increase the tension and escalate the already tense situation. The de-escalation of the Cold War and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist influence lead to Horizontal Nuclear Proliferation. In other words, more and more countries observed the Cold War and the amount of influence each actor possessed and realized that they too could obtain the power if they too had nuclear weaponry of their own. This led to the nine countries that own nukes of their own: US, Russia, France, China, the UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.