How to do Mutual Assured Destruction in the 2020s
MAD kept us alive for the last 70 years and it might still work
I grew up learning to duck and cover- a siren goes off, you crawl under your desk and cover the back of your neck with your clasped hands.
Even at seven or eight we knew this was total bullshit. If a bomb back then hit my city, we were toast, almost literally. There were no ‘tactical’ nuclear bombs back then.
Now the idea of a bomb designed to do limited but awful destruction is a reality and a crazy man is seriously threatening to use them. An act of desperation. But we are told that the US has a plan.
So, as a writer, I cannot resist thinking about what it might be. And what I’m coming up with is pretty nuts.
Here’s a scenario: Joe Biden picks up the red phone and calls Vlad. He says Vlad, just so you should know, there is a tactical bomb sitting somewhere in Moscow that we can ignite remotely.
You go there with the nukes and we pull the trigger. It’s that simple.
It took me about five minutes to imagine that scenario and I am definitely not a military genius. But I have no doubt the actual military and intelligence geniuses are way ahead of me.
