Climate MADness - Can MAD help us understand a strategy to prevent climate change?

Can the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as an unofficial international doctrine be  a useful tool in understanding and producing a collective international approach to prevent climate change? Jonathan Roper,

This essay is written at a time where several climate conferences have failed to produce solutions close to preventing the imminent reality of climate change. The primary premise of this essay is to suggest a rhetorical solution which could precipitate systemic change leading to action in international and domestic spheres. This essay will outline what MAD was, it's strengths and weaknesses, then assess it's suitability to be used in expressing humankind's potential approach to climate change.

What is, or was MAD?

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) was an unofficial, sometimes denied, but overall attributable systemic interaction through which two sides, the USA and the USSR, subsequently Russia, avoided direct military confrontation for the latter half of the 20th Century and into the 21st. This strategy was never a codified strategy for either side throughout this period. It wasn't an ideal circumstance and had no solution. It was in effect, an end game, or solution in itself.

The circumstances arose in 1949, where both sides had conducted successful nuclear weapon tests. Initially this was a major psychological blow and security worry for the USA and its allies, for the USSR had developed a nuclear capability in advance of their best estimations. For the USSR this was a propaganda success, its military, spy network and scientific community all had collaborated successfully to develop their nuclear capability. After a subsequent arms race to deploy larger and larger nuclear arsenals and weapons, each capable of striking each other's reciprocally growing nuclear arsenals, an impasse was reached on 30th October 1961. On this day, Nikita Khruschev announced the successful detonation of a 50mT weapon, catching up with the USA, by having a usable hydrogen bomb. Now both sides had the ability to destroy each other and cause a global nuclear winter, MAD had commenced. (Medvedev, 1979)

Characteristics of MAD doctrine

As a strategy MAD developed from 1949 onwards initially by bluff, and subsequently through deployed military capability. It has a number of distinct characteristics.

MAD depends on both the fear of first strike and second strike. Both sides naturally maintain a deep suspicion over the other's actions,  constant vigilance is a necessity. Neither side can act first in fear of reprisals from the other. Both sides maintain a vast network of detecting stations with ground bases, aircraft and ships, all constantly alert to a surprise attack from the other.

MAD only works with the assurance of an early warning system and the subsequent capability of second strike, i.e. the guarantee of extinction of the other side and vice-versa. When detection technology of radar and satellite lagged behind the deployment technology of rocketry this became a real issue. In these instances, both the USA and the USSR caused panic in the other's command. The intensity of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was partially caused by the USA's fear of the USSR's deployment of missiles so close to them on the island of Cuba, America's front garden. It's overall resolution involved the secret removal of missiles from Turkey, the USSR's “backyard” in a reciprocal unofficial action (White, 1997).

MAD developed in the climate of two ideologies which were directly opposed to each other. There have been endless arguments about these ideological differences. Suffice to say that a synthesis of the two discourses was seen as untenable by both sides. There had to be an ideological winner and there had to be ideological loser, instead of a consensus. Both sides were willing to pay for their survival or face loss in a zero-sum game.

Both sides maintained a surprise element, so neither could quantify with certainty the other's asset readiness. With mobile launchers, be that on trains, planes, trucks or latterly submarines, a constant estimation of the other's strengths was required. This lead to escalation of arsenals and increased paranoia of perceived threat.

Both sides, despite their altruistic rhetoric of singular protection, maintained a priority of state assets over civilian defence. For the given threat of nuclear attack, both sides were forced to maintain a carefully defended handful of sites, leaving the vast majority of their general populations, and indeed the rest of the world, exposed to annihilation or nuclear winter. It was the first time that mankind could exterminate itself totally, a dark day in the epoch of the anthropocene.

Both sides also assumed they would be able to identify the attacking party, despite the global consequences. Throughout the initial stages of the Cold War, this was easily achieved. Only two countries had nuclear weaponry, there could only be only one perpetrator. However as China developed nuclear capability on 16th October 1964 and nuclear proliferation spread to 14 countries in 2014 (peaking at a much higher number following the break up of the USSR and voluntary disarmament of South Africa), slowly this attributable nature was eroded, forcing more technological solutions.

The system under MAD had it's fail safes. Not all could be guaranteed and the strategy of deterrence could not be sustained without dangerous levels of brinkmanship. A globally apocalyptic accident was narrowly avoided on several occasions. The Palomeres incident in 1966 was caused by a plane crash after a failed inflight refuelling manoeuvre. The atomic detonation over Spain was prevented by the final fail-safe mechanism after three others had failed to operate. At RAF Lakenheath in 1957, a B47 air crash ignited a warehouse containing three atomic devices, which, if they had detonated, could have flattened East Anglia. By requiring constant alertness MAD therefore had dangerous deployment issues.

Through false alarms and accidents, MAD put global security at risk, threatening the global population with extinction. A bear climbing over a fence at Duluth air force base, Minnesota, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, precipitated the launch of a squadron of nuclear bombers, solely prevented by the base commander's quick thinking as he drove his car down the runway flashing his headlights. In 1983, the NATO exercise Able Archer, which simulated a coordinated nuclear attack in Western Europe, causing a high state of alert in the USSR. This coincided with the USSR's detection of five ICBM launches in the USA. The reasoning of Stanislav Petrov a Soviet Air Defence Force officer, that a nuclear attack would consist of hundreds of missiles in a massive first strike, prevented the USSR from launching it's retaliatory strike. These five false positive detections of ICBM launches in the USA by Russian satellites, were latterly diagnosed as sunlight reflecting off high altitude clouds.

The doctrine of MAD seeped into popular culture in many media. Especially the fear of a rogue individual setting the agenda and the inevitable first strike, second strike consequences of a global nuclear apocalypse. The was played out in the popular imagination in the Stanley Kubrick film “Dr Strangelove” after the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962. More subversively, the threat of a false alarm causing a nuclear apocalypse was imagined in the cheery 99 Red Balloons No.1 UK single by Nena. (Nena, 1983) after the near miss of the Able Archer incident.

So given its attributes and foibles, was MAD useful?

“I begin to believe in only one civilising influence, the discovery, one of these days, of a destructive agent so terrible that war shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace” (Collins, 1870)

To some extent it was, Wilkie Collins' dream was realised, we are still here and a major war between superpowers with the expected consequences of mass death and nuclear winter has been avoided. This impasse was achieved within national budgets. MAD was a strategy which continued for over 70 years as a sustained state of affairs in an uneasy peace. The drive for technically delivering this destructive capability spawned many beneficial technologies and improvements which might have taken much longer to discover. The space race was as a direct result of improving ballistic missile technology,  quickened by the requirements of nuclear deployment and ideological rivalry. Nuclear power stations were supported by governments as a means to provide electricity and also help refine uranium. The internet originated in a military computer network which would distribute information to many places at once, to avoid destruction in case of a nuclear strike on a particularly valuable target.

“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defence against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.” (Amis, 1987)

Conversely MAD was a negative force, that put both superpowers in a very expensive deadlock. Although some argument is made that the cost of a nuclear weapons program was comparatively cheap when compared to standing armies with similar capabilities to annihilate the enemy, the money could have been better spent elsewhere. As President Kennedy pointed out, budgets “...could be better devoted to combat injustice, poverty and disease.” (Kennedy, 1963). The remainder of the ideological and economic capital of this system of belief was used to fund proxy wars and rebellions in other countries, leading to more global instability. The potential as ever for a human created system to go wrong is very costly. So, although MAD prevented direct conflict between the superpowers it didn't prevent conflict globally. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, interstate conflict decreased substantially. (Human Security Report Project, 2013)

Imagine this, in 1945 an alien lands on earth and meets with the United Nations Security Council. The alien lays out a plan which involves her handing out highly destructive devices to the richest 14 countries (comparable to the 14 nuclear capable nations at present), these will guarantee peace on earth, but the price of that peace is almost imminent global destruction at any second. No one in the post war ravaged world would agree to this system voluntarily and would see it as insanity. However, this is exactly what MAD was and is.

After 70 years, if the same alien returned to earth. It would put away its destructive boxes after analysing the atmosphere, noting the declining species numbers, ocean acidification and question our collective desire to destroy ourselves through climate change. The alien would point out that the same 14 nations that owned nuclear weapons, were responsible for 65% of the global emissions. Mutually, they were destroying themselves. The 15 largest economies on earth in 2013 were responsible for 77% of all carbon emissions, pushing humanity toward destruction. (Boden, Marland and Andres, 2014).

Is viewing the issue of human endeavours which cause climate change as MAD, and therefore adopting a similar systemic outcome, a useful approach?

By viewing climate change and emitting global warming gases as MAD, a rather simple understanding of the problem can be realised, look after the planet for the good of all. This premise gives justification for emissions targets to be met, all individual countries to participate easily in a common goal and create and follow a really effective system of GHG emission reduction. As a rhetorical solution it can be deployed and set in a much faster manner than for example, complex economic mechanisms, such as setting a carbon price floor or putting prices on natural resources.

Hopefully MAD is a simpler framing of the problem and equally as useful as the 'Tragedy of the Commons' theory of resource depletion. The rhetoric of MAD, if implemented, could provide impetus for participants to self regulate their actions without the need for a centralised treaty or the appointment of a central owner of the commons. This overall goal is analogous to that of the 'comedy of the commons' outcome, whereby all participants regulate their own behaviours to maintain the benefits of the commons for all, resulting in a sum of benefit, greater than the sum of it's parts. In climate change's case, sharing the planet by self-imposed reduced consumption, is more beneficial than destruction. The act of not burning a litre of petrol in a car, has a small short term cost for that actor, however long term benefit for all as that CO2 emission is not lingering in the atmosphere. For economic theorists, the unused resources, could be seen as having optimal value, as if the resources are utilised, this would result in the loss of the game by all players.

By framing the the problem as mutual, the onus is on everyone to participate in this enterprise.  Equating climate change to the doomsday nuclear winter imagined in the 20th Century could help reduce the prevalence of responses to climate change such as individual resilience and denial. In the same way as nuclear MAD would cause destruction for the many, with only a few randomly surviving in bunkers. Countries and institutions with large carbon footprints, who chose to sidestep this effort would need to be positively brought on side. The US senate has a language of 'doves' and 'hawks' to paraphrase a senator's stance on foreign intervention. A new shorthand will need to be arrived at with the ostriches, dodos and eagles suggested. The ostriches, with their heads stuck in the sand, are those who think continuation of pursing climate damaging actions due to the resilience they think they possess to changing climatic conditions. This policy should be seen as futile as thinking that having one's head in the sand offers protection from the elements. The dodos are those who wish to continue on as normal, to protect their own agendas in short term prioritisation of goals, which will ultimately lead to their and our extinction. The eagles are those who wish to conquer the imminent threat to the globe, by protecting their nest from all threats.

In the same way that a nuclear arms race was driven by the fear and paranoia of the destructive capability of another country, this same fear and concern could accelerate the development and deployment of low carbon technologies. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Western governments realised that MAD could be troublesome with the electorate. MAD was hidden behind the cloak of 'flexible response', a reasonable sounding strategy of proportionate response to each threat, with little notion on how to prevent escalation back to the highest level response. In the context of our collective economic actions causing MAD, this requires a population to understand the general concepts of wanting to do the 'green thing', promoted by artists, film makers and speakers, much as Kubrick and Nena neatly summed up the weaknesses of the system of nuclear MAD. Simultaneously it  requires economists, scientists and law makers to guide best practice and the most effective methods to transition to a sustainable, low carbon economy, for example, the work done by Zero Carbon Britain (2013)

MAD is a solution and endgame in itself, a mutual 'mate' in chess, but not a stalemate. With the ideological, adversarial, zero-sum game approach to the assured destruction focussed on anthropogenic actions, a mutually assistive multilateral approach is now possible in the global political world. Not every country can pursue goals to decarbonise their economies and indeed many countries are not emitting sufficient green house gasses to warrant affecting their development rate in the near future. However, technological changes and improvements can help developing country's development trajectories to head towards mature low carbon economies.

As another evolved end game to the supposed stalemate, a more reciprocally positive approach to mutually assured destruction has been posited as Mutually Assured Stability (MAS) or MAD with less paranoia (ISAB, 2012). This US government report involves a recommendation of several components; an understanding of each other's goals, a mutual appreciation to make each nation feel safer, agreements on responding to threats from other countries, a strategy to limit proliferation and improve nuclear disposal security. Interestingly it also examines standardization of nuclear classification and early warning of each side's accumulation of nuclear stocks. Other aspirations  involved collaboration over limiting drugs trafficking and scientific research for public health advances. These are more symptomatic of two countries with a close international relationship, forged in the goals of a strategy to improve upon MAD. Instead of expanding nuclear stockpiles and warnings about expansions of nuclear arsenals, a non binding MAS doctrine for sustainable limitation of green house gases could be created and operated along these lines. Those countries which need help developing on a lower carbon intensive trajectory can receive help through international collaboration. Overall it could be seen as MAD but with a written agreement.

By seeing climate change as MAD and having initial proportionate responses on a national level would be adequate. A preferred response is an international agreement along the lines of MAS, or even the much restricted 'New Start' treaty, the most recent bilateral treaty between the USA and Russia in 2010, commenced in 2011 (Woolf, 2014), however until now, a multilateral agreement substantial enough to address the climate problem has yet to be reached. If key nations agreed on carbon emission reduction and helped others to reduce carbon emissions, then the world would be able to enact an effective response to climate change.

The issue of geo-engineering could become a problem in the future, should more developed countries seek to offset some of their carbon emitting practices by pursuing purpose-built carbon sequestering projects. For example these could include iron fertilization of the oceans or cloud seeding, as opposed to projects which indirectly sequester carbon, like replanting destroyed forests, or using lime mortar instead of cement in buildings. In the rhetoric of MAD, this is the equivalent of the planned Strategic Defence Initiative, giving one side a distinctly unfair advantage, rendering impotent the second strike of the other. This could destroy the delicate natural balance of all nations. The nations who pursue these strategies would have the ability to claim a moral right to release more CO2 into the atmosphere, as they would be able to sequester more CO2. In this light it would be better to prevent geo-engineering from happening, except for small scale scientific research to fully understand the problems and capabilities of these processes. If, in the future, a catastrophic natural event occurs, which pushes excessive levels of CO2 into the atmosphere above safe levels, such as super-volcano eruption, or a solar storm causing radiation to increase substantially, humanity will have the preparedness and capability to protect itself under an international universal agreement. Geo-engineering should therefore remain a carefully controlled practice and be patrolled globally under international agreements, firmly disapproved of for short term political gains.

The difficulty of seeing Climate Change as MAD

From the 1960s MAD worked as a system or solution as there was an intense ideological rivalry, a zero-sum game for nation states, knowing their very existence was threatened. This could be formed into easy rhetoric, 'fighting for freedom', 'fighting for the people' against a devious, heavily armed, untrustworthy, 'other'. With climate change, there is no 'other' there is only ourselves. We are consuming, burning fossil fuels, emitting invisible gases into the atmosphere. Only careful and well thought out representation can illicit the same response to illustrate the 'other' as irresponsible consumption and to inform individuals in governments and policy makers to view their decisions as either helping to advance MAD, or prevent it, even if initially the decision appears nothing to do with environmental matters.

Some would criticise this response as too negative, MAD was a system formed in a climate of fear and mutual distrust, it led to wars and proxy conflicts throughout the world. We should look at more positive ways of thinking about the climate change problem and use the rhetoric of environmental care and community to define strategies to prevent global warming. We shouldn't look at a system based on the rhetoric of conflict and fear, or we would look everyday into the abyss of despondency and risk paralysis at the scale of the task. This criticism is very valid for the general population and businesses, those who make lots of little decisions every day in what they buy, how they work, costing priorities and making profits. However, for governments making long term strategic decisions, (or even 5 year short-term party-based decisions) in competition with other large economic actors, MAD is a perfectly valid rhetoric to follow. Governments currently seen as legitimate have followed far more extreme domestic policies in the past, in the name of other rhetorical ideals, for example; China's 'One-child' policy (Greenhalgh, 2003) or California's eugenics program (Hornblum, 1998). Without mentioning countless international wars fought for much less altruistic or even scientific goals. Climate MAD should be a spur on finding and implementing alternative ways of pursuing development goals or social problems, not an excuse to inflict damage on a society.

MAD falls down when one major polluting country sees it's priorities as more important or decides to ignore economic and political actions to prevent climate change for short term internal gains. A decision like this will not result in an instantaneous decrease in national security or loss of dominance on the global stage for that actor, or even instant annihilation as with a nuclear threat. A non-state actor like a company or political party might and will ignore environmental paths to further their own aims. Initially this will be a problem as the legal political and social structures are not in existence to punish or prevent such actions, save at the margins. However, as the effects of global warming become more prevalent and more extreme events occur, moves towards prevention will come. The rhetoric of MAD could ease and precipitate this move. In the interconnected, globalised society the major polluting countries operate in, there is scope for sanctions, trade embargoes, negative market speculation all backed up by multinational coalitions. In the future this can and will make a difference to a state or company's strategy and ethics. By attempting to implement a binding structure of targets and reciprocal penalties at the start of such a system has just delayed any attempts of involving counties in such a dialogue.

Conclusion

It is hoped that the rhetoric of MAD shows a useful tool in understanding the threat of human induced climate change. That through realising the threat to each other by emitting greenhouse gases, the major polluting nations and corporations could see their own actions in this light and seek to change their behaviours, much as MAD created a workable systemic competition between the nuclear powers.  This essay has tried to balance some of the problems of this rhetorical device that overall could induce international action without initial need for ratifying treaties or coalitions. As Collins posited, we are now facing a force so terrible that we have no choice than but to 'keep the peace'. However it wasn't war that has caused this situation, as Collins envisaged, it has been the billions of industrial and economic decisions of the many, inadvertently building up over the centuries. MAD or MAS is not the ideal response for a nation or the international community to have, however it has been shown to work in the past and it is hoped, could work in the present to precipitate policy and action.

References

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