What was the policy of mutually assured destruction?

Mutual assured destruction, principle of deterrence founded on the notion that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counterattack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated.

What was the name of the first agreement to limit nuclear weapons?

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), first proposed in the early 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and finally signed in July 1991, required the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their deployed strategic arsenals to 1,600 delivery vehicles, carrying no more than 6,000 warheads as counted using the …

What was the US nuclear weapon strategy called?

for mutually assured destruction
U.S. nuclear doctrine called for mutually assured destruction (MAD), which entailed a massive nuclear attack against strategic targets and major populations centers of the Soviet Union and its allies.

When did the Soviet Union stop using nuclear weapons?

Up to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the Soviet Union could not – in any meaningful sense – wage nuclear warfare against the US. In that case, the number of weapons mattered less than the ability to deliver them. By the 1970s, both sides had massive arsenals based on missile technologies that could target anywhere in the world.

Why was the nuclear option important in the Cold War?

Both concepts were tied to the economics of the Cold War: brinkmanship and massive retaliation relied on the nuclear deterrent to intimidate the Soviet Union and China, and it was considered much cheaper than building up conventional armed forces to do the same job. The nuclear option provided the United States with “more bang for the buck.”

What was the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign policy?

Possession of nuclear weapons gave the United States leverage in foreign relations, allowing it to use the strategy of brinkmanship and the threat of massive retaliation to deter communist expansion.

What was the most powerful nuclear weapon used in the Cold War?

e. The Titan II Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carried a 9 Mt W53 warhead, one of the most powerful nuclear weapons fielded by the United States during the Cold War. Nuclear warfare (sometimes atomic warfare or thermonuclear warfare) is a military conflict or political strategy which deploys nuclear weaponry.