CYIL vol. 12 (2021)

maria manuel meruje CYIL 12 (2021) The doctrine of deterrence gradually became mutual. Mutually assured destruction or MAD Doctrine consists of a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy, in which the use of large-scale nuclear weapons by two or more adversaries would cause the total annihilation of both (attack and defense). This doctrine is based on the theory of deterrence, that is the threat of using bombs against the enemy prevents the enemy itself from using the same type of weaponry. This strategy allows for a balance in which neither party has an incentive to initiate a nuclear conflict nor to disarm. Nevertheless, the US developed a military formula to overcome the evidence that the MAD Doctrine has demonstrated by empowering each of its military services with its own strategy – the ‘Triad’. Thus, the Air Force has strategic bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads (ICBMs), the Navy has submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles (SSBMs), and the Army has intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), nuclear artillery, as well as missile defenses. In theory, and in the limit, the dispersal of nuclear bombs reduces the possibility of an enemy destroying a country’s entire nuclear arsenal in a first strike, ensuring the ability to retaliate. 33 The Soviet military services only acquired the bombs from 1954 onwards and did not rely on the theory of deterrence. Thus, Russia’s approach to avoiding nuclear war has been political. In the early 1970s and after the hydrogen bomb test, Russian Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov repeated Eisenhower’s words himself in his speech to the UN General Assembly in December 1953 – “Atoms for Peace”, considering that nuclear war could result in the destruction of world civilization. 34 As far as is public knowledge, the obligation of the Russian military forces would be to not allow a surprise attack by the US. During the period of the Cold War, the debate in the US Government always tended towards understanding whether Russia would adopt the theory of deterrence or go beyond that theory. In the present context with the tensions presented by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and US or in other regions, Mark Fitzpatrick and Marc Barnett concluded in an UNIDIR study that nuclear deterrence will work up until the time it will prove not to work. 35 3.3 The system of nuclear deterrence: the Anti-ballistic Treaties The development of anti-ballistic defense systems by the two superpowers was progressively reinforced and improved throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but with internal criticism in the US, which considered that they would not be efficient in the event of activation for the defense of North American territory and that the expenditure of public financial resources was exorbitant. Meanwhile the first steps towards negotiations between the US and Russia were taken in 1964, when William Foster, Director of the US Agency for Disarmament and Arms Control, met the Russian Ambassador to the USA, Anatoly Dobrynin and they discussed the prohibition and limitation of anti-ballistic systems. The issue was not taken up again until 1969 in Helsinki, Finland, with the round of negotiations known as SALT I, and a decade later the second round of negotiations – SALT II. There has been a succession of treaties between the USA and Russia, as can be seen in the following table: 36

33 Idem, ibidem. 34 Idem, 71. 35 Fitzpatrick (fn 29), p. 31. 36 See: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/treaties-at-a-glance.

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