Question

What is meant by the term "mutually assured destruction"?

Answer 1

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is a strategic concept connected with the ability of two or more superpowers to annihilate each other denying final victory in an armed confrontation.

Explanation:

In our modern history MAD became a reality because of nuclear weapons that can be deployed worldwide (through ballistic missiles) and have the destruction capability to obliterate entire nations. Before the fifties wars could be won by one or other opponent leaving the winner in a position of prominence even if scarred and heavily damaged in the process (Soviet Union "won" WWII but at the cost of millions of dead and huge destructions to her infrastructure).

In modern times the strategy is to assure the impossibility for the enemy to survive the war and to assure that it will be destructed anyway regardless of the result, so that instead of risking a self-destructive war it will not attack.
It is like to play a game where you cannot win...it becomes useless to play the game.

Some weapons or systems were introduced to try to bypass this strategy: the "Star Wars" program launched during the Reagan presidency was supposed to intercept (using lasers or other missiles) the incoming nuclear missiles denying the enemy the ability to strike or reducing its effectiveness. The Soviets introduced fake warheads to divert and saturate the interception capability of the system.

Massive and fast first strikes were studied to destroy the primary launch sites of the enemy leaving them with a reduced number of warheads not sufficient to operate the MAD strategy...as usual the countermeasure was discovered as to place missiles on movable platforms (submarines or lorries) to be able to move them and hide them from the enemy (securing their survivability).

Answer 2

Nuclear destruction.

Explanation:

It could be defined as an euphemism for total nuclear destruction of the combatants, a war in which there are no victors. It is a term that came into being as the Cold War escalated between NATO and the East Bloc.