As my teacher once told me, please read the question or statement!

I said the principal of MAD, not doctrine of MAD.

For MAD to be considered and effective at least 2 protagonists must be nuclear armed. That was not the case in 1945. Even with both or all sides nuclear armed there must be the ability to survive a first strike and be able to retaliate.


I may be wrong, but I would have called it a principle (not principal) which, when becomes policy is a doctrine.

Yep actually seems to work quite well..

Here we go back to Rationality and where it falls down.

Wars are primarily done for economic reasons, generally to do with theft or attempted theft. All you need is someone to invade somewhere like some barren islands sparsely populated off coast of say South America, Tell everybody we are keeping them if any attempt made to retake then you will detonate a nuke.

But that wasn't economic reasons - it was done by one side as they were trying to distract the population who were screaming for them to resign due to gross mismanagement and it was claimed back by another govt who couldn't survive another PR disaster

"Wars are primarily done for economic reasons," is I'm afraid , a classic Marxist statement made to absolve the population for getting all fired up ("Nach Paris!" "We've got the ships, we've got the guns" etc etc)

One slight problem with racedoooos argument.

When Scotland becomes independent and makes England remove Trident from HMNB Clyde, you guys down in OZ will be able to buy the UK's Trident kit at a knock-down price as England hasn't got anywhere else to keep it.:D

It has been the classic capitalist or pseudo capitalist countrys not the Marxists one who have started most wars.

The selling of oil in other than US $, opening a bank that is a threat to Western ones or a threat to nationalise ill gotten gains has a predictable response.

"It has been the classic capitalist or pseudo capitalist countrys not the Marxists one who have started most wars."

Korea 1950?

Amur Valley?

Vietnam v China?

Afghanistan 1979?

The idea of Indonesia building an A bomb is unlikely - it takes them 20 years to agree on anything (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing........ consensus is paramount there)