From MAD to Madness

This deathbed memoir by Dr. Paul H. Johnstone, former senior analyst
in the Strategic Weapons Evaluation Group (WSEG) in the Pentagon
and a co-author of The Pentagon Papers, provides an authoritative
analysis of the implications of nuclear war that remain insurmountable
today. Indeed, such research has been kept largely secret, with the
intention “not to alarm the public” about what was being cooked up.

This is the story of how U.S. strategic planners in the 1950s and 1960s
worked their way to the conclusion that nuclear war was unthinkable. It
drives home these key understandings:

• That whichever way you look at it -- and this book shows the many
ways analysts tried to skirt the problem -- nuclear war means mutual
destruction

• That Pentagon planners could accept the possibility of totally
destroying another nation, while taking massive destructive losses
ourselves, and still conclude that “we would prevail”.

• That the supposedly “scientific answers” provided to a wide range of
unanswerable questions are of highly dubious standing.

• That official spheres neglect anything near a comparable effort to
understand the “enemy” point of view, rather than to annihilate him, or
to use such understanding to make peace.

Dr. Johnstone’s memoirs of twenty years in the Pentagon tell that
story succinctly, coolly and objectively. He largely lets the facts speak
for themselves, while commenting on the influence of the Cold War
spirit of the times and its influence on decision-makers.

Johnstone writes: “Theorizing about nuclear war was a sort of virtuoso
exercise in creating an imaginary world wherein all statements must
be consistent with each other, but nothing need be consistent with
reality because there was no reality to be checked against.”

While remaining highly secret – so much so that Dr. Johnstone himself
was denied access to what he had written – these studies had a major
impact on official policy. They contributed to a shift from the notion
that the United States could inflict “massive retaliation” on its Soviet
enemy to recognition that a nuclear exchange would bring about
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

"From MAD to Madness could not be more timely reading. In it, a former senior
Pentagon analyst from the last Cold War comes back from the past to warn us of the
disaster we are courting in the new Cold War. We should heed his warning."

—Ron Paul