It took a nuclear theorist from outside the government, Donald Brennan of the Hudson Institute, to publicize the ethical difficulties of this position. But Strangelovian or not, MAD remains the foundation of the way the US regards nuclear weapons today. The basic problem, generations of strategists found, was that any attempt at protecting one side of the superpower standoff made the other feel vulnerable, and thus more likely to strike out first. Fast forward to 2001. Bush and his advisers want to begin deploying a defensive system meant to protect the US against single missiles launched by a rogue dictator, or by mistake from an established nuclear power.
Defenses are for new threats.
Yet the status quo will largely still exist for the old. In other words, MAD lives. The president needs to convince Russia of this, however. If Moscow begins to believe that any US defenses are in fact aimed at shielding America from a notional Russian attack, relations could turn frosty, or worse. That is because the calculus of realpolitik would hold that a US safe behind a missile shield might be more likely to lob weapons at Russia.