The expiration of New START and China’s impending intercontinental ballistic missile parity have rendered the bilateral logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) inadequate for managing an emerging three-way nuclear competition. This necessitates trilateral transparency mechanisms, such as Joint Data Exchange Centers (JDEC), and the integration of negotiated ground-based missile defense deployments with limits on offensive forces.
The article proposes David Goldfischer’s Mutual Defense Emphasis (MDE) framework, where treaty-limited ground-based defenses expand only as offensive forces decline, aiming for very low or zero offenses. MDE posits that limited, verifiable defenses are stabilizing, provide insurance against cheating, and measure deterrence by relative damage, ensuring no favorable post-war calculus for an attacker. Imperfect defenses work through virtual attrition, forcing attackers to commit more offensive potential to penetration aids. Space-based defenses are incompatible with MDE due to indistinguishability from offensive systems. Transparency via shared launch data and jointly observed interceptor tests is crucial. Offensive arms control, particularly (MIRV)ed systems, enhances MDE viability. Past U.S.-Russian efforts to adapt the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty through demarcation negotiations and JDEC initiatives ultimately failed due to incompatible expectations and Russian fears of U.S. first-strike capability.
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