Mutually Assured Destruction was a term invented by or for Robert McNamara. JFK had won the 1960 election largely on the meme that Eisenhower and his VP, Nixon, had allowed a "Missile Gap" to develop between the United States and the USSR.
In April of 1961, as the new SecDef, he asked for a briefing from the JCS and SAC detailing the "Gap."
They sat him down, and explained that the Missile Gap didn't exist. We had so many missiles and bombs, from ICBMs, SLBM, and B-52s in 24 hour orbit, down to tactical nukes from fighters, that police stations and Party headquarters buildings in towns of more than 10,000 had been had been targeted, just to use them all, and confirm that the USSR would never be able to mount an attack.
Here is the tippy top secret: Our intent was "Launch On Warning." If the CIA and the NSA came to the President with proof that the USSR was PLANNING an attack, (Remember, that by this time, we were watching every movement by satellite.), we would launch first. Within 2 hours, on the President's order. There is no point in nuking an empty silo. Estimates ran to 380,000,000 Russian dead, before one of their unreliable birds cleared a silo. The Russians knew that there was a finger on the Button, itching to vaporize the entire country. They never came close. It was always bluster, and back door subversion.
MacNamara was horrified. For the rest of his career, he spent every waking moment trying to convince the President not to listen to the CIA. He came up with MAD, and put it out, trying to pressure the rest of the country to reject 'launch on warning.' You hear a lot about MAD, still, as if the Feds would have let NYC vanish as a justification for shooting back.
You really think this current administration would shoot back at anybody that took credit for the mushroom cloud? He'd invite them over for a beer summit to talk things out.
All true. Good history lesson FRiend.
An additional fact seldom reported is that up to the point of the Cuban crisis, our planned military response to any Soviet aggression was to ‘shoot the works’ not only at the Soviet Union, but at Red China, North Korea, Communist East European Warsaw Pact nations, ANY point on the planet that represented even the slightest threat to us.
McNamara WAS horrified, although General Curtis LeMay was urging a preemptive first strike (and personally, I think he was correct in doing so, had we taken out the Soviet Union for good in ‘62, history would have taken a far more favorable turn so far as our Nation is concerned), it became apparent that there was a need to develop measured partial retaliatory options, hence the creation of the ‘SIOP’ (Single Integrated Operational Plan).