Obama- SAD instead of MAD?

In the decades following the Second World War, America has employed the MAD doctrine to provide a reasonable level of protection in a nuclear world. MAD, of course, stands for Mutually Assured Destruction; the premise being that no nation with nuclear weapons could attack another nuclear-armed nation without expecting that both nations would be destroyed in the resulting nuclear exchange. In that case, no nation could gain from attacking another nation, and so, they don't.

Pacifists and liberals have for all those same decades called the MAD doctrine simply mad. No conflict, they say, is worth destroying the world for. They also argue that there is no need for an arsenal capable of destroying the world several times over. The oft-heard slogan is "let's give peace a chance" (which would be fine if we could convince everyone else to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with us.) So from the liberal point of view, MAD has been a terrible failure; the world proceeds along balanced on a razor's edge, with obliteration just one political miscalculation away.

Yet from the conservative point of view, MAD has been a spectacular success. Consider that the First World War ended in 1918, and by 1931 Japan had invaded China to begin the long road that led to the Second World War in 1939. Twelve years or maybe as long as twenty years elapsed between World Wars, and on that schedule, another one might have been expected by 1965. Didn't happen, but there was a pretty active "cold war." Conservatives prefer the posturing and politics to the death and destruction; liberals just want to pretend it can't happen.

So the Obama Administration, firmly in the utopianist liberal camp (which conservatives refer to by its short name, "la-la land,") is apparently pondering a substantial reduction in America's nuclear arsenal. From some 8,000 warheads to as little as 300, which is fewer than China is believed to have, and many fewer than Russia's well over 11,000.  And we are apparently talking about a unilateral reduction here.

Now the point of MAD is that a counter-strike would have sufficient clout to ensure destruction of the attacker. With only 300 warheads available for an American counter-strike, an attacker might conclude they have good odds of surviving, and the deterrent effect is simply lost. In that case, Obama is giving us SAD (that's Singly Assured Destruction- of America) instead of MAD.

Of course, there may be another possibility. Perhaps this will be as successful as Obama and Hillary's other foreign policy initiatives, like the "Arab Spring" successfully bringing democracy (or is that "Islamists") to the Middle East! Or perhaps Obama's Stimulus in ensuring that unemployment never reaches 8 percent? The Solyndra success? With Obama's track record, we'd be safer if we buy umbrellas and wear sunglasses- does anyone know the words to "Kumbaya?"