secure second strike

secure second strike, the ability, after being struck by a nuclear attack, to strike back with nuclear weapons and cause massive damage to the enemy. Secure second strike capability was seen as a key nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. The strategy also partially explained the extraordinarily high number of nuclear weapons maintained by both the United States and the Soviet Union during the arms race.

Secure second strike was a concern that followed the massive retaliation doctrine (also known as nuclear utilization theory), in which nuclear retaliation would be threatened in the event of an attack, and ignored the implications of mutually assured destruction (MAD), in which both the attacking and defending states would be annihilated. The policy of the United States in the early 1950s was that the country should be prepared to respond to security threats with nuclear weapons. This policy was established in the context of recognition of the overwhelming superiority of Soviet conventional forces.

By the early 1960s, the U.S. defense establishment realized that the most likely outcome of an outbreak of nuclear war would be the elimination of both sides. This understanding came to underpin the maintenance of the balance of power and negotiation of peace agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their nuclear arsenals. The secure second strike doctrine was criticized by most experts for failing to recognize that the number of weapons unleashed in such a scenario would automatically make life impossible throughout much of the world.