What is the relationship between nuclear weapons and political outcomes in international relations? Over the course of Cold War policy and scholarly debates, a powerful strain of thinking emerged on this question. This body of thought culminated in the 1980s as the “theory of the nuclear revolution,” often referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), and it soon became the dominant theory of nuclear politics. Once nuclear arsenals are sufficiently large and secure against preemptive attack, the theory argues, no state can hope to launch a nuclear war without being utterly destroyed in retaliation – the condition of MAD.