Mutually assured detention

Non-BJP chief ministers are retaliating. If Centre can use its agencies to threaten, intimidate and jail its rivals, so can they. Fightback has become an established pattern and will get more intense

School kids are super smart these days. But even if they weren’t, they’d tell you at once what the so-called MAD doctrine in international strategic affairs means.

It is Mutually Assured Destruction. Where if one nation uses a nuclear weapon against the other, the retaliation will come with three and so on. Because both warring parties are convinced of this mutually assured destruction (MAD), they keep the peace. The logic has kept the peace among big powers for 75 years now, never mind that Vladimir Putin has been checking the outer limits of that restraint lately.

But what’s the emerging