Mutual assured destruction

Mutual Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defenderIt is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the very same weapons.

Mutual Assured Destruction in Homeward Bound
The Race felt increasingly apprehensive at the Tosevites being able to duplicate the Race's techology and then surpass it, sending a spacehip to Home itself and even  develoing faster-than-light flight which the Race always considered impossible. This opened the possibility of Tosevites devastating Home with bombings from space without the Race being able to answer effectively. Exactly from feeling so theretened, the leaders of the Race felt tempted to lash out and order their forces on Tosev to launch an all-out premptive nuclear war.

However, finally they came up with a credible threat - should Home be devastated, one of the Race's existing sub-light ships would be used a an awsome weapon of retaliation; the ship would travl towards Tosev-3, and instead of decelerating would hit the planet at a full half the speed of light. Such a hit would release so much energy as to cause untold damage, possibly to the extent of destroying the planet atogether or making life on it impossible. Though also the Race's own colonists would in that case perish, the leaders felt ready to make the threat in all seriousness.

At least as far as the relatively reasonable Tosevites of the United States were concerend, this mutual deterrence worked, and neither side made use of the awsome possibilities at its disposeal. It remained to be seen if this strategy would also work towrds the other Tosevites seeking to develop their own FTL flight - for example, The Soviet Union, Japan and especially Germany, with its fanatic ideology and old scores to settle with the Race.