Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of Global Conflict since 1945

Abstract

Atomic means national suicide. The ultimate delusion of atomic era is notion that national suicide is a feasible means of defense, and How apparently sensible and sane men could drift into such beliefs, journalist LF. Stone commented, will astound future historians, if there are any. As race to develop more destructive nuclear weapons with farther range escalated during 1950s, Stone warned: war clouds are gathering which could mean end of our species. The Russians and Americans resemble two huge herds moving toward possible conflict, too closely packed to struggle successfully against their fate. The helplessness of human kind is dominant feature of planetary landscape as crisis approaches.1Stone's comments effectively capture twisted logic of nuclear deterrence and crisis management during Cold War. The leaders of largest states consistently sought to avoid nuclear Armageddon by making prospect of a new world more horrific. By holding all of humankind hostage to possibility that full-scale conflict between strongest states would annihilate civilization, they hoped to insure restraint and compromise around sites of greatest danger - particularly Berlin, Taiwan Strait, Cuba, and Middle East. This was a strategic logic that encouraged all-ornothing thinking - stable preservation of geopolitical status quo or complete destruction in a fire of biblical proportions; an imperfect long peace or a radiated landscape where envy dead.2Despite its perversity, nuclear deterrence and crisis management worked during Cold War. On numerous occasions, American, Soviet, and later Chinese leaders stepped back from brink of conflict and sought compromise. They recognized that continued aggression against strong enemy interests would produce irreversible consequences. They recognized that victory in areas of most central Cold War disputes was not possible. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev captured chastening influence of nuclear threats most clearly he appealed to President John F. Kennedy to help untie knot of in aftermath ofthe Cuban missile crisis.3 [WJe are living at a time, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy, when it is important to achieve progress together in international affairs. It is particularly important, I would say, that this be really tangible and actual progress creating a new situation - a situation of relaxation of tension, thus opening to us prospect of solution to other pressing problems and questions.4 The moment of greatest nuclear danger in Cold War inspired strongest push for settlement among leaders who controlled absolute weapon.5A Cold War settlement, however, never came to fruition. This was at least in part because of nuclear weapons. They encouraged avoidance of war, but they also encouraged continuation of conflict. McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's special assistant for national security affairs, captured this paradox he explained that nuclear capabilities were the most potent status symbol since African colonies went out of fashion.6 Powerful states with global ambitions - particularly United States and Soviet Union - did not wish to use these weapons, but they manipulated their placement and posturing for purpose of displaying power. Nuclear warheads, missiles, and other delivery vehicles became currency for calculating strength, measure of a regime's ability to assure its own security, and security of its allies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact, two dominant post- 1945 alliances, centred their activities on deployment of nuclear forces. The use of these weapons for threats and signals of resolve, not actual war, was fundamental to Cold War diplomacy.A new international body of expert opinion coalesced around attempts to find most effective nuclear postures for national gain, without crossing threshold to Armageddon. …