NUCLEAR WEAPONS
NUCLEAR WEAPONS derive their energy from the splitting (fission) or combination (fusion) of atomic nuclei. This category of weapons taken together may have finally fulfilled the wish of technologists throughout history for a weapon so terrible that it would make war between great powers obsolete. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history, yet no two nations possessing nuclear weapons fought a major war against one another.
The nuclear era began with the MANHATTAN PROJECT, the secret American effort during World War II to construct an atomic bomb. On 6 July 1945 the world's first atomic explosion was created during a test in the New Mexico desert. On 6 and 9 August, respectively, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic bombings, and on 10 August Japan offered to surrender. The wave of celebrations in the United States that followed the end of the war were tinged with an immediate sense of shock at the terrifying power of this new class of weaponry. In a world where the science fiction of
H. G. Wells had suddenly become a reality, anything seemed possible, and popular reactions to the bomb varied widely. Many feared that the next world war would result in the literal extinction of humankind, and to witnesses of two world wars in the space of three decades, a third world war seemed a virtual inevitability. Others searched for hope in the new "atomic world, " imagining the imminent creation of a world government, the abolition of war, or even a utopia where the atom eradicated disease and provided limitless electrical power. While no such utopia emerged, nuclear energy did eventually fight cancer and generate electricity. No aspect of American society escaped the cultural upheavals of the bomb. By the early 1950s even schoolchildren were instructed by a cartoon turtle that they "must be ready every day, all the time, to do the right thing if the atomic bomb explodes: duck and cover!"
Political, military, and intellectual elites within the United States also grappled with the implications of nuclear weapons. A group of academic nuclear theorists led by Bernard Brodie began developing theories of deterrence for a world where preventing war seemed to be more important than winning one. Military leaders hoped that the American monopoly on nuclear weapons would deter any potential aggressor for the time being, but even optimists did not expect this monopoly to last more than a decade. If war with the Soviet Union did come, and "war through miscalculation" as well as by conscious design was always a fear, planners did not believe that the use of tens or even hundreds of atomic bombs would necessarily bring victory. Expansion of the American nuclear stockpile continued at the maximum possible rate, and following the first Soviet atomic test (years before it was expected) in August 1949, President Harry S. Truman gave permission to proceed with the development of a whole new kind of nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. Unlike an ordinary atomic bomb, no theoretical or even practical limit existed on the terrific energy released by the explosion of one of these new "thermonuclear" weapons. In 1957 the Soviet Union tested the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and the United States soon followed suit. The potential warning each side might receive of an attack from the other was now reduced from hours to minutes. As a result of these and other technical advances, by the early 1960s political leaders on both sides had reached the conclusion that in any global nuclear war neither superpower could hope to escape unacceptable damage to its homeland.
This realization did not prevent the continuation of the nuclear arms race, however. Each side feared that a technological breakthrough by the other might yield an advantage sufficient to allow a preemptive "first strike" so powerful as to make retaliation impossible. To prevent this, each superpower had to secure its "second strike" capability, thus ensuring the continuation of the deterrent of "Mutual Assured Destruction" or MAD. To this end the United States constructed a "strategic nuclear triad" built around an enormous armada of intercontinental bombers, a force of approximately one thousand land-based ICBMs, and beginning in 1960, a fleet of submarines equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. In the 1970s MAD was threatened by the creation by both sides of ICBMs that could deploy multiple warheads, each potentially capable of destroying an enemy missile while it was still in its hardened silo. Another potential threat to MAD was the advent of antiballistic missile (ABM) systems. Both sides had worked on these since the 1950s, but in recognition of the technical difficulty of "hitting a bullet with a bullet" and of the possibly destabilizing nature of a partially effective defense, in May 1972 the two superpowers signed the ABM Treaty, severely curtailing deployment of and future research on such systems. In the 1960s and especially the 1970s nuclear weapons had become so plentiful for both sides that they were deployed in large numbers in a tactical role as well. Relatively small ground units and even individual ships and aircraft were now potential targets of nuclear attack. This raised at least the realistic possibility for the first time in the Cold War of a successful defense of Western Europe against a Soviet ground assault.
The question remained, though, of just how many Europeans might be left after the radioactive smoke had cleared from such a "successful" defense. Advocates of a nuclear freeze swelled in number both in Europe and in the United States, and following the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, popular fears of nuclear war grew to a level not seen since the 1950s. Reagan also challenged the prevailing logic of MAD, renewing the ABM debate by calling in March 1983 for the creation of a vast new system of defense against nuclear attack through his "Strategic Defense Initiative" (derided by critics as "Star Wars"). This final round of the arms race was cut short, however, by the collapse of the Soviet economy in the 1980s and in 1991 of the Soviet Union itself.
In the years that followed the end of the Cold War nuclear fears, both public and governmental, rapidly switched from a general nuclear war to the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons by "rogue states," such as Iraq or North Korea, and whether or not to build a limited national missile defense system. After the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, nuclear terrorism became the greatest potential nightmare of all.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boyer, Paul. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. First published in 1985.
Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Random House, 1988. Thoughtful combination of history and memoir.
Carter, Ashton B., John D. Steinbruner, and Charles A. Zraket, eds. Managing Nuclear Operations. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1987. Standard reference work.
Federation of American Scientists. "United States Nuclear Forces Guide." Available http://www.fas.org.
