Though rapid advances in technology mean that the nuclear weapons of today are far more destructive and accurate than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the basic strategic logic underlying use of nuclear force remains largely the same in the post-Cold War era. In Arms and Influence (1966), written at the height of the Cold War, Thomas Schelling understood that what sets nuclear weapons apart from weapons of the past was that they “make it possible to do monstrous violence to the enemy without first achieving victory” (Schelling, 22). It is this power to do so much damage with so little prior warning that makes nuclear weapons the ultimate coercive tool—and perhaps even what Waltz calls “the only peace-promoting weapons that the world has ever known” (Waltz, 162).
The beginning of the Cold War and the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race can accurately be described as an example of the “security dilemma,” wherein states face the tough decision of whether or not to build up their military capabilities. Though one might feel more secure if they build a new battleship or nuclear missile, such a move would presumably decrease the perceived security of their adversaries, who might respond in kind by building up their own militaries. Perhaps, then, the first state would have been better off not building new capabilities at all.
With Western Europe in shambles after World War Two, many observed in jest that “all the Russians would need would be shoes” to conquer it (Smoke, 50). The U.S. army too was mostly disbanded and in no condition to fight another “World War” in Europe. But the U.S. at this time briefly held a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and “deterrence of a Third World War became the principle function of American military power” as American leaders issued explicit threats of nuclear retaliation against Russian cities (Smoke, 51). Confronted with a “security dilemma” between allowing the American nuclear monopoly to go unchecked and raising the possibility of nuclear war by building their own arsenal, the Soviets chose the latter, completing their first successful test in 1949. This development was followed by the rapid American development of fusion bombs, which the Soviets soon matched as well (Smoke, 55). Aggressive escalations like these characterized much of the Cold War, as both nations eventually stockpiled tens of thousands of warheads.
This decades-long arms race seems to undermine the touted “nuclear revolution” theory, which posits that countries who hold nuclear arsenals which are large enough to survive a first strike and credibly retaliate should not fear conquest or compete in unnecessary arms races. The trouble with this theory is that “survivability” has proven to be reversible through advancements in “counterforce” technologies which target enemy missiles (Ibid., 15). This game of cat and mouse between nuclear arsenals and those seeking to destroy them played out even with limited technological capacity: “In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union learned that its SSBNS were being tracked by the United States, but it took more than a decade to counter this ability” (Ibid., 47).Though accurate, “casualty-minimal,” missiles are only now becoming a reality, that they are capable of undermining previously-secured arsenals posthumously validates Cold War realist perspectives which posited that every gain by the other side necessarily made one less safe (Ibid., 48). No matter the era, a nuclear arsenal’s coercive power should be measured not in megatons but in the credibility of its second-strike capabilities (and therefore the preservation of Mutually Assured Destruction).
Given that some countries will be able maintain “survivable” arsenals, nuclear deterrence continues to be a powerful force in international relations. As the characterization of the half-century-long “war” between the United States and U.S.S.R as “cold” suggests, “There has never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states” (Waltz, 5). Instead we have become accustomed to “limited” wars like Korea and Vietnam, proxy campaigns which neither side considers existentially important enough to warrant the introduction of nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence does not prevent small wars, but it seems to prevent large ones. This restraint is not necessarily only applicable to the bipolar system of the Cold War; Israel has resisted the temptation to launch an all-out war against its hostile neighbors with nuclear weapons for decades despite the fact that none of them possess nuclear weapons with which to retaliate (Ibid., 5). Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only actual nuclear attacks ever perpetrated, occurred within a war which was already total, perhaps explaining why restraint was not exercised as in other cases.
Another explanation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki which merits exploration is that of racial threat perception (Búzás). Because racial prejudices have been shown to play a role in how dangerous or amicable we perceive another state to be, it seems likely that the U.S. might have been more hesitant to drop nuclear bombs on a majority-white European nation than on Japan. Racial dynamics and threat perceptions will continue to play a role in international politics and warfare for the foreseeable future.
That nuclear decision-making can be affected by race relates to a final lesson from the Cold War: nuclear weapons do not fit neatly within rational strategic frameworks. Ultimately, nuclear weapons are controlled by error-prone humans who rely on imperfect information and safety systems when making decisions. Take the 1980 Titan II missile explosion in Damascus, Arkansas, where a dropped wrench socket led to leaking fuel and a deadly explosion (Christ). Luckily, the 9 megaton W-53 warhead did not explode; such a disaster would likely have killed thousands of unsuspecting Americans and exposed countless others to nuclear fallout (check out https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ to play around with rough estimates of the potential destruction caused by different nuclear warheads in different locations). Another close call with far worse potential consequences occurred in Russia in 1983, when Soviet missile detectors seemed to indicate that American ballistic missiles were headed towards them. Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet military officer, rightly decided to treat the warnings as a false alarm and did not launch a second-strike attack, averting nuclear war (Associated Press). The fact that we came so close to nuclear holocaust—which no one on either side wanted—should make us very worried about the potential for catastrophic human error outside of neat strategic protocols.
This is a two minute trailer for “Command and Control,” a PBS documentary about the Damascus Incident: