THE NUCLEAR AGE

From two nuclear weapons in the world, 80 years ago, to 12,500 warheads around the globe today.

The development of nuclear weapons divided the world both militarily and technologically into the haves and have-nots, as Harvard historian Plokhy writes. In 1945, the only “have” was the United States, but the Soviets, Britain, and France quickly developed their own weapons, creating what Winston Churchill called a “balance of terror,” with fear being the leading factor in efforts to control the use of atomic weapons and the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology. Treaty negotiation efforts began with a recognition of mutually assured destruction, or MAD—the reality that any country using a nuclear weapon will almost certainly be countered by another, leaving both countries in ruins. That mindset shifted in the 1980s to “mutually assured survival,” a strategic concept where nations prioritize cooperation and coexistence to avoid nuclear war. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed several treaties reducing the number of nuclear weapons in both arsenals and even eliminating entire classes of weapons. Both men were motivated by a desire for a stable international order and by visions of the aftermath of any nuclear weapons exchange (Reagan’s from the movie The Day After, Gorbachev’s from the reality of Chernobyl). The spirit of mutually assured survival seemed to indicate that the nuclear arms race was over, or at least greatly diminished. But by 1996, amid growing international tensions and increasing levels of fear and distrust, only two-thirds of United Nations member nations signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, with India, Pakistan, and North Korea among the naysayers. All three now have their own bombs, and other nations and nongovernmental “rogue nations” have the capability to build their own nuclear weapons. This “new international order” brings us back to MADness, the author asserts, with a return to the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and ’60s. Fear of enemies, both real and perceived, is once again the driving force in control of arms negotiation.

A well-documented history of the effort to control nuclear weapons.