Following the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the twentieth century was haunted by the specter of nuclear annihilation. Locked in a hostile embrace, the U.S. and the USSR engaged in a ruinous arms race preparing for the kind of war no one wanted and no one could win. Though the Cold War ended, the dangers of nuclear proliferation remain, with poorly secured nuclear weapons and materials vulnerable to theft, sale, accident, or misuse. The many debates over the years surrounding the arms race, proliferation, deterrence, and security are collected here to provide readers with a fine-grained sense of the international tensions, political urgency, diplomatic strategies, and global fears that have long underlined the effort to build and maintain nuclear arsenals.

This new edition of a very current interdisciplinary book covers both technical material and social issues, to give readers of all backgrounds a sense of the overall implications of the arms race. Weapons are the primary focus of the book, with the history of their development and nuclear politics included in the introductory chapters. There is a thorough discussion of global nuclear exchange, which considers the consequences of an all-out nuclear war, the psychological impact of the threat and actual nuclear war; the atomic bombings of Japan; and the biological effects of radiation from nuclear weapons.

Discusses the development of nuclear weapons, the race for nuclear supremacy, deployment of these weapons during the Cold War, and disarmament.

The Cold War introduced new military arsenal, weapons of mass destruction. The United States and the Soviet Union invested billions of dollars into the development of sophisticated and destructive weapons. Creating a dangerous military arsenal became another objective. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb. This book examines how nuclear proliferation and the arms race influenced the trajectory of the Cold War.

Written by two preeminent authors in the field, this book provides an accessible global narrative of the nuclear arms race since 1945 that focuses on the roles of key scientists, military chiefs, and political leaders. The first book of its kind to provide a global perspective of the arms race, this two-volume work connects episodes worldwide involving nuclear weapons in a comprehensive, narrative fashion. Beginning with a discussion of the scientific research of the 1930s and 1940s and the Hiroshima decision, the authors focus on five basic themes: political dimensions, technological developments, military and diplomatic strategies, and impact. The history of the international nuclear arms race is examined within the context of four historical eras: America's nuclear monopoly, America's nuclear superiority, superpower parity, and the post-Cold War era. Information about the historical development of the independent deterrence of Britain, France, and China, as well as the piecemeal deterrence of newcomers Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea is also included, as is coverage of the efforts aimed at the international control of nuclear weapons and the diplomatic architecture that underpins the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

The volume contains papers presented to the Eleventh Course of the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (ISODARCO) held in August 1986 at San Miniato, Italy. Attention was focused on the international aspects of arms control and disarmament.