Friday, April 20, 2018
The Arms Race
The arms race started after america dropped the first atomic bomb on japan. With the war won against both Japan and Germany the soviet union and the united states common enemies were defeated and they had nobody to keep them working together. The united states had a monopoly on nuclear weapons until 29th of August, 1949 when the soviet union had their first nuclear weapon test. At that moment the race was on, both the united states and the soviet union continued to make nuclear weapons, each bigger or better than the last. America believed that there was a "bomber gap", they believed that they were behind in bombers so they stepped up their game and started making many more bombers only to later find out they were ahead in bombers and were putting much more effort into building these bombers than the soviets were. The soviets were focusing on a different delivery system, the missile, they would be able to fire a nuclear warhead from anywhere in the world to the united states or any other enemies of the soviet union. This scared the hell out of american's so they shifted gears to the same method, they started to build missiles that could reach the soviet union. Eventually tension was lowering and both countries slowed down their nuclear weapon productions.
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The arms race was really intense and very suddenly sent America and the USSR into a heated battle of perceived strength. The entire world was terrified when they saw how much damage a single bomb could do to an entire city without even a moment's notice. The USSR and US didn't just want to beat each other, they wanted to have the defensive power of mutually assured destruction.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree, after the first nuclear bombs were created, both sides didn't just want to have more bombs than the other just to gain more, but to have defense to intimidate the other. This defensive power to show that if one drops a bomb the other will also be dropped on is called deterrence.
ReplyDeleteOne thing largely overlooked is the fact that Americans believed they were behind in the arms race, when in fact they were really ahead. This fueled Americans to keep producing nuclear weapons, even though they were not really necessary. Americans were terrified and paranoid during this period of time, and the Soviets were as well. And like others said, this arms race was meant to insure security in each respective country, rather than be used offensively, although each side was afraid that an attack might happen.
ReplyDeleteThe Arms Race was a sort of competition to see who could build as many weapons as quickly as possible. United States and the Soviet Union spent nearly 15 years building up their arsenal and continuing to make new technology as an effort to push each other to see who had more power. This resulted in the idea of MAD (Mutual-Assured-Destruction): the idea that countries would be hesitant to unleash a raid on each other because they realized that they would be attacked back and both countries would be destroyed.
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