Sunday 28 February 2010

Introduction on Use of Nuclear Weapons in Cold War

The Background
Ever since the first successful atomic bomb test in 16 July 1945 by the US, the USSR realised that there was a shift in the balance of world power. Since the US has a weapon of such massive destructive power, the USSR was not only afraid, but also at a disadvantage against the US. With this weapon in hand, the US used the “bomb diplomacy” tactic, offering information about the bomb to the USSR in exchange for the reorganization of governments in Russia and Romania. As time passed by, the USSR also had enough information to begin building its own bombs.

General Information
Basically, the two countries involved in this Cold (Nuclear) War are the USA and the USSR.

Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weapons are used. It is demonstrated by the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that neither nuclear power was prepared to use nuclear weapons fearing total destruction via nuclear retaliation. Both parties believed that as long as they have ever-improving weapons, they would be either more powerful or at least have the same power as the other party and thus would not be defeated.

In this nuclear warfare, there are a few significant events marked such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Nuclear Arm Race. In the following research we are going to make, we have made the Cuban Missile Crisis as our flashpoint.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union truly developed an understanding of the effectiveness of the U.S. ballistic missile submarine forces, and work on Soviet ballistic missile submarines began in earnest. For the remainder of the Cold War, although official positions on MAD changed in the United States, the consequences of the second strike from ballistic missile submarines was never in doubt.

Despite of the stockpiling of weapons in both countries, no nuclear exchange has really been resulted.