- As a policy tool to influence the other superpower’s behaviour
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“The Cold War was…the result of the early decision by both states to manage [their] relationship through containment of influence and power of the other”
- The real destructive potential of nuclear arsenals enabled the superpowers to use them symbolically, as threats to restrict the freedom of a superpower to use war against the other’s interests
- Furthermore, the threat of war does not necessarily mean a lack of peace – symbolic threats are commonly used to secure peace through deterrence of attack
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“The means of attack and defence do not make friendly cooperation impossible, because they have, most of the time, a purely symbolic function”
- Thus the US was able to use its Massive Retaliation doctrine to influence the Soviet decision on whether to aid openly North Korea’s attack on the South, and to limit the extent of aid actually given, thereby avoiding confrontation between US and Soviet forces
- Also the USSR sought nuclear weapon parity with the US in order to gain the respectability of a superpower on equal status with the US, thereby encouraging negotiations rather than aggressive intimidation by the US
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“Soviet writers have claimed…that the growth of Soviet strategic power has restricted the United States’ ability to use its strategic forces in support of its foreign policy, and that it has made nuclear war less likely”
- Also the presence of escalating stockpiles of nuclear weapons contributed to the leaders of both states to come together to sign arms control treaties (SALT 1 in 1972 and SALT II in 1979) in an attempt to rationalise the arms race and to come to an understanding about the motives of the other superpower in acquiring increasing numbers of nuclear weapons
- In these ways, by enabling active intimidation and providing the basis for attempts for mutual management of the other’s nuclear arsenal, nuclear weapons were used as policy tools to deter open aggression and promote mutual communication, thereby helping to preserve the lack of open conflict between the superpowers
Outcomes of Mutually Assured Destruction
♪ The sobering effect: a heightened awareness of mutual vulnerability and increased global responsibility in the confrontation of the prospect of their own mortality
♫ The subordination of antagonistic ideological interests to a common goal of preserving international order
“The atomic bomb,” Soviet leaders reminded their more militant Chinese comrades in 1963, “does not observe the class principle.”
♪ “Game theory” (Gaddis): an implicit mutual agreement by the superpowers to play by the rules of the international structure: respecting spheres of influence, avoiding direct military confrontation, regarding nuclear weapons as a last resort, and accepting bipolarity
Nuclear Weapons as Detrimental to Peace
- Misinterpretation of nuclear threats posed by the other superpower
- The effectiveness of the threat lies in its believability – but while the destructive capability of nuclear weapons when launched was not in doubt, the willingness of the superpowers to actually use nuclear weapons in a conflict situation was prone to serious misinterpretation
- This was commonly due to the lack of understanding between the two superpowers (American inexperience in Great-Power politics (cf. Brian Farrell’s lecture) and Soviet views that an empire was necessary for self defence), and the commonly held view that the other superpower is always the more aggressive one
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“To conceive one’s opponent as nothing but an opponent is fatal.”
- This tendency to misinterpret has reduced the ability of nuclear weapons to function as symbolic threats that serve to preserve peace, and transform them rather into potential triggers or justification for war
- Arms race was sustained by the suspicion that the other side was stockpiling weapons in order to gain a quantitative advantage that would make a nuclear war winnable – the view here is that the other side was pursuing nuclear weapons for aggressive aims, when in reality both sides were responding only to misinterpretations that the other side was pursuing such aims
- This chronic tendency to overestimate the threat posed by the other superpower, most evident in the early stages of Cold War in the 1950s esp. after the USSR exploded its first nuclear weapon and hydrogen bomb, made it difficult to stabilise a state of reliable peace
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“It has taken time for both sides to learn that the other intended management [i.e. defensive manipulation of the other’s policy towards it], rather than harbouring desires to wage war on the other. Once the discovery was made, however, the nuclear relationship had become so complex that even well-intentioned leaders such as Khrushchev and Kennedy found management very difficult.”
- Thus nuclear arms were only a provisional measure, or the best means that strategists on both sides could come up with to maintain peace – although crucially, the presence of nuclear arms on both sides does not totally preclude nuclear war
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“Soviet leaders evidently believe that attaining parity has brought them important advantages, and while not entirely happy with the relationship (because it does not entirely preclude nuclear war) they apparently believe that there is at present no alternative to…mutual vulnerability”
- Nuclear proliferation
- The accumulation of destructive power leading to the heightening of tensions, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Role of Other Factors in Preserving Peace
- The Bipolar Condition
“…the pressures of a bipolar world strongly encourage them to act internationally in ways better than their characters many lead one to expect.”
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A “self-regulating” system: where there exists some fundamental agreement among major states within the system on the objectives they are seeking to uphold by participating in it.
- Bipolarity in this context refers to the military superiority of the US and the USSR relative to any other country, regardless of economic strength. Between 1945 and 1991 military power was equivalent to political power on a global scale.
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The importance of structure: “behaviour alone will not ensure stability if the structural prerequisites for it are absent, but structure can under certain circumstances impose stability even when its behavioural prerequisites are unpromising”. The post-WW1 settlement was one that would “integrate power with morality” (Wilson). Nobody, in contrast, would picture the post-WW2 settlement as a triumph of justice; yet peace was unexpectedly maintained, largely because other states accepted this balance of power and were content with the status quo.
- The Bilateral Soviet-American Relationship
“…in the days before the Cold War began, Russians and Americans had never actually gone to war with one another; the same claim could not be made for the history of either country’s relations with Great Britain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Japan, or France.” (Dulles)
- This was characterised by mutual independence, geographically and (to a large extent) economically
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The lack of cultural exchange – “the fact that two such dissimilar people have had so few opportunities for interaction… has in itself constituted a structural support for stability in relations between the two countries”. Americans and Russians had few opportunities to cultivate a sense of mutual contempt
- US and Soviet Domestic Structures:
Capitalism, and the Relative Weakness of the Soviet Union
The capitalist system “was conceived and designed to win the victories without the wars.”
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Deterrence offered the opportunity for the development of a military-industrial complex – deploying “a profusion of military hardware” without the risk of war. “The whole theory of deterrence has been based upon the assumption that paranoia and prudence can co-exist.” It is heavily ironic that, in the build-up of nuclear arsenals, capitalism fostered economic growth and technological research while purporting to avoid military confrontation.
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On the other hand “institutionalised suspicion in the USSR resulted from weakness, not strength… as a consequence, the Kremlin was most unlikely actually to initiate military action”. Recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war (Geoffrey Blainey), and the Soviets, plagued with persistent domestic problems, possessed no such confidence.
- The “reconnaissance revolution”
“Both sides are able to evaluate each other’s capabilities to a degree that is totally unprecedented in the history of relations between great powers.”
- The development of the reconnaissance satellite leaving no room for Trojan Horse deception; the perfection of espionage techniques rendering transparency a reality
- Ultimately this equipment and skills were also made useful in arms control treaties: Americans and Russians tacitly agreed to the use of reconnaissance satellites and other surveillance techniques to monitor compliance
- UN Peacekeeping, and Proxy Wars
“In peace and security matters during the Cold War, the main value of the UN lay in containing regional conflicts and preventing them from setting off an East-West confrontation.”
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To a large extent both the United Nations and the Third World served as outlets for the diversion of pent-up US-Soviet tensions, but the latter restrained their freedom of action in reminding them of the need for world order.
- The vetoes they frequently passed in the Security Council preventing UN interference in local conflicts enabled their disagreements to be physically enacted by unwitting proxies
- In the long term, these conflicts led to a sense of “war weariness” e.g. among American citizens at the end of the Vietnam War. This sense of fatigue, added to the prevailing nuclear threat, precipitated peace movements throughout Western Europe and America and ultimately led to détente between the superpowers.
Conclusion
“It is very hard to disentangle the effects of nuclear weapons from factors such as bipolarity in accounting for the absence of war in Europe after 1945. In retrospect, however, it seems reasonable to speculate that one or another Cold War crisis – over Berlin, Cuba, or the Middle East – might have escalated into a real war were the two superpowers not conscious of the horrendous potential costs of conflict.”
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1949) p.285
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into The History of the Cold War (USA: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.230
Peter Beckman et al, The Nuclear Predicament (USA: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1992), p.161
Mary Midgley, “Deterrence, Provocation and the Martian Temperament”, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Analyses and Prescriptions (USA: Auburn House, 1985) ed. Fred Holroyd, p.78
David Halloway, “Thinking about Nuclear War: the Soviet View”, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Analyses and Prescriptions (USA: Auburn House, 1985) ed. Fred Holroyd, p.63
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into The History of the Cold War (USA: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.234
David Halloway, “Thinking about Nuclear War: the Soviet View”, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Analyses and Prescriptions (USA: Auburn House, 1985) ed. Fred Holroyd, p.80
Peter Beckman et al, The Nuclear Predicament (USA: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1992), p.158
David Halloway, “Thinking about Nuclear War: the Soviet View”, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Analyses and Prescriptions (USA: Auburn House, 1985) ed. Fred Holroyd, p.65
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, (Reading, Massachusetts: 1979), p.176
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into The History of the Cold War (USA: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.218
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York: 1962), p.43
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into The History of the Cold War (USA: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.229
Sir Brian Urquhart, former member of the UN Secretariat, writing in an American magazine, 1998
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (USA: Penguin Books, 1992), p.262