Forget about World War II - did the atomic bomb stave off a large-scale, World War III-style confrontation during the Cold War, and thus save countless lives, or would we have been able to maintain peace with the USSR without the threat of nuclear warfare hanging over the leaders of both countries?
It seems to me that the 2nd half of the 20th century would have been a lot more bloody and violent without atomic weapons than with it, but I am no historian.
If we’re just talking about the US vs. the USSR, then I don’t think a conventional war was ever really a possibility. Thanks to the oceans between us, the defender would have a major advantage over the attacker, meaning that neither side would want to be the one to attack. I’m not sure how things would have played out in western Europe, though.
OH HELL YES IMO.
We would have a had a ww3 eventually. Except with all kinds of new fangled things like computers and rockets and jet aircraft and intercontenential bombers and blah blah blah.
I’ve often said the two greatest inventions were the gun and the atomic bomb.
Any war between the US and USSR would have no doubt been played out in Europe - the land part of it, at least. Either side losing its allies would have been weakened, perhaps fatally.
We can never know for sure but I agree with the idea that actually dropping the bomb helped to keep it from happening again. I don’t think blowing up battleships and fake suburbs in the Nevada desert had the impact of seeing what happened to people in cities that got bombed. The culture was full of after the nuclear war stories which I doubt would have existed without a real demo. Would MAD have worked as well as it did without the example? I have my doubts.
I think there’s a very real probability that it did.
During the Cold War “standoff”, the USSR had far more in the way of conventional forces – especially tanks – than any of the NATO powers individually (or, I think, combined). If there had been an invasion by the Soviet Union, it would eventually have been met by a nuclear threat. I think both sides realized this.
On the flip side, the Soviets having both fission and fusion weapons inhibited adventurism by the NATO forces. No European nation would do so – it would be suicidal. And they would have prevented any such attempts by the US.
So, yes, think the nuclear stalemate did prevent the outbreak of war, despite the tense situations. Even with works like Herman Kahn’s On Nuclear War suggesting that any east/west conflict need not develop into a nuclear exchange, both sides realized the sytrong possibility that it would.
I likewise agree that MAD (via nukes) staved off a WWIII event. I think the Soviets would have been likely to be adventurous in Western Europe sans the credible deterrent of nukes.
Initially tactical nukes were seen as the only way to stop a full-fledged Soviet tank rush into Western Europe. Today I think the use of tactical nukes would be a very last resort (after all, the Europeans are not keen to nuke their own territory). I believe current plans are crap loads of soldiers with man-portable anti-tank missiles. Lots cheaper and more numerous than tanks. They’d bleed the (then) Soviets dry as they rushed across Europe then push them back.
In the end though I think all sides realize that if their very existence is on the line nukes will get rolled out. As such there is no point in starting.
I think the best way to look at this is if MacArthur had his way and was able to use Nukes in China during the Korean War.
Whatever the damage, I think that would have removed the “taboo,” from using them.
Once that taboo was removed would we have seen them in other minor wars? If so then would that have made an arms race among every nation who could have nukes want them?
If so? Than that drastically changes the question and makes the world much more deadly
That was the “doctrine” that supposedly prevented war between the USA and the USSR. I don’t belive it:
-first: Stalin was nuts, but after he died, Kruschev had no intention of going to war in the west
-the USSR was economically weak, it was showing strains as the USSR struggled to build ICMBs and nuclear submarines
-the USA screwed up, in not recognizing Russian weakness. A lie was propagated by Kennedy and Johnson-the so-called “missile gap”. At no time did Soviet Russia ever have more weapons than the USA.
The net result was that trillions of dollars were wasted in weapons systems that were never used. That was good for Raytheon, GE, General Dynamics, etc. (and their Russian counterparts). A total tragedy for the taxpayers.