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How Did The Atomic Bomb Influence American Foreign Policy

2001 Words9 Pages

A. Plan of the investigation Nowadays, nuclear weapons are rooted in our international diplomacies in which they play a major role. Analyzing the impact of their arrival on the diplomatic stage would be interesting. Therefore, the question I asked myself is: to what extent did the atomic bomb influence the American foreign policy during the summer of 1945? The purpose of my investigation will be to establish the importance of the new weapon at the very end of the Second World War. The investigation will be done through the two major events of this period: the Potsdam Conference of July 1945, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (linked with the Russo-Japanese war of August 1945). This study is based on three historical and academic books and one magazine focusing on this period. …show more content…

This way, the Potsdam conference began two days after the latter was successfully tested on July 15th 1945. At Potsdam, Truman mentioned to Stalin that USA had “a new weapon of unusual destructive force” (Zhukov, 1971). Despite this, Stalin did not doubt the nature of the craft and its diplomatic weight at the conference was not the one expected (Dobbs, 2013). It appeared at Potsdam that the atomic experience was not enough. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an essentially diplomatic choice The choice of the bomb, justified as military, proved to be, as a matter of fact, purely diplomatico-strategic. Militarily indeed it was only a matter of time before the Empire of the Rising capitulate. For Americans, Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s bombing objective was therefore twofold: The first aim was to demonstrate to the Russians, through the destruction of these cities, the overwhelming power that was behind US diplomacy (Takaki, 1996). The Bomb and the Russian invasion of Manchuria (the Russo-Japanese

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