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The Pros And Cons Of The Cold War

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1991, the Cold War has ended without the exchange of ICBM’s and nuclear holocaust that would have followed despite heightened tensions between the USSR and the USA over a span of 45 years. Within the same year the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty 1 was signed successfully reduced most of the nuclear stockpiles that America and Russia possessed over a period of 15 years. This significantly marked a the end of vertical proliferation between these two superpowers, however the concerns of vertical proliferation shifted to horizontal proliferation with states such as Iran and North Korea developing their own nuclear programmes, therefore, threatening global peace once again. Nuclear Weapons support international peace due to the dangers of being …show more content…

The idea of assured destruction was first introduced by Robert McNamara’s speech to the American Bar Foundation in 1967, which demonstrated how in the event of a nuclear strike, America should possess a “credible assured-destruction capability,” which guarantees “certainty of suicide to the aggressor,” therefore, preventing attacks from happening in the first place . Moreover this strategy demonstrated the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, as just one strike damaging enough to cause widespread suffering, therefore, making it highly undesirable to provoke nuclear capable nations, which can explain why nuclear weapons support peace, albeit a negative one. In addition the USSR during the Cold War, outlined by John A. Battilega (2004, p.160) was also reluctant to utilise nuclear weapons as Soviet strategists “considered their nuclear power the only guarantee of security from war, and they never examined the question of mutually assured destruction as a condition that they should accept, much less pursue .” From this we can evaluate that during the Cold War in relation to the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 that both America and the USSR respected the deterrent of nuclear weapons and, therefore, avoided direct conflict leading to a peaceful outcome despite heightened tensions. This demonstrates how nuclear weapons are capable of being instruments of negotiation and

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