Nuclear Balance of Terror: 25 Years After Alamogordo

Report Outline
Nuclear Arms Race and Strategic Policy
Quarter-Century of Atomic Development
Effort to Restrain Nuclear Arms Race
Special Focus

Nuclear Arms Race and Strategic Policy

The age of nuclear weapons will soon be 25 years old. It was on July 16, 1945, that the first atomic bomb—a pygmy compared with its descendants—was successfully tested on a remote stretch of desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The first fire-blast to be caused by the splitting of atoms marked far more than the birth of a superior weapon. So much was changed in that instant of atomic energy release that the years immediately preceding it seem to belong to a totally different era. A few weeks after the triumph at Alamogordo, the bomb proved, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, its unique power to terrorize a powerful enemy into surrender. But though the bomb ended the war, the euphoria of peace was tempered, for victor and vanquished alike, by the existence of so destructive a weapon and the fear that it would someday bring about the doom of man.

Changes wrought by the bomb soon became apparent: It forced an overhaul of strategic planning for national defense, injected a radically new factor into the old game of power politics between nations, initiated an era of “grand alliance” between the scientific community and the military establishment, and inaugurated a new kind of open-end arms race of astronomic cost to the taxpayer. The bomb had other pervasive effects: it created a new stimulus for pacifism, thrust a number of once politically indifferent scientists into the unaccustomed role of political activists, and contributed markedly to an element of nervous distemper in the psychological climate that infected an entire generation of youth the world over. Ultimately it brought the two leading military powers of the world—the United States and the Soviet Union—into a shaky state of equilibrium popularly known as the “balance of terror,” a state in which each has more than enough arms on the ready to demolish the other within a few hours.

Over the quarter-century since Alamogordo, both nations have pressed forward in a competitive arms race. They have not only increased their stockpiles of deadly weapons, but have engaged in a continuing effort to improve their firepower and to refine their delivery systems. So today we have not simply a supply of bombs to be airlifted to drop points, but elaborate systems of nuclear defense and offense of a complexity and sophistication beyond the dreams of 25 years ago.