Nuclear Weapons and Strategic Power in International Relations

Introduction: The Dawn of Nuclear Power

Throughout history, international relations have been shaped by military power. Traditionally, this power has come in the form of conventional weaponry possessed by sea, land, and, later, air forces. The Second World War was decided largely on the basis of a massive deployment of these weapons, backed by enormous industrial might. Yet the Second World War also introduced an entirely new force — the nuclear weapon. The two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in a new age in both warfare and international relations.

In 1945, the United States was the only nation on Earth that possessed these new super-weapons. For a brief moment in time, it enjoyed unchallenged primacy across the globe. Nevertheless, the immediate aftermath of the war brought with it a different kind of fight — the fight to prevent the development of nuclear technology by other powers. Faced with the possibility that these horrible new weapons might fall into the hands of the unscrupulous, President Truman's advisor Bernard Baruch offered, in June 1946, to transfer the new technology to a United Nations agency so that it might be used only for benign civilian purposes and for the good of all the peoples of the world (Lefever 77). Unfortunately, the Soviet Union soon developed its own version of the bomb, aided by stolen information passed to it by American spy Julius Rosenberg. The age of nuclear confrontation — or the potential for nuclear confrontation — had begun. From this point forward, a balance of nuclear forces would be instrumental in shaping international affairs.

Nuclear Strategy in the Early Cold War

The first major conflict of the post-World War II period revolved around precisely this need to prevent the spread of influences hostile to the United States and its allies. In 1949, the bulk of China fell under communist control as the People's Republic became the world's second major communist power. Stalin's Soviet Union quickly adopted China as an ally, and both sought to expand the influence and power of the communist world. Communists tried to take over Korea, and the peninsula soon became the first real military test of the Truman Doctrine.

Formulated as a defense of "free peoples everywhere," the Truman Doctrine represented an attempt to present a newly nuclear world in the light of a classic struggle between good and evil — "fashioning a world order rooted in both a traditional balance of power and a set of forward-looking civilizational values" and addressing "the meaning of America in a globalized world" (Merrill). That meaning was based on America's role as a morally superior nation capable of bearing the burdens of nuclear power.

The attempt to roll back the communist advance in Korea was an effort to keep "evil" powers contained. Korea marked the earliest appearance, therefore, of the "Domino Theory." According to this theory, one communist nation would cause other nations in its region to become communist — the ideology spreading like a contagion from country to country. That communism was somehow illicit, and that communist states were incapable of handling nuclear weapons in a humane and civilized manner, was clearly implicit in these beliefs.

Still, the United States was not above using the threat of nuclear attack as a means of deterring the still greater threat of a nuclear-armed communist power. In response to the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, the United States had already stated in the United Nations Security Council that the Soviet Union should not be given any reason to believe that nuclear weapons would not be used against it if it launched an attack on Europe (Hilsman 19–20). The threat of nuclear action became a real option in Korea; NSC 147 explicitly advocated the use of all necessary weapons, "including 'strategic and tactical operations of nuclear weapons'" (Korea Institute of Military History 544). Much as it had been deployed against Japan in 1945, the nuclear threat was coming to be seen as the last resort — an ultimate weapon if all else failed. A nuclear-armed communist world would have to be contained at all costs, even if that meant threatening to use nuclear weapons to contain that nuclear threat.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and Deterrence Theory

After Korea, the tropics became the next battleground between the democratic West and the communist East. President Kennedy debated what to do as communist forces gained strength in Laos. Eisenhower again advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons if all else failed; nonetheless, Kennedy took no direct military action at that time (Botti 236). At almost the same moment, a seemingly real nuclear threat emerged in Cuba. Khrushchev installed missiles on the newly communist island only a short distance from the United States. Indeed, the weapons' proximity to the United States played a critical role in shaping the American response. For the first time, almost the entire continental United States lay within range of hostile nuclear forces, together with large parts of Central and South America (Weldes 43).

Used to threatening a nuclear response, the United States and its neighbors now faced the threat of wholesale destruction. Yet Kennedy's own massive nuclear arms build-up may have helped to create the Soviet threat. New intelligence in 1961 proved the fallacy of Kennedy's 1960 campaign claim about a U.S.–Soviet missile gap, but Kennedy acquiesced to congressional fears of American nuclear inferiority and to overwhelming public support for a missile-building program. In reality, the Soviet missile stockpile was tiny, and Khrushchev was fearful (Nash). Both the American "threat" to the Soviet Union and Khrushchev's reaction to that threat revealed the inherently psychological nature of the nuclear deterrent. It was not really whether one used — or threatened the use of — such weapons, but rather whether the potential for such a threat existed. The greater the imagined threat, the greater the necessary response.

The presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba represented an enormous potential danger to the United States, playing directly into well-established American and NATO policy — that for the purposes of self-defense the United States must preserve first-strike capability (McNamara). The Cuban Missile Crisis presented an almost unforeseen circumstance: a choice between nuclear stalemate and mutually assured destruction. President Kennedy chose initially to preempt the nuclear threat by declaring a "quarantine" of the island of Cuba — an indisputable act of belligerence under international law, but one that served to preempt the greater catastrophe of nuclear holocaust (Rivkin). The quarantine stated, in effect, that the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba was, on the face of the matter, unacceptable. America's real nuclear deterrent would be its ability to use the threat of nuclear attack to prevent the creation of a similar threat on the part of its chief rival. Nuclear power backed up an argument that nuclear force itself was illegitimate.

Conclusion: Nuclear Weapons as Moral and Political Instruments

International relations have been transformed through the use of nuclear strategy. What once was a contest of brute force has become a game involving the constant threat of force. The entire system is underpinned by a philosophy of moral versus immoral, of black versus white. A side claims victory in a particular move by asserting its inherent moral superiority, for moral superiority alone justifies the possession of weapons whose use would result in the utter destruction of both user and rival. The possession of weapons of nightmarish power is permitted only to those who can demonstrate that they hold the moral high ground — and they endlessly defend that high ground with the weapons themselves.

In the end, the threat of force replaces the use of force, yet that threat remains ever present. A nation retains supremacy by playing the bully. As long as no other nation dares challenge the bully, the supremacy of the dominant power remains assured. Still, the dream of obtaining more weapons than the superpower remains potent, and as long as that dream persists there will always be more "enemies" for the superpower to fight — more enemies over whom it can demonstrate its moral superiority by virtue of possessing a superior supply of nuclear weapons.

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