Nuclear deterrence, in the form of an assured ability to inflict massive damage on an enemy’s homeland even after absorbing an initial nuclear attack by that enemy, has been a constant in American strategic doctrine almost since the beginning of the US-Soviet nuclear competition. Some of the assumptions made about nuclear deterrence need serious reconsideration. This review will help us understand why the trajectory of constantly growing stockpiles took a sharp turn in the late 1980s. The task of resolving this dilemma requires a review of the experiences of successive American presidents as they sought to control the dangers of nuclear weaponry. The dilemma that “tormented generations” face now is how to judge that nuclear deterrence has reaped its final reward, how to decide that whatever utility it had as an immediately usable instrument of unprecedented destruction to the planet has ended. But Churchill envisaged an end to reliance on nuclear deterrence, that it would someday “reap its final reward,” enabling “tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s dictum of 1955 is still broadly accepted: “…safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” Churchill described the practice of nuclear deterrence as a “sublime irony.” So it must have seemed. One of the basic nuclear constants has been public confidence in the ability of nuclear weapons to preserve peace and to protect the safety of the homeland. These factors include national leadership attitudes and the state of the relationships between nuclear-armed nations. One of them is that progress toward ending reliance on nuclear weapons for defense purposes has depended on factors other than a cost-benefit analysis of the weapons themselves. There have been constants, too, in the nuclear arena, primarily on the political-psychological side of the equation. The types of weapons perceived to be needed for deterrence have changed from “city-busting” multi-megaton weapons to lower-yield weapons. The technology of the nuclear components of the weapons advanced spectacularly for many years but has now leveled off. The perceived utility of nuclear weapons, once thought to be ideal for the conduct of coercive diplomacy, has shrunk to the point where deterrence against their use is almost their sole purpose. ![]() Numbers of nuclear weapons have risen sharply and have just as sharply declined. Plenty of changes have appeared in the nuclear arena in the past seven decades.
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