Nuclear Arms Race

Improved Essays
Nuclear Arms Race “If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.” - Winston Churchill. The arms race during the Cold War was a challenge between the United States and Soviet Union to create nuclear weapons to use on each other. The Nuclear Arms Race demonstrates a Cold War problem because it made the entire war much more dangerous with the development of powerful weapons; the Nuclear Arms Race hurt the relationship between the U.S. and Soviet Union by the two nations developing dangerous weapons to use against each other. To begin, the Nuclear Arms race demonstrates a problem of the Cold War because more deadly weapons were being developed by the two countries, making it the most dangerous war that had ever taken place. “The Soviets and Americans were developing super weapons such as the hydrogen bomb that they …show more content…
For example, aerial pictures were taken by the U.S. and they discovered that the Soviet Union had developed bombs (“Nuclear Arms Race”). As a result, tensions increased and became greater between the two countries; they both now had the capability to destroy each other. “During the 1950s - 1960s the Soviet Union began to catch up and close the gap between development with nuclear weapons compared to the United States, causing tensions between the two countries to be higher.” (“The Effects of the Nuclear Arms Race on Cold War Politics”). This meant that the countries were now aware and afraid of each other and the military advances they possessed. To add, stakes of the war increased with military developments. Now, the winning side would force the other to dispose of their weapons or they would terminate them and take them for themselves. Because of how large of a conflict the Cold War was, it made the thought of the Soviet Union much

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The author argues that these changes have increased the threat of nuclear weapons as Russia has lowered the threshold for using them. Schlosser then brings up an example of NATO in the cold war. NATO used a strategy to disperse tactical weapons to the frontline to deter a Soviet invasion. Schlosser then states that the authorization for firing the weapons was deregulated and thus the threat of the weapons being fired accidently rose substantially.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cold War Dbq Essay

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The end of World War II introduced nuclear weapons to the world, little did they know it would be the cause of their next conflict, the Cold War. The Cold War was a non-violent struggle for power between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the current president at that time, Ronald Reagan, were trying to resolve their conflict peacefully. The leader that was primarily responsible for ending the Cold War was Mikhail Gorbachev, since he called for the nuclear weapons treaty and for slowing down the arms race.…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Spread Of Communism Dbq

    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “To the defeat of Nazism, the British gave Time, the Americans gave Money, and the Soviet Union gave Blood. ”(Joseph Stalin). Despite their joint efforts during World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union developed a rivalry over their different economic systems. Those systems, communism, and capitalism led to main disagreements between the two countries. Those disagreements led to the nuclear arms race, where the US and the Soviet Union races to produce the greater number of nuclear bombs, and to the race for space, where both countries raced for dominance in space.…

    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Cold War Dbq Analysis

    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Document 3: War. A subject matter that isn’t that hard to understand, for example the definition according to google is, “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.” This definition isn’t really that meaningful because it doesn’t say anything about how wars are started, how it affects society, economics, culture, and many other things. Although google gives a very broad definition of war, every war is different no matter what happens. Every war has started differently, different people dead, different consequences and historical background that has shaped the future of the world we live in.…

    • 898 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Arm Race Research Paper

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the mid 1950s it was generally accepted that in a nuclear war the concept of a victory was ludicrous. Then the third major naval arms race, involving the U.S, Britain, and Japan, had erupted at the end of WWll. Then the leads and lags in an arm race against a background of a hegemonic struggle characterize the cold war as well. Also the arm race, arm control, and the history of cold war, by Patrick Glynn.…

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cold War Dbq

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages

    It has become common today to underestimate the clash during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as there was no actual fighting between these countries. However, the Cold War was a time of strong tension primarily between the United States and the Soviet Union, which affected many countries around the world. During World War II, the USSR and U.S were allies fighting against Hitler and the axis powers. Nevertheless, the political differences between the Soviets and the Americans intensified after the WWII as both nations tried to spread its own ideology for global domination. During the Cold War, these nations did not directly drop bombs on each other or fire missiles, but created immense tension by testing their own…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cold War Dbq

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Cold War was a time of heightened geopolitical tensions between the two global superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. It is known as the Cold War because while battle did not ensue between the Western and Eastern Blocs, major proxy wars supported by both sides occurred. It was a conflict between capitalism and communism, democracy against authoritarianism. During this time, both sides stockpiled on nuclear arsenal, but never ensued in an all-out war on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The Soviet Union was not the only national threat: various problems brewed on the domestic front.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Atomic Bomb Dbq

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As scientists were discovering new isotopes for a bigger and more powerful bomb, people waited frantically wondering what to expect in the event of a nuclear war. The United States laid its fate and security in the hands of influential men. For example “Internationally, Reagan purposefully engaged the Soviets in an arms race, whereby he and his advisors hoped U.S. technological and economic superiority would strain the Soviet…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dbq Arms Race

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages

    From the period of 1949 to 1963, the Arms race was a period were there which saw two superpowers the USA and the USSR increasing their nuclear technology developments. The arms race ultimately prevented tensions from escalating into an actual fully fledged war. On the other hand there were de-stabilising factors that put both countries on the brink of nuclear warfare and the world at risk of annihilation, such as the pressure of domestic politics, hot wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the Cuban missile crisis. Regardless of these factors the war remained a Cold war. This is because the arms race created the most important stabilising factor which was mutually assured destruction.…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Why did the cold war start? Why did we make more bombs and weapons then we needed too? Why does the soviet union and the united states hate each other? The war began many resources, and they used many weapons during the war. The first thing that this essay will talk about is why did the cold war start.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Japan the Soviet Union felt that they need to create their own nuclear weapon to ensure that the U.S. would not use one on them. Then in 1949 the Soviet Union set off their first nuclear weapon. The Soviet Union’s nuclear bomb test scared America because now the U.S. was not the only one with a nuclear weapon and now it felt threatened. As a result of the Soviet’s test the U.S. started to produce more nuclear weapons under the idea of deterrence. “The stockpile of both the United States and the Soviet Union increased in a nuclear arms race as each sought to develop a deterrent to the other, involving a second-strike capability” (Carlisle).…

    • 1824 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since the beginning of the Cold War in 1947, tensions had been gradually increasing between the Soviet Union and the United States. However, in 1962 tensions reached an all-time high when the United States found evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this tense period, the entire world held its breath fearing global disaster. The Cold War at times threatened to become a direct confrontation between the superpowers. Looking back, a victory in terms of the Cuban Missile Crisis alludes to achieving foreign policy goals, and although both succeeded in the short term, Khrushchev was the ultimate victor in the long run.…

    • 1356 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Atomic Bomb Effects

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Apollo 11 space mission is one scientific accomplishment that stemmed from the alarm that the Russians would send missiles to the States from the moon. Additionally, the uncertainty about whether or not both countries had atomic bombs in their arsenal kept the tension surrounding the Cold War at an all-time high. The potential weapons developments kept the battles at bay because both countries knew that if either opponent sent a bomb, the only viable result would be a mutually destructive nuclear…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Essay On Arms Race

    • 1723 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The Cold War began at the end of World War Two with the destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American atomic weapons. This led to the rapid surrender of Japanese forces, causing the U.S. To possess the most dangerous and destructive weapons, known to mankind. But the soviets did not want this to be the case and rapidly started developing atomic weapons of their own, this beginning a new generation of warfare, a nuclear arms race, which would last four four decades until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. An arms race refers to a rapid increase in the quality and/or quantity of instruments of military and naval power by rival States in peacetime.…

    • 1723 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays