Arms Race

Hey all



Today I will post the the second last topic for my section, development of Cold War, which will be the Arms Race.

Firstly - The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for real or apparent military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. (Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_race)



Cartoon of the Nuclear Arms Race in literal meaning, with Krushchev and Kennedy racing and carrying missiles.



Simply relating this to the situation of the Cold War tells us that USA and USSR were in a 'race' (metaphorical) to overtake their enemy in terms of the military aspect. Both nations were in a power struggle to reign as leader and eliminate each other, and to do so, they believed that military threatening would be able to help, which resulted in the rise of nuclear weapons.


Graph of nuclear stockpile over the years. As seen, the nuclear stockpile is steadily on the rise for the USSR, while the USA's nuclear weapons numbers dropped after 1960-70, which was the post Cold War crisis period.

To cut long story short, here are the main point about the Arms Race (from 1945-1960, mostly during the development of cold war period)

• It was - a "RACE" between USA and USSR for MILITARY POWER to rival each other



• Its events -



• USA was ahead of the Arms Race and had NUCLEAR MONOPOLY on both KNOWLEDGE AND MATERIAL.
  
  
• The USSR was working extremely hard to create their own atomic weapons. but were LIMITED by LACK OF URANIUM. However, USSR was able to draw it out from NEW SUPPLIES FROM EASTERN EUROPE, possibly because of Comecon.
  
  
• 1949, USSR SUPRISED USA by detonating it's FIRST ATOM BOMB, which USA believe would not be created till the mid 1950s.
  
  
• Following that, both countries DEVOTED MASSIVE RESOURCES AND MONEY to improve the nuclear weapons QUALITY and QUANTITY. This lead to the INVENTION of the H-BOMB (Hydrogen/Thermo-nuclear bomb). USA tested it in 1952, and USSR once again surprised USA by detonating its first H-Bomb in 1953. (Thus I believe that at this point of time, both party's nuclear technology were on par with each other. )
  
  
• To COUNTER USSR's actions of detonating the H-Bomb, USA retaliated and STOCKPILED their H-BOMBs, believing that it would INITMIDATE USSR.
  BOTH superpowers then STARTED BUILDING Inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in 1957, which were seen as the ideal platform for nuclear weapons, and this meant both parties became even more dangerous and powerful.
  
  
• In that same year, the SPACE RACE BEGAN, with USSR launching the Sputnik into space using a rocket, which was proof that USING ROCKETS, the NUCLEAR WARHEADS could be deployed and STRIKE ANYWHERE.
  
  
• By 1960, USA launched ICBMs FROM SUBMARINES, posing an EVEN GREATER THREAT
  
  
• There was a doctrine during that time called MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. If either party were to launch a first strike, it would lead to IMMINENT CATASTOPHE for both. Thus both parties aim was to stockpile weapons BUT NOT ATTACK.
  

Inferences - USA used nuclear/atomic bombs to solve the war in Asia during WWII, and I believe that they thought further development in this science would make them more intimidating. Having military access to these devastating bombs would cause other countries to no start war, for they may have shared the same fate as Hiroshima, the first victim of an atomic bomb. However, USSR took this chance to grow their military power, by also manufacturing bombs of similar powers to the USA. In the end, both got caught up in a struggle of military power frenzy, pumping in massive amounts of resources to create these terrifying weapons of destruction. Although it is true that both parties were at fault, I believe that USSR was the one to blame more during the period of the nuclear arms race.

USSR was constantly rivalling USA throughout the series of events of the Cold War, the policies, alliances and power. USA was the pioneer of the invention of the nuclear bomb, and thus to further research in that field of science was somewhat "natural instinct" for discovery, despite possible reasons like threatening USSR to push back communism. However, USSR most likely just saw it as power gap between them, and started to work on nuclear weapons as well. USA now seeing that USSR has caught up, was also alerted and started massive production of these weapons (refer to graph above, nuclear stockpile for USA sky-rocketed from about 1953-1960). Thus it can be said that USSR caused the arms race to aggravate to the point where both parties were too caught up in power, resulting in the crisis

In conclusion, I believe that although USA probably did have intentions to use the nuclear weapons to force USSR to back down, USSR's reaction of fighting back all the way resulted in the quantities of nuclear weapons to shoot up, and this lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Therefore I believe that USSR is more to blame for this event in the Cold War development.

The Arms Race would lead to death, the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the end if it did not stop.

And the winner is............THE USSR

In my next post, I will post about my last topic, which is the Space Race. In that post, I will also conclude who is the "Winner" of the Cold War, and by Winner, I mean the one who was more at fault.

Hao