The United States

This paper reports that three major sets of factors political, doctrinal and technical influenced the US invention and adoption of nuclear weapons, and their eventual incorporation in a strategy of nuclear deterrence that is of a distinctive US origin. The factors were modified by both technical opportunity and technical exigency, which are potent stimuli to breakthroughs. The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev on the world stage and his reception by Presidents Reagan and Bush have loosened the grip of periodic fears that resuscitate the cycle of threats and the policies that embody them. Whether present rends in the direction of a more relaxed form of deterrence and reduced force levels will be sustained depends on: the absence of superpower policy reversals, near-term success in resolving the many remaining arms negotiation deadlocks (and hence US force posture debates), and the degree to which changes in elite and public sentiment in both the East and West about the efficacy of nuclear intimidation (and especially the unprecedented change in US knowledge and perceptions of the Soviet Union) overcome the institutionalization of nuclear threat-making in US-Soviet and East-West relations. Thus, the overall failure of the nuclear superpowers to make compellent nuclear threats credible and effective should be a cautionary tale in their future relations and those of other such antagonists. There can be little doubt that nuclear weapons have, in some way, reduced the incidence and scope of war since 1945. Whether or not this might have been achieved at lower levels of weaponry remains an open question. What seems clearer is that such nuclear inhibition could have been achieved without the additional costs and risks of the superpower use of nuclear weapons to coerce change in each other's policies, including those concerning arms control. Success in these endeavors has largely been confined to success in provoking nuclear counterthreats and not compliance