During the third phase, from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union intensified the arms race but sought to create greater stability through a set of formal agreements relating to nuclear testing and weapons systems. The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 brought the Superpowers to the brink of nuclear Armageddon and was a watershed in the arms race and the Cold War as a whole. In the second phase, beginning in the second half of the 1950s, both sides acquired inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology, but Soviet exaggeration of its capabilities generated an increased sense of American vulnerability and greater tension in U.S.–Soviet relations. Although political relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated rapidly after the Second World War, the United States was relatively secure during this period because it enjoyed an atomic monopoly until 1949 and then strategic nuclear superiority. In the first phase, from 1945 to the mid 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union acquired atomic and then hydrogen bombs. This arms race, which passed through several phases, became a defining feature of the Cold War. demonstrated the power of nuclear weapons by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 it heralded the beginning of a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union (Britain, France, and China also acquired nuclear weapons during the 1950s and 1960s, but their destructive capacity was dwarfed by that of the Superpowers). President Roosevelt therefore authorized an experimental nuclear weapons program – the Manhattan Project – in collaboration with Britain and Canada. Even before the United States entered the War it feared that Nazi Germany was attempting to develop an atomic bomb. The nuclear arms race began during the Second World War.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |