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It's widely believed that the use of the bombs in WWII as a practical demonstration of the technology is what lead to there not being a WWIII and generally a pe

It's widely believed that the use of the bombs in WWII as a practical demonstration of the technology is what lead to there not being a WWIII and generally a period of (granted, uneasy) world stability throughout the cold war. Thanks to the bomb's use at the end of an almost-finished conflict, everyone was too afraid of the destruction to turn the cold war hot. Without it, the cold war would have turned hot and a lot more nukes would have been used. Who knows what the world would look like today without those two bombs.

ahelwer 6y ago
Love too incinerate 150,000 civilians instead of some random atoll with media floating in a boat a few miles away This is just one of many lacklustre attempts at justifying a hideous war crime. From Eisenhower: "I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
pasabagi 6y ago
I think the USSR was typically very keen to avoid a war for obvious reasons: they had a much smaller economy, exhausted population, significantly smaller military and massively smaller industrial base than the West. America was more keen, but the logistics of actually invading the USSR would make any war essentially unwinnable. Maybe if the nukes didn't exist, the USSR would have annexed western Berlin, but I don't really know how they would have managed more than that, even if they had wanted to. I also don't think nuclear weapons would have prevented a war if the USSR was more aggressive or more close to the USA in military power.
SiempreViernes 6y ago
See wikipedia's list of common misconceptions for a demonstration of the explanatory power of things that are widely believed. Nuclear peace is a theory that find limited support for it's more conservative claims: as the single basis for the "long peace"* it is plainly lacking. *So called because intra-state conflict outside of NATO doesn't count.

ahelwer 6y ago

Love too incinerate 150,000 civilians instead of some random atoll with media floating in a boat a few miles away This is just one of many lacklustre attempts at justifying a hideous war crime. From Eisenhower: "I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."

pasabagi 6y ago

I think the USSR was typically very keen to avoid a war for obvious reasons: they had a much smaller economy, exhausted population, significantly smaller military and massively smaller industrial base than the West. America was more keen, but the logistics of actually invading the USSR would make any war essentially unwinnable. Maybe if the nukes didn't exist, the USSR would have annexed western Berlin, but I don't really know how they would have managed more than that, even if they had wanted to. I also don't think nuclear weapons would have prevented a war if the USSR was more aggressive or more close to the USA in military power.

SiempreViernes 6y ago

See wikipedia's list of common misconceptions for a demonstration of the explanatory power of things that are widely believed. Nuclear peace is a theory that find limited support for it's more conservative claims: as the single basis for the "long peace"* it is plainly lacking. *So called because intra-state conflict outside of NATO doesn't count.