Nuclear Weapons: An International History

This book explores the history of nuclear weapons from the discovery of nuclear fission at the end of 1938 to Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech to the United Nations in December 1988. I attempted an international history, for two reasons. First, a great deal has been written about U.S. policy, much less about the other nuclear superpower. I use newly available Russian sources including archives, interviews, and memoirs, to examine the Soviet Union not merely as a threat and a target, but as an actor with its own nuclear program and its own ideas and goals. Key elements of nuclear history – arms racing, deterrence, crises, arms control, and above all the danger of nuclear war – necessarily involve, in one way or another, more than one country, more than one actor. That is why it makes sense to attempt an international history.

Second, the historiography is very largely about national programs and national policies, but our theories about nuclear weapons and international relations focus – naturally – on relationships. I have tried in the book to bring theory and history into contact with each other – not to test theory, rather to see theorizing (for example, about brinkmanship or escalation) as part of the history: what problems were the theories responding to, what were they advocating, and what effect did they have? These interactions need to be understood, as far as possible, from multiple angles if we are to understand the nuclear history of the Cold War. Does this history suggest lessons for today?