The arms race: How did the arms race change the cold war conflict between 1959 & 1963?
- Created by: Jess
- Created on: 09-04-13 14:51
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- How did the arms race change the Cold War conflict between 1959 & 1963?
- Awareness of danger.
- The danger of initiating nuclear war retained both the USA & the USSR from direct, armed confrontation.The Superpowers would not have coorporated had it not been for nuclear weapons.
- The concept of the 'limited war'
- Used to avoid direct confrontation. First emerged during Korean War (1950-53). USSR took no direct role in the war & despite calls of General MacArthur to use nuclear weapons against China, Truman preferred to use military tactics that ensure the war remained limited in scale.
- Nuclear weapons forced each side to think twice before taking any measure to escalate war.
- Massive retaliation
- Based on the threat of using large numbers of US nuclear bombs against Communist aggression. It was hoped it would act as a deterrent.
- It was risky business, as Kennedy found out during the Cuban missile crisis on 1962.
- Development of Mutually Assured Destruction
- By the early 1960s both superpowers possessed enough nuclear missiles to destroy the other & systems to ensure a counter-strike was possible even after being hit first.
- Both sides recognised the limitations of this all-or-nothing approach and decided that a more flexible range of responses was needed.
- This led to the strategy of counterforce, which would use smaller targeted nuclear missiles to provide the option of using more limited action to achieve more specific objectives.
- Attitudes to conventional weapons
- If the devastation caused by nuclear weapons was too horrific to contemplate except as a last resort, the importance of convetional arms remained central to military strategy.
- Attempts to reduce conventional arms were undertaken by Eisenhower & Khrushchev; both of whom saw nuclear weapons as a cheaper alternative.
- The Korean & Vietnam wars were fought with conventional arms & showed the need to keep a numerical advantage in conventional weaponry. This would allow each side an alternative to the use of nuclear missiles, a strategy Kennedy referred to as 'Flexible response'
- Civilian impact
- The innovation it promoted led to computers & space technology; yet the vast economic cost of the arms race was to pace a significant burden on the populations of the Superpowers.
- Resources that could have been used to develop adequate up-to-date consumer goods was diverted to the military.
- The development of nuclear arms was to become a weapon by which the economic resources of the opponent could be stretched to breaking point.
- The innovation it promoted led to computers & space technology; yet the vast economic cost of the arms race was to pace a significant burden on the populations of the Superpowers.
- Awareness of danger.
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