Face to Face with Armageddon
John Garnett assesses the pros and cons of ‘mutual deterrence’, the nuclear defence strategy that both escalated and controlled tensions between the superpowers during the Cold War.
Two developments, one technical, the other political, have shaped East-West relations for most of the second half of the twentieth century. The first was the development of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons together with delivery systems with intercontinental ranges. The second was the onset and evolution of the Cold War, which, though fluctuating in intensity, provided the political context in which the new weapons of mass destruction had to be evaluated. These twin developments led to the strategy of nuclear deterrence which came to dominate the military policies of both superpowers from the mid-1960s, and reflected and exacerbated the Cold War.
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