Conclusion

Abstract

The Cold War might be over; we might have won it; and in Europe today we might have a high degree of order. But that is not enough. Although the peace we now enjoy is based on relatively settled political arrangements and growing economic interaction between East and West, it is also characterised by a concentration of sheer destructive power unprecedented in world history. Some of that military power will remain necessary for the foreseeable future, as a reminder of the futility of war between industrialised and interdependent societies; but a major part of it, the nuclear stockpile, has now become disfunctional. During the Cold War years the accumulation of nuclear weapons discouraged mistrustful ideological adversaries from undertaking incautious steps. Today, the continuing nuclear arms race perpetuates anachronistic ways of thinking, provides through fear the most likely cause of war between the blocs, and prohibits the evolution of a stable peace.