Getting MAD and Even: Nuclear Weapons, Bipolarity, and a New Kind of Rivalry

Abstract

For those who lived through the arrival of the nuclear age, claims about its newness were commonplace. Something clearly changed when it became possible for the superpowers to destroy each other in an afternoon. Yet, not everything changed. Though there were many calls for world government, particularly in the years immediately following World War II, no such institution emerged. And despite the fear of nuclear war, the rivalry of the Cold War continued until Gorbachev and the Soviet Union ended it almost unilaterally. How can this confluence of continuity and change be reconciled? If the Cold War did not end with the possibility of mutual annihilation, then what did?