The arms race, MAD and proliferation

What the specification asks for

“Key developments in the nuclear arms race (1945–75), the development and means of delivering other weapons of mass destruction, MAD theory and nuclear proliferation. Arms limitation and reduction talks.” — examined through change and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The sequence that made deterrence stable

The American monopoly lasted four years and ended with the Soviet test of August 1949. The thermonuclear step followed quickly: an American test in 1952 and a Soviet one in 1953, producing weapons hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima device and removing any remaining sense that these were large bombs rather than a different category of thing.

Delivery is the part candidates skip and it is where the change actually happened. In 1949 a nuclear weapon had to be flown to its target by a bomber that could be shot down. By the early 1960s it could be delivered by intercontinental missile in about thirty minutes, or from a submerged submarine whose position was unknown. The submarine matters most: it is the part of the arsenal that cannot be destroyed in a first strike, and it is therefore the technical basis of mutual assured destruction.

Mutual assured destruction is not a policy somebody chose. It is a description of a situation: once each side can absorb an attack and still destroy the other, neither can gain by striking first. Robert McNamara's formulation of assured destruction as a required capability is the doctrinal version of that arithmetic.

Proliferation, and the other weapons

Britain tested in 1952, France in 1960 and China in 1964; India followed in 1974. The Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 divided the world into states that had tested before 1967 and states that undertook not to acquire the weapon, in exchange for access to civil nuclear technology and a promise of disarmament negotiations by the nuclear powers.

Chemical and biological weapons developed alongside. The Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 banned development, production and stockpiling — going considerably further than the 1925 Protocol's ban on use — while chemical weapons were not comprehensively banned until the 1990s, outside this option's key dates but worth knowing as the endpoint.

Why the treaties did not stop the numbers rising

SALT I in 1972 capped the number of launchers — missiles and submarine tubes — and the ABM Treaty of the same year limited defences, on the logic that a defence which worked would destabilise deterrence by making a first strike survivable. Both are genuine achievements and both left one thing untouched.

The untouched thing was the multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle: several warheads on one missile, each aimed separately. Capping launchers while that was being deployed meant that warhead numbers went up throughout the era of arms control. That single technical fact answers most examination questions about how far détente limited the arms race, and it is far more precise than saying the treaties were not really effective.

There is a reason the negotiators chose that quantity, and it is worth stating because it turns an apparent failure into an explanation. Launchers can be counted from orbit: a missile silo is a hole in the ground of a known size and a submarine has a fixed number of tubes. Warheads cannot be counted without opening the nose cone, which in 1972 meant inspection on the other side's territory, and neither government would accept that. So the treaty limited the thing that could be verified rather than the thing that mattered, and arms control was shaped by the technology of observation as much as by the technology of attack.

The same point explains why 1987 was different. The INF Treaty removed a whole class of missile and provided for inspectors on the ground at the sites where they were destroyed, which is an intrusion the leaderships of 1972 would not have contemplated. What changed between the two agreements was not principally the arithmetic of the arsenals but what each side was willing to let the other see, and a candidate who can say that has explained the difference between limitation and reduction rather than merely naming it.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

August 1949

The first Soviet atomic test ends the American monopoly. Why this date: It converts a one-sided weapon into a relationship, which is the precondition for everything called deterrence afterwards.

1952 and 1953

American and Soviet thermonuclear tests. Why this date: The jump in yield removes the possibility of treating nuclear weapons as very large conventional ones.

1968

The Non-Proliferation Treaty is opened for signature. Why this date: It fixes the distinction between states that had tested by 1967 and everybody else, which is the structure of the proliferation argument ever since.

1972

SALT I and the ABM Treaty are signed. Why this date: They cap launchers and limit defences while leaving multiple warheads per missile alone, which is why warhead numbers rose during arms control.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1949 — The first Soviet atomic test, four years after Hiroshima.
• About 30 minutes — The flight time of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the number that made warning and decision times the central problem of the era.
• 1968 and 1972 — The Non-Proliferation Treaty and SALT I — the two agreements a candidate must be able to date and distinguish.

The people to place

• Robert McNamara — United States Secretary of Defense, 1961–68; formulated assured destruction as a stated requirement.
• Andrei Sakharov — Soviet physicist central to the thermonuclear programme who became a public critic of the arms race.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'deterrence kept the peace' reading: No direct war between the superpowers occurred in forty-five years, and the arithmetic of assured destruction is the best available explanation for a peace that no previous rivalry of that intensity achieved. Contested by The reading that stresses how close the system came to failure — Cuba in 1962, false warnings, and crises managed by chance as much as by design — and argues that survival is not the same as safety..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Arms control treaties reduced the number of nuclear weapons in the 1970s.

This: SALT I capped launchers, not warheads, and multiple warheads could be carried on one missile. Warhead totals rose through the 1970s. Reduction, as opposed to limitation, belongs to the INF and START agreements of 1987 onwards.

Not this: Mutual assured destruction was a policy adopted by the superpowers.

This: It is a description of a strategic condition produced by survivable second-strike forces. Governments planned around it, including planning to fight nuclear wars, rather than choosing it.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Limitation and reduction.

The distinction: SALT limited how many launchers could exist. INF in 1987 and START afterwards removed weapons that already existed. A question about arms control between 1945 and 1975 is about limitation, and saying so is worth a mark.

Blurred: Proliferation and the arms race.

The distinction: The arms race is the two superpowers accumulating; proliferation is the number of states possessing. Britain, France, China and India changed the second without changing the first much, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty addresses the second only.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer sees that the treaties of 1972 measured the wrong quantity and that this was not a failure of will but a failure of definition: a cap on launchers is easy to verify by satellite and a cap on warheads was not, so the negotiable limit and the dangerous limit were different numbers. Arms control was constrained by what could be counted.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The multiple-warhead point. It converts a vague complaint that the treaties did not do enough into a specific mechanism with a date, and mechanisms are what the AO2 marks are for.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which nuclear weapons in 1975 were different from those of 1945. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of the nuclear arms race in the years 1945–72. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant were arms limitation talks in changing the nuclear arms race, in the years 1945–75? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far were developments in delivery systems responsible for the stability of nuclear deterrence, in the years 1945–75? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The decision to drop the atomic bombs
• Next lesson: Conventional and guerrilla war, 1945–75
• Key topic 3 · New forms of conflict – nuclear and guerrilla war versus conventional war, 1945–75 · The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The changing nature of warfare and international conflict: The changing nature of warfare, 1919–39 · Changing methods of warfare by land, air and sea, 1939–45 · Conventional war and the development of 'new' wars, 1976–2000 · Changing methods of warfare at the beginning of the 21st century, 2000–2011