The nuclear revolution refers to the period of history from 1945 to the 1950s when the United States and the Soviet Union first developed the capability to easily destroy the vast majority of each others' countries and governments through the use of nuclear weapons. As the constant advancement in methods of storing and deploying nuclear weapons continues to advance, this age continues as all countries exist under the threat of obliteration by nuclear holocaust (143).
The major consequence of the nuclear revolution is that war between nuclear powers now means the potential destruction of both countries. Even if some people did manage to survive, they would be unable to rebuild the country in heavily irradiated conditions. A major war also has the possibility of causing a nuclear winter which kills almost all life on Earth (143-144).The tremendous destructive power of nuclear weapons makes their use in any conflict, even if the other side does not have nuclear weapons, absurdly costly. Although their use would result in victory, it would be come at the cost of millions of civilian casualties. This would result in social and political isolation, as well as being profoundly immoral (144).
- Many scholars, such as Kenneth Waltz, hold that the obvious insanity of nuclear war will prevent nuclear weapons from even being used. The author objects to this view because shit happens, as a history of technological and computer malfunctions have demonstrated. Moreover, the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrates that human miscalculation is also enough to nearly start nuclear war. It is not unlikely that one of these two situations will occur in the future (145).
The collapse of the USSR, by which the Gorbachev government allowed countries in Eastern Europe to collapse and for the Union to disintegrate into its constituent republics, was totally unexpected by political scientists and marks the first time that such a massive change in international power has occurred without a major war (146).
The fields of political science and IR theory both suffered a massive backlash from the fall of the USSR because they had totally failed to predict it. The most severely damaged theories were Marxism, whose main proponent had collapsed and which failed to win election anywhere in Eastern Europe, and Realism, which had explicitly rejected study of domestic political factors which eventually collapsed the USSR (146).
Attempts by scholars in the realist school to explain the reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev have failed. Realists such as William Wohlforth argue that Secretary Gorbachev's reforms made rational sense because they recognized a need to reform the economy to compete with the USA. The fact that these policies resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain and did little to help the Soviet economy refute this claim (148).
The author instead argues that the collapse of the USSR was enabled by the fact that pulling itself back from the edge in 1990 would have involved massive military expenditure which would have only had the government more internationally isolated and done nothing to enhance its longterm sustainability or strength. Faced with two bad options, voluntary collapse seemed to make more sense to many Soviet leaders (148-149).Furthermore, the Soviet leadership in 1990 did not have to worry about American invasion because they still possessed a nuclear arsenal. This meant that collapse did entail the severe risks which accompanied the collapse of other empires (149).The other aspect of international relations after the Cold War which the realist school has failed to explain is the fact that the world is under American hegemony and that none of its allies have joined a coalition against it (149-150).
- The Communism of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky assumed that war would be an essential part of the relationship between capitalism and communism. Mr. Trotsky in particular assumed that capitalist would war among themselves over access to wealth, while war would exist between communism and capitalism because of intrinsically opposed interests. Joseph Stalin also assumed that war was inevitable and structured his foreign policy on this assumption. This only changed in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev recognized that the nuclear revolution would make any future war between Communism and Capitalism suicidal (146-147).
- The one country capable to balancing against the USA, China, has not been spending a lot of money on its military and does not appear to be preparing to counter the United States. This is because the traditional rationale behind balancing was that military strength was needed to prevent invasion, Following the nuclear revolution, a direct military confrontation between China and the USA would be apocalyptic, making military investment unnecessary for deterrence (150-151).
Since the 1960s, IR theory and political science scholars have attempted to simultaneously pretend that their theory is completely rationalist and amoral while urging policy makers to accept their conclusions. Following the nuclear revolution, these claims are nonsensical, since any coherent theory must accept that nuclear war is a normative issue that must be avoided at all costs (154).
It is impossible and impractical to develop a theory of IR informed by logical deductive reasoning from first principles, a technique often advocated by social scientists, as theory must by necessity be informed by past events and historical fact, in IR theory particular the fact that nuclear war has not occurred since 1945 (153).
- Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr both held that in an anarchic world, nuclear weapons would eventually be used, leading to the extinction of humanity. Since nuclear weapons could not be uninvented, both Mr. Morgenthau and Mr. Niebuhr argued that the only solution to preventing future nuclear war was the creation of a world government to end the state of international anarchy. The author argues that working out how to achieve this goal should remain the primary focus on international politics (154-155).
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