Reagan, Nuclear Weapons, and the End of the Cold War

Abstract

During the twenty years of close, sometimes fraught, and eventually constructive diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union lasting from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, the state of the nuclear balance between them was never far from the center of their attention. During the Cold War era conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union took on a heightened significance because of the possibility, however remote, that such crises might escalate to the level of all-out thermonuclear war. Even in the absence of crises, supposed imbalances between the nuclear forces of the two superpowers, especially if linked to an alleged operational superiority possessed by one side or the other, could themselves become sources of enmity as the inferior side sought to eradicate its disadvantage with a build up of its own nuclear arsenal.