In 1945, the world witnessed how modern physics could change international politics in a way we had never seen before with the first use of the atomic bomb. The Cold War would’ve been much warmer without it, and yet no other weapon has ever been as close to wipe us all out of the Earth than this one. Nuclear weapons have reshaped dramatically the meaning of “rising tensions” between superpowers, and they have turned war into a much scarier phenomenon than ever before. In a nuclear war, there is no fight, no winners, and no heroes, perhaps not even an outcome of it.

The atomic bomb was a result of the Manhattan Project during World War II, and it was conceived as an explosive, a much mightier one than anything we had ever seen before. After the tests, and their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons proved to be much more than that, ones capable of destroying an entire nation in a single bombardment. A single atomic bomb not only can destroy an entire city, but turn it directly into a pile of ash and rubble, quite literally, thus making it more powerful than an entire army’s arsenal.

Such unprecedented strength has changed history in a quite unexpected way: The fact that a war between two major powers can completely destroy both countries, if not the entire world, has prevented direct conflict between big countries since the end of WWII. Without a nuclear arsenal, a war between the USA and the USSR in the second half of the 20th century would’ve probably happened, as the Indian-Pakistani conflicts over Kashmir have proven. This threat of mutually assured destruction is a quite unorthodox way to keep major powers away from direct conflict, yet a quite effective one to maintain peace.

This peace, however, is not risk free. After all, countries possessing atomic weapons aren’t all in the same side, and diplomatic tensions could eventually lead to a war that could end it all. This fear of total destruction is both what kept the Cold War cold, and warm at the same time. After all, there’s been several occasions on which we’ve almost edged towards the final conflict, such as in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As William Faulkner said: “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?“.

Furthermore, the possession of nuclear arsenals by strong nations prevents war between them, but it doesn’t put an end to war in or between smaller ones. In fact, this lack of conflict between major powers boosts bully wars from those powers is weak countries, through which the larger ones fight each other. There are plenty examples of this such as Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan, to list the better known, and there are many other countries in which a superpower has carried out a war that can only remind us of school bullying.

These unprecedented weapons have turned wars either into a threat to human existence, or into a form of bullying, just like the one carried out by children at the school playground. Big powers fear each others’ ability to destroy them, but rely on that might to impose their will on those weaker countries who lack nuclear weapons or aren’t backed by someone who does. This system has lasted into nowadays, and nothing seems to be going to put an end to it, whether it is a good thing or not. After all, this new point of view for international relations has given more peace than violence, especially in the wealthier countries, and war in this modern world hardly takes place in a strong nation’s territory, but in weaker ones’. War today is very different from what it was in the first half of the 20th century, and it sure will stay this way as weapons become more and more sophisticated, and the economies much bigger, and much more interconnected.

There is a lot to blame to the atomic bomb. It has been a major threat to human existence, and it has been close to put an end to it more than once. It’s also responsible for many conflicts on smaller nations waged by big powers willing to expand their influence and their dominion. In the other hand, nuclear weapons have granted a strange form of long-lasting peace for the world, only fed by our fear of mutually assured destruction. Nukes might have been a great invention to be conceived, or they may the thing to put an end to everything else. So in the end, have nuclear weapons been a good thing? The answer might just be a matter of waiting and see what happens.