ATOMIC WEAPONS HAVE BROUGHT PEACE, AND EXAMPLE IS THE COLD WAR, OR LONG PEACE Steve Chapman, February 2003 Learning to Love the Bombs nuclear proliferation inherently dangerous Anyone looking ahead from 1945, when this standoff began, would have glumly expected that sooner or later the two sides would come to savage blows. But the most striking fact about the Cold War was its peacefulness. Not only did all those nuclear weapons go unused, but American and Soviet soldiers never met on the field of battle. Historian John Lewis Gaddis argued that the period was misnamed Instead of the Cold War, he said, it may well be remembered by history as the Long Peace. Writing in 1987, he noted that it compared favorably "with some of the longest periods of great power stability in all of modern history" Ina century marked by the greatest and most deadly wars ever seen, this era of tense truce came as a surprise, and might be seen as a miracle. But nothing supernatural was involved. Human nature didn't suddenly change. Nations didn't cease to regard each other with suspicion and distrust. But at least one important thing made the postwar world different the invention of atomic weapons. As the military theorist Bernard Brodie wrote in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now its chief purpose must be to avert them"
