What were the Results of the Manhattan Project and the Discovery of Nuclear War?

Question: What were the Results of the Manhattan Project and the Discovery of Nuclear War!?

In Particular: Political, Social, and Economic Effects!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

One might very well assert that the creation of nuclear powers heralded in an end to the sort of major world conflicts that had characterized the preceding centuries!. By raising the stakes to those of potentially complete anniliation, the major powers became much more reticent to challenge one another directly!. Moreover, it rather cemented in place for some while at least, who the major powers would be, as only those with the economic and technological capacity to construct a deliverable nuclear threat would be able to affect the strategic balance of power!.

Economically speaking, the impact was rather two-fold!. On the one hand this era of peace in Europe enabled a continent ravaged by two successive World Wars to rebuild unimpaired by continuing conflict!. At the same time, the investment required to build and maintain a deliverable nuclear threat strained the resources of the nuclear powers considerably!. Bear in mind, it does one little good to build a bomb that cannot be protected from an interdictive attack, nor delivered to one's opponent!. Accordingly, you tend to need a good bit of redundancy in terms of war heads to spread out the risk of being taken out in a first-strike!. You also need a variety of ways to deliver your own nuclear threat to the enemy in case one or more of your delivery systems do get taken out!. So you end up with long-range bombers, ICBMs and nuclear tipped war heads on submarine based weapons that can hide and offer a meaningful threat of counter-strike if the other delivery systems get taken out in a surprise attack!. Add to this such variables as interceptor aircraft to interdict your opponent's bombers, and interceptor defenses for knocking down incoming missles, and after awhile you are talking about some really serious defense investments that only the largest economies can sustain!. Indeed, many observers attribute this high cost as being one of the reasons for the collapse of the former Soviet Union, as its economy was strained beyond the breaking point trying to compete with the U!.S!. build-up during the Reagan Era--though in fairness, that was only part of the problem!.

At the same time, as you may imagine, in the West there developed considerable dissatisfaction among some elements in the population over the enormous expense of the nuclear arms race even if it was being won!. Its impact on the economy, on taxes, and the power it necessarily conveyed to a growing military industrial complex was resented in pacifist circles, giving rise to anti-nuclear protests and anti-war movements in general!. Indeed, the well known and now ubiquitous peace symbol was originally an anti-nuclear protest symbol!. So I suppose that in terms of social impact you might point to the development of nuclear weapons as providing a foundation for much of today's left-wing politics in America, and for the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the implications that had on the people of Russia, and the various states that sought independence from it, and from its political orbit in the Warsaw Pact--Poland, Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia, and the various Balkan states!.Www@QuestionHome@Com