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Deterrence

Source: TW

Someone was recently telling me that before nuclear weapons, there was no concept of a deterrent that could maintain peace. It is believed that nuclear weapons were the primary cause for the Cold War being cold rather than hot.

I question the idea that there was no concept of a deterrent before that. There were deterrents before nukes. The Germans had the best gas warfare capability in terms of the agents they synthesized. The British gas weapons were nowhere in the league of the German ones. The American versions were also inferior, but in sheer quantity, they were apparently way more than those of the Germans.

But neither side deployed them because they knew of the consequences of a retaliatory attack, even with inferior weapons. So, it was a true deterrence, but the war still waged on with utmost fury.

Only the Japanese with the most inferior chemical weapons used them because their Chinese foe did not have retaliatory capacity.

After WW2, several Americans like Patton, MacArthur, demon LeMay, etc, wanted to nuke Russia to different degrees. The last of the above-named wanted a complete destruction of the rUs with 100s of nukes. For about 4-5 years, the Americans had the window of opportunity to do it when the rUs had not yet built their deterrance, but desisted for diplomatic reasons. But after that, one can agree that a country (other than Israel or TSP) which develops nukes gains some deterrence from a direct Anglospheric attack.