World War III​—Can Anybody Stop It?

“FOR the love of God, of your children, and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness!” These impassioned words were recently addressed to the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, which are presently engaged in the greatest arms race in history. The speaker was no ill-informed alarmist. He was George F. Kennan, former United States ambassador to Moscow.

“No one will understand the danger we are all in today,” pointed out Mr. Kennan, “unless he recognizes that governments in this modern world have not yet learned how to create and cultivate great military establishments, particularly those that include the weapons of mass destruction, without becoming the servants rather than the masters of what they have created.”

Many others agree with Mr. Kennan in his bleak assessment of present-day world politics. An official of the People’s Republic of China observed that war between the superpowers “is inevitable,” adding: “The next 10 years are very, very dangerous. They are frightful. We should never forget this fact.”

Why All the Alarm?

For the past several years there has been much talk about “détente,” or a lessening of tensions between the world’s superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. During this period many people got the impression that world war was becoming less likely. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972, followed by the signing of SALT II in 1979, and people talked hopefully of “a generation of peace.”

No longer. “Not for thirty years has political tension reached so dangerous a point as it has attained today,” pointed out Mr. Kennan late in 1980, just 18 months after the SALT II treaty was signed. “Not in all this time has there been so high a degree of misunderstanding, of suspicion, of bewilderment, and of sheer military fear.”

What has created the tension? Why does World War III, once thought distant, suddenly loom so near? Political, economic and technological factors are all involved. They are converging to create an arms race that experts fear cannot be stopped. Yet, unless it is stopped, many say this arms race can only lead to war.

“Modern history offers no example of the cultivation by rival powers of armed force on a huge scale that did not in the end lead to an outbreak of hostilities,” warns Mr. Kennan. “And there is no reason to believe that we are greater, or wiser, than our ancestors.”

Why can the arms race not be stopped?

In the beginning of the nuclear age, missiles were not very accurate. They could be counted on to hit very large targets, like cities, but not small targets, like enemy missile silos. The result was what Winston Churchill called the “balance of terror.” Both sides targeted their missiles on each other’s cities, establishing, in effect, an exchange of hostages. Both sides knew that starting nuclear war would mean the loss of their own cities.

This strategic doctrine, known as Mutual Assured Destruction (or, appropriately, MAD), may have helped to prevent an early outbreak of World War III for one major reason. It did not matter which side struck first. Nuclear war would still be disastrous for both sides. So there was less incentive to drop the first bomb in former times of tension, such as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.