Ever since the nuclear weapons have been invented, the effects of nuclear weapons on the causes of war have been profound. People usually tend to believe that nuclear weapons are bad and should never have been invented in the first place. It makes sense, because people fear the tremendous destructive power of nuclear weapons. However, there are also positive effects of this very devastating power on the causes of war. This is because of the concept of MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction.
All major powers are forced to rethink the notion of war due to the Mutually Assured Destruction nature of nuclear weapons. Possible total destruction of the states presents too many risks to the rational leaders of the respective states. For rational …show more content…
Which would not have been affected?”. If we take a look at the underlying issues that lead to the war, clearly expansionist and imperialistic view of Germany lead to the European war. So, we have to understand what caused German expansionism. There are two reasons for German expansionism:
1. Expansion out of insecurity
2. Expansion out of pure desire to expand (Hitler’s ideology)
The following Nazi beliefs about international affairs caused German expansion out of insecurity:
“Germany is insecure,” especially “Germany can be strangled by cutting off food imports.”
Germany is surrounded by hawks and is under constant threat of being attacked.
In those days, major powers used to have buffer states, which provided great protection against unexpected attacks. However, nowadays buffer states are not considered to be important, due to invention of nuclear weapons, which provide an insurance and a sense of confidence to major powers due to to the concept of MAD. Therefore, if Germany possessed nuclear weapons by 1933, the insecurity issue would simply fade …show more content…
Many Germans claimed that the postwar treatment Germany had received from Allies, was the reason for ruin of Germany. Even though the claims were not true, it was widely spread opinion in Germany and the government successfully propagated these myths. This situation in Germany created a window for Hitler’s rise to power. He used the cause of undoing Versailles to unite his people. Since the Treaty was enforced by nuclear powers in our scenario, and rational leaders would be deterred by this fact before violating the Treaty. However, due to Hitler’s ambition for empire, he can be categorized as an irrational leader, so I don’t believe he would be deterred by nuclear weapons. For Hitler, undoing the Treaty was the first step in accomplishing his desire for empire. Besides, at a times when Germany started violating the Treaty, countries worldwide were suffering from Great Depression, France and Britain were still recovering from WWI. From Hitler’s point of view, the French and British were too weak to enforce the Treaty. Additionally, due to widespread propaganda of German victim narrative, both French and British were starting to believe that the Treaty of Versailles was indeed too harsh on the Germans. Overall, nuclear weapons would not affect Germany’s violation of the Treaty,
All major powers are forced to rethink the notion of war due to the Mutually Assured Destruction nature of nuclear weapons. Possible total destruction of the states presents too many risks to the rational leaders of the respective states. For rational …show more content…
Which would not have been affected?”. If we take a look at the underlying issues that lead to the war, clearly expansionist and imperialistic view of Germany lead to the European war. So, we have to understand what caused German expansionism. There are two reasons for German expansionism:
1. Expansion out of insecurity
2. Expansion out of pure desire to expand (Hitler’s ideology)
The following Nazi beliefs about international affairs caused German expansion out of insecurity:
“Germany is insecure,” especially “Germany can be strangled by cutting off food imports.”
Germany is surrounded by hawks and is under constant threat of being attacked.
In those days, major powers used to have buffer states, which provided great protection against unexpected attacks. However, nowadays buffer states are not considered to be important, due to invention of nuclear weapons, which provide an insurance and a sense of confidence to major powers due to to the concept of MAD. Therefore, if Germany possessed nuclear weapons by 1933, the insecurity issue would simply fade …show more content…
Many Germans claimed that the postwar treatment Germany had received from Allies, was the reason for ruin of Germany. Even though the claims were not true, it was widely spread opinion in Germany and the government successfully propagated these myths. This situation in Germany created a window for Hitler’s rise to power. He used the cause of undoing Versailles to unite his people. Since the Treaty was enforced by nuclear powers in our scenario, and rational leaders would be deterred by this fact before violating the Treaty. However, due to Hitler’s ambition for empire, he can be categorized as an irrational leader, so I don’t believe he would be deterred by nuclear weapons. For Hitler, undoing the Treaty was the first step in accomplishing his desire for empire. Besides, at a times when Germany started violating the Treaty, countries worldwide were suffering from Great Depression, France and Britain were still recovering from WWI. From Hitler’s point of view, the French and British were too weak to enforce the Treaty. Additionally, due to widespread propaganda of German victim narrative, both French and British were starting to believe that the Treaty of Versailles was indeed too harsh on the Germans. Overall, nuclear weapons would not affect Germany’s violation of the Treaty,