The Importance of Trust in the Cold War

In 1949, the first Russian test is a bit that freaks everybody out. Truman's responses were in that case, we have no choice. Once more than one country has it, you end up in a series of kind of suffocating logical conclusions. The bomb exists, it is devastating. Cities are the natural target. There is no obvious defense. And it's a psychological weapon. But really there was an enormous opposition to the H bomb because they knew what that meant. In 1961, Russia tested its largest man-made explosion at least fifty megatons - which now is two thousand Nagasaki blasts. It is no longer a weapon of world destruction but just the strategy and psychology behind

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