Ever since 1945 peace among the great powers, such as it is, has been guarded above all by nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles. Weapons so powerful, and so hard to stop on their way to target, that, should they ever be used in any numbers, they can literally put an end to mankind. The balance of terror, as Winston Churchill and others called it.

The outcome was a nuclear arms race that, costing hundreds of billions, went on seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Here and there some attempts were made to slow it down; however, not one of them was able to change the situation in which any use of nuclear weapons might quickly end in suicide. At any one time, the leader of the pack was almost certain to be the U.S. And no wonder, considering that country’s wealth, technological prowess, and, starting soon after President Eisenhower warned his countrymen against “the military-industrial complex,” the “new militarism,” as it has been called.

It was the US which built both the first atomic bomb and its bigger brother, the first hydrogen bomb. It was the US which built the first intercontinental bomber. The first tactical nukes (warheads small enough to be used in the field), the first atomic cannon, the first nuclear submarine, the first sea-launched ballistic missiles, the first MRVed and MIRVed ballistic missiles (which enabled several warheads to be put on top of a single missile, thus making interception enormously more difficult), and the first cruise missiles were all American inventions. Only occasionally did the Soviet Union, take the lead; and even when it did so, as in the case of intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellites in 1957-58, its supremacy was usually either quite short-lived or completely imaginary.

Each time the US seemed to gain an advantage it was said to signal a victory for the flag, freedom, democracy, etc. On the rare occasions when the Soviet Union did so, invariably the outcome was to make war more likely. In reality, none of the technological advances mattered very much. Whichever side got ahead, the balance of terror remained intact. As a result, no major clash of arms between nuclear powers—not just the US and the USSR but the US and China, the USSR and China, China and India, India and Pakistan—has ever broken out. Depending on whom you believe, no such a clash was ever even close to breaking out.

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This raises the question, why all the brouhaha? That the US should take the necessary steps to counter the new Chinese missile is unquestionable. That, given the history of nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles since 1945, the new missile is not going to upset the balance of power to the point of making a nuclear war much more likely is almost equally unquestionable.

It was US nuclear superiority that enabled it to use the bombs in war, the only country which has ever done so. It was US nuclear superiority, too, which explains why, right down to the present day, the US has always refused to promise they would not be the first to use the bomb. In this, incidentally, it differs from China. In the words of one Western source writing in 2017, “the most remarkable feature of China’s nuclear doctrine is its consistent no first-use policy. In other words, China pledges ‘not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances’.”

Absent war, what have previous generations of nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles achieved? Very little. What will the present Chinese one achieve? Almost certainly, very little. To be sure, nukes are terrifying monsters, but they do have one advantage. If they are not used, there is no reason to worry; if they are used, there won’t be any reason to worry either.