Pax Atomica is one of the terms that has sometimes been used to describe the period of severe tensions without a major military conflict between the
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
and the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. The term is also at times used to describe the entire post
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
/ post-atomic-bomb era.
[Chicken Pax Atomica: The Cold War Stability of Nuclear Deterrence. By James Pasley. Journal of International and Area Studies. Vol. 15, No. 2, December 2008. Pg. 21.] In the phrase's narrower application, applying only to the Cold War era, the phrase refers to the argument that the stability between the two superpowers was caused by each side's large
nuclear arsenals which led to a state of
Mutually Assured Destruction
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the ...
(MAD).
[Selassie, Bereket H. ''Eritrea and the United States''. The Red Sea Press, 1989, p. 2.] That is, if one of the superpowers would have launched a nuclear attack, the other would have responded in the same way. This threatened the complete destruction of both countries and probably the entire northern hemisphere.
John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is an American international relations scholar, military historian, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War an ...
has described the period as the
Long Peace
"Long Peace", also described as the Pax Americana, is a term for the unprecedented historical period following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day. The period of the Cold War (1945–1991) was marked by the absence of major wars betw ...
.
In the phrase's broader application, applying to the entire post World War II era, the phrase refers to the argument that the possession of nuclear arms by several of the world's larger powers has tended to act to prevent the outbreak of full-scale warfare between any of these several powers, also due to the probability of MAD.
The phrase Pax Atomica is derived from the more popular term
Pax Romana
The Pax Romana (Latin for 'Roman peace') is a roughly 200-year-long timespan of Roman history which is periodization, identified as a period and as a golden age (metaphor), golden age of increased as well as sustained Imperial cult of ancient Rome ...
, which describes the period of stability under Roman hegemony during the
Roman Age
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...
.
See also
*
Deterrence theory
Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy ...
*
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuc ...
*
Balance of power (international relations)
The balance of power theory in international relations suggests that states may secure their survival by preventing any one state from gaining enough military power to dominate all others. If one state becomes much stronger, the theory predict ...
*
Nuclear peace
Nuclear peace is a theory of international relations which argues that the presence of nuclear weapons may in some circumstances decrease the risk of crisis escalation, since parties will seek to avoid situations that could lead to the use of nucle ...
References
Military terminology of the United States
Nuclear warfare
Atomica Atomica may refer to:
*Atomica, Atom (comics)#Rhonda Piñeda/Atomica, Atom comic book female superhero Rhonda Piñeda
*Atomica (film), ''Atomica'' (film), 2017 American science-fiction thriller film directed by Dagen Merrill and starring Dominic Mo ...
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