The United States developed the first atomic bomb and used it to end World War II in 1945. After the war, the world was marked by a Cold War that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. During that long period of time, a number of other nations joined the nuclear club by developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons, and one of the primary goals of American foreign policy was to limit nuclear proliferation to the greatest degree possible. In the changed world circumstances faced today, the danger of nuclear proliferation has not passed. Instead, there is more and more concern about new technological developments that might make it possible for smaller and less-developed nations to produce nuclear weapons that would be smaller and more powerful than the bombs used on Japan in 1945. While the Cold War may have ended, international tensions have not disappeared as more and more border wars and regional conflicts have developed. We can only speculate about what such clashes would be like if one or more participants possessed nuclear weapons, or what might occur of a terrorist group had nuclear weapons. The U.S. has long believed nuclear proliferation was something to be fought, and clearly there is and should be a concern about the spread of nuclear weapons to the Third World today.
Allan M. Winkler in his book Modern America: The United States from World War II to the Present relates the history of what came to be called the Cold War period up to 1985, several years before the Cold War effectively ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. The author begins with World War II because he feels "that the war had a profound impact in shaping the nature of postwar society." He notes that the war developed differently in the United States than it did anywhere else--the U.S. came to the war later, fought overseas, experienced no devastation at...