I haven’t read this book and I’m also not an expert, so my confidence on this comment is low.
But-
Although nuclear weapons seem to have at best a quite limited substantive impact on actual historical events, they have had a tremendous influence on our agonies and obsessions, inspiring desperate rhetoric, extravagant theorizing, wasteful expenditure, and frenetic diplomatic posturing
Not only have nuclear weapons failed to be of much value in military conflicts, they also do not seem to have helped a nuclear country to swing its weight or “dominate” an area
Wars are not caused by weapons or arms races, and the quest to control nuclear weapons has mostly been an exercise in irrelevance
As a relative layman, I find claims like these puzzling. This is primarily because the “agonies and obsessions … desperate rhetoric, extravagant theorizing, wasteful expenditure, and frenetic diplomatic posturing” that Mueller apparently dismisses drove the course of history for the half-century following the Second World War.
It’s hard to imagine that the Cold War would have occurred at all in the absence of nuclear weapons. While it’s true that the first nukes didn’t pose much more serious a threat than a large-scale firebombing, it was barely more than a decade after the war that much more destructive weapons were being built. A successful conventional Soviet assault on the U.S. mainland was, as far as I know, never a serious possibility. It seems clear that the terror of that period was driven by the nuclear threat, and that the nuclear threat drove U.S. and Soviet strategic posture, which also influenced foreign aid, trade policy, etc. Even if their danger is exaggerated, perception of their danger (in my view an unavoidable perception—even the Joint Chiefs were prepared to nuke Cuba during the missile crisis despite knowing that the strategic situation had not appreciably changed) had serious effects.
Also, and again, not an expert (and I’d like to know if Mueller addresses this specific case) but of course Israel has been a nuclear power since as early as 1979. Before that date, Israel fought three major wars and dozens of smaller engagements with its neighbors. Since then, virtually all of Israel’s military conflicts have been essentially counterinsurgency or against state proxies such as Hezbollah. It’s often argued that Israel’s status as a nuclear power has driven Iran’s efforts in that arena, which has also influenced Saudi belligerence; this conflict has affected oil prices, domestic politics in both countries, the ongoing war in Yemen, etc. This is kind of a long DAG, but I feel like there are other examples like this, and I find it sort of hard to accept the position that the simple existence of nuclear weapons hasn’t been immensely consequential.
I haven’t read this book and I’m also not an expert, so my confidence on this comment is low.
But-
As a relative layman, I find claims like these puzzling. This is primarily because the “agonies and obsessions … desperate rhetoric, extravagant theorizing, wasteful expenditure, and frenetic diplomatic posturing” that Mueller apparently dismisses drove the course of history for the half-century following the Second World War.
It’s hard to imagine that the Cold War would have occurred at all in the absence of nuclear weapons. While it’s true that the first nukes didn’t pose much more serious a threat than a large-scale firebombing, it was barely more than a decade after the war that much more destructive weapons were being built. A successful conventional Soviet assault on the U.S. mainland was, as far as I know, never a serious possibility. It seems clear that the terror of that period was driven by the nuclear threat, and that the nuclear threat drove U.S. and Soviet strategic posture, which also influenced foreign aid, trade policy, etc. Even if their danger is exaggerated, perception of their danger (in my view an unavoidable perception—even the Joint Chiefs were prepared to nuke Cuba during the missile crisis despite knowing that the strategic situation had not appreciably changed) had serious effects.
Also, and again, not an expert (and I’d like to know if Mueller addresses this specific case) but of course Israel has been a nuclear power since as early as 1979. Before that date, Israel fought three major wars and dozens of smaller engagements with its neighbors. Since then, virtually all of Israel’s military conflicts have been essentially counterinsurgency or against state proxies such as Hezbollah. It’s often argued that Israel’s status as a nuclear power has driven Iran’s efforts in that arena, which has also influenced Saudi belligerence; this conflict has affected oil prices, domestic politics in both countries, the ongoing war in Yemen, etc. This is kind of a long DAG, but I feel like there are other examples like this, and I find it sort of hard to accept the position that the simple existence of nuclear weapons hasn’t been immensely consequential.