... the nuclear arms race and why it precipitated such a "mad momentum", there are four areas of study to be considered: the conception of an arms race, the principle of action-reaction, the strategic and political concerns of the superpowers and the nuclear arms race in the larger context of the Cold War. Once President Truman ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, the nuclear arms race started proper. Given the basic ideological conflict between the US and the Soviet Union, the Second World War was but an alliance of necessity to defeat Nazi Germany. As Norman Lowe put it, "the need for self preservation against Germany... caused the USA, the USSR and Britain to forget their differences and work together in a 'marriage of convenience'."1 Indeed, once it ended, the conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union were bound to surface again; with the entrance of atomic ...

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