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What is the Balance of Terror?

Introduction The phrase “balance of terror” is usually, but not invariably, used in reference to the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Refer to Mutual Assured Destruction. Outline It describes the tenuous peace that existed between the two countries as a result of both governments being… Read More

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An Overview of Absolute War

Introduction The concept of absolute war was a theoretical construct developed by the Prussian military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz in his famous but unfinished philosophical exploration of war, Vom Kriege (in English, On War, 1832). It is discussed only in the first half of Book VIII (there are only a couple of references to… Read More

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What was the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum?

Introduction The Frisch-Peierls memorandum was the first technical exposition of a practical nuclear weapon. It was written by expatriate German-Jewish physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in March 1940 while they were both working for Mark Oliphant at the University of Birmingham in Britain during World War II. The memorandum contained the first calculations about… Read More

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An Overview of Mutual Assured Destruction

Introduction 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 (see below) capabilities would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of… Read More

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An Overview of Foreign Interventions by the United States

Introduction The United States (US) has been involved in numerous foreign interventions throughout its history. By the broadest definition of military intervention, the US has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023, with half of these operations occurring since 1950 and over 25% occurring in the post-Cold War period. The objectives for… Read More

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What is Pax Americana?

Introduction Pax Americana (Latin for “American Peace”, modelled after Pax Romana and Pax Britannica; also called the Long Peace) is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later in the world after the end of World War II in 1945, when the United States (US) became the world’s… Read More