This chapter explores how the nuclear revolution in war changed the character of conflict and challenged our traditional conception of what constituted an act of war. The related question of how this change impacted the war–state relationship is also explored. I explained in the previous chapter how the rise of modern war is intimately connected with the industrial revolution. Innovations in this period transformed warfare and contained several military revolutions on land and the sea. One of the most pronounced of these ‘revolutions’ was the emergence of airpower as a distinct but separate environment of modern war. The rise of electronic warfare was less well known but as important. However, in terms of impact, dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 represented a true paradigm shift in the conduct of war. It is often pointed out that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was genuinely awful if measured in terms of deaths, but the USAAF firebombing of Tokyo in the preceding March was far worse; between 80,000–100,000 killed versus 66,000 at Hiroshima and 39,000 at Nagasaki. Viewed in this way, the explosive potential of the atomic bomb represented a critical enhancement in the firepower available to the US but, at the time, it was not necessarily seen as a game changer in the conduct of war. It is important to note that the significance of the atomic bomb in terms of its conduct on war is contested. In the view of Price and Tannenworld (1996), this weapon was viewed as just another weapon, albeit one that packed a lot more punch, to be employed on the battlefield. As such, its claimed impact has been much exaggerated. In their view, the most crucial change was the development of thermonuclear weapons. The detonation of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952 produced a ten-megaton explosion approximately 500 times more powerful than Hiroshima. What possible use could such a weapon have but to prevent war?

The subsequent introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles, heralded by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, gave this weapon an almost invincible aura.

However, as Freedman explains, the significance of this technology lay in the fact that a single bomber armed with a single bomb was able to destroy a city (Freedman, 2003, 17).