Essay On Nuclear Arms Race

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The nuclear arms race was a race for nuclear dominance between the United States and the Soviet Union. It took place during the cold war. The definition of an arms race, made famous by nuclear arms race during the Cold War is a rapid increase in instruments of military power. A nuclear arms race is one where the instruments are nuclear weapons. The designs and testing of the first nuclear weapons during WWII by the US was called the Manhattan Project. The USSR was not officially informed about the Manhattan project until about 3 years later when Stalin was briefed at the Potsdam Conference on July 24 1945, this conference was 8 days after the first successful US test of nuclear weapons. They soon regretted telling the USSR from a fear that the USSR would inform German spies of the Manhattan Project or that the USSR would expect some insight on the technology of these weapons. In August 1945 a month after the Potsdam conference President Harry Truman ordered two bombs two be dropped on Japan, one hit Nagasaki and one hit Hiroshima. In the years after WWII the US had a monopoly on information about nuclear technology. Behind the scenes the USSR began work on their nuclear weapons but they were limited because of a lack of uranium. Then, the USSR discovered uranium in Eastern Europe which boosted their technology. nuclear experts predicted the Soviets would not have their first nuclear weapons until about 1955 but they detonated their first test nuclear weapon in 1949. The US tested their first hydrogen weapons at the Bikini Atoll in 1954. Both countries spent massives amounts on the quantity and quality of their weapons. For many decades the amounts of nuclear weapons and technology for the USSR and the US went back and forth. Curre... ... middle of paper ... ...fic coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations. When she was 20, her brother, father and mother were taken away, tortured and killed. That same year, she joined the CUC, or Comitee of the Peasant Union (English Name). Mencú also taught herself Spanish and other Mayan languages in oorder to help teach the peasant children better. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression. After this, she left the country. Her experiences were in a ghost written autobiography called, “I, Rigoberta Menchú”

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