For four years—from July 16, 1945, the date of the first atomic test, to August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device—the history of nuclear weapons might appear to be an exclusively American story. But even that is misleading.

From the earliest theorization of the chain reaction, nuclear development was international: a web of scientific collaboration, technological transfer, espionage, and strategic imitation. As my guest David Holloway argues, nuclear weapons have always had an international history—one that can only be understood by examining not just individual states, but their relationships, perceptions, and interactions.

To approach nuclear weapons in this way, he suggests, “requires an effort to understand the different parties involved, their strategies, their policies, their behavior, and, above all, their relationships and interactions.” In this conversation, we explore that history—from Los Alamos to Moscow, from Atoms for Peace to nuclear brinkmanship, and from non-proliferation to the limits of the nuclear order itself.  

David Holloway is Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Emeritus) at Stanford University. His work focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, Soviet science and technology, and the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His latest book, Nuclear Weapons: An International History, represents a culmination of decades of scholarship.

Chapters

0:02:31 — What Is International History?

0:07:11 — The International Roots of Nuclear Science

0:12:23 — Technology Transfer and the Klaus Fuchs Connection

0:16:51 — The Soviet Bomb: Hesitation and Espionage

0:19:06 — Atoms for Peace

0:21:13 — The Thermonuclear Turning Point

0:24:02 — Nuclear Weapons and Marxist Theory

0:30:08 — Brinkmanship: Dulles, Khrushchev, and the Logic of the Brink

0:33:50 — Non-Proliferation and the NPT

0:43:57 — India, Pakistan, and the Blind Eye