Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

The Soviet Union was “widening the gap between its preparedness for war and the unpreparedness of the free world.”92 The Soviet possession of nuclear weapons had greatly intensified the Soviet threat to the United States, NSC 68 concluded. The Soviet nuclear threat is more immediate than had previously been estimated. In particular, the United States now faces the contingency that within the next four or five years the Soviet Union will possess the military capability of delivering a surprise atomic attack of such weight that the United States must have substantially increased general air, ground, and sea strength, atomic capabilities, and air and civilian defenses to deter war and to provide reasonable assurance, in the event of war, that it could survive the initial blow and go on to the eventual attainment of its objectives.93 NSC 68 did not have an immediate effect on United States policy, since its call for a sharp increase in the defense budget was unpopular in the government,94 and the administration did not act upon it before the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. But the report did reflect a sense of deep foreboding in Washington now that the Soviet Union had acquired the atomic bomb.