In a very real sense, we did. The US and allies dictated the terms of the post-WWII world order, then did so again financially when the left the Bretton-Woods system and moved the world to fiat currencies, then did so again geopolitically when they dictated terms to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Sure, there was a period where American dominance was uncertain, once they also get the atomic bomb, and that was a bit less clear while the USSR was still in place, but by the 1980s in was inevitable that they had lost, and in 1990 the Soviet Union fell. It’s been another 20 years, and during a large part of that time, the leading hypothesis was that history had ended, with the US and the liberal order as the victor.
Also, the US did consider the possibility of waging a preemptive nuclear war on the USSR to prevent it from getting nukes. (von Neumann advocated for this I think?) If the US was more of a warmonger, they might have done it, and then there would have been a more unambiguous world takeover.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s nuclear weapons did not provide an overwhelming advantage against conventional forces. Being able to drop dozens of ~kiloton range fission bombs in eastern European battlefields would have been devastating but not enough by itself to win a war. Only when you got to hundreds of silo launched ICBMs with hydrogen bombs could you have gotten a true decisive strategic advantage
Perhaps. I don’t know much about the yields and so forth at the time, nor about the specific plans if any that were made for nuclear combat.
But I’d speculate that dozens of kiloton range fission bombs would have enabled the US and allies to win a war against the USSR. Perhaps by destroying dozens of cities, perhaps by preventing concentrations of defensive force sufficient to stop an armored thrust.
Maybe we have different definitions of DSA: I was thinking of it in terms of ‘resistance is futile’ and you can dictate whatever terms you want because you have overwhelming advantage, not that you could eventually after a struggle win a difficult war by forcing your opponent to surrender and accept unfavorable terms.
If say the US of 1965 was dumped into post WW2 Earth it would have the ability to dictate whatever terms it wanted because it would be able to launch hundreds of ICBMS at enemy cities at will. If the real US of 1949 had started a war against the Soviets it would probably have been able to cripple an advance into western Europe but likely wouldn’t have been able to get its bombers through to devastate enough of the soviet homeland with the few bombs they had.
Remember the soviets did just lose a huge percentage of their population and industry in WW2 and kept fighting. The fact that it’s at all debatable who would have won if WW3 started in the late 1940s at all (see e.g. here) makes me think nuclear weapons weren’t at that time a DSA producer.
In a very real sense, we did. The US and allies dictated the terms of the post-WWII world order, then did so again financially when the left the Bretton-Woods system and moved the world to fiat currencies, then did so again geopolitically when they dictated terms to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Sure, there was a period where American dominance was uncertain, once they also get the atomic bomb, and that was a bit less clear while the USSR was still in place, but by the 1980s in was inevitable that they had lost, and in 1990 the Soviet Union fell. It’s been another 20 years, and during a large part of that time, the leading hypothesis was that history had ended, with the US and the liberal order as the victor.
Also, the US did consider the possibility of waging a preemptive nuclear war on the USSR to prevent it from getting nukes. (von Neumann advocated for this I think?) If the US was more of a warmonger, they might have done it, and then there would have been a more unambiguous world takeover.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s nuclear weapons did not provide an overwhelming advantage against conventional forces. Being able to drop dozens of ~kiloton range fission bombs in eastern European battlefields would have been devastating but not enough by itself to win a war. Only when you got to hundreds of silo launched ICBMs with hydrogen bombs could you have gotten a true decisive strategic advantage
Perhaps. I don’t know much about the yields and so forth at the time, nor about the specific plans if any that were made for nuclear combat.
But I’d speculate that dozens of kiloton range fission bombs would have enabled the US and allies to win a war against the USSR. Perhaps by destroying dozens of cities, perhaps by preventing concentrations of defensive force sufficient to stop an armored thrust.
Maybe we have different definitions of DSA: I was thinking of it in terms of ‘resistance is futile’ and you can dictate whatever terms you want because you have overwhelming advantage, not that you could eventually after a struggle win a difficult war by forcing your opponent to surrender and accept unfavorable terms.
If say the US of 1965 was dumped into post WW2 Earth it would have the ability to dictate whatever terms it wanted because it would be able to launch hundreds of ICBMS at enemy cities at will. If the real US of 1949 had started a war against the Soviets it would probably have been able to cripple an advance into western Europe but likely wouldn’t have been able to get its bombers through to devastate enough of the soviet homeland with the few bombs they had.
Remember the soviets did just lose a huge percentage of their population and industry in WW2 and kept fighting. The fact that it’s at all debatable who would have won if WW3 started in the late 1940s at all (see e.g. here) makes me think nuclear weapons weren’t at that time a DSA producer.
Fair enough.