Who Likes Bombs?

Remember the good ol’ days of the Cold War? You know the 40 year ideological conflict between the United States and the debunked USSR. I consider myself a historian as well as a political scientist (I have degrees in both fields) and one thing that almost any person with a background in history will tell you is that history tends to repeat itself. Being an avid subscriber to this theory and with thousands of years of evidence to support it, I fear as if we may find ourselves again in the midst of a Cold War.

Yesterday the Russians successfully (in their words) tested the “dad of all bombs.” Excuse the peculiar name of the device, but it appears as if it is the real deal. In essence, the Russian bomb is a counter to the U.S. made device termed the “mother of all bombs.” The Russians claim their bomb is four times more powerful than its American cousin and the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in history. Both devices are vacuum bombs, which act like a nuclear bomb in the sense that they consume massive amounts of oxygen to detonate and then push that oxygen back out with incredible force.

Does this new found bomb have any implication for renewed tensions between Moscow and Washington? Relations are strained between both President Bush and President Putin, some even calling their relationship “cold.” Bush like the rest of the world is concerned that Putin is reasserting the old “hard line” in Russia, i.e. taking countless steps away from democratization. To say that Russia is still in shambles is an understatement, but one needs to realize that they have the world’s largest oil reserves. I don’t believe anything imminent to be at hand; look towards the future for dicey relations to reassert themselves.

If the Third World War were to erupt between the U.S. and Russia in the future, I would not be concerned about “the dad of all bombs” or the “mother of all bombs.” Granted, each pack around 8 tons of TNT and are formidable, but both nations still have around 20,000 nuclear warheads sitting around. Nuclear weapons are still by far the most horrific means of killing people (and the planet for that matter) ever constructed. Even though the Cold War is over and world tensions are a shadow of what they use to be, it doesn’t mean the plutonium with its 29,000 year half life disappeared when the USSR collapsed, nor did human nature suddenly change.