Pax Atomica is one of the terms that has sometimes been used to describe the period of severe tensions without a major military conflict between the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

. The term is also at times used to describe the entire post

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

/ post-atomic-bomb era.Chicken Pax Atomica: The Cold War Stability of Nuclear Deterrence. By James Pasley. Journal of International and Area Studies. Vol. 15, No. 2, December 2008. Pg. 21. In the phrase's narrower application, applying only to the Cold War era, the phrase refers to the argument that the stability between the two superpowers was caused by each side's large nuclear arsenals which led to a state of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).Selassie, Bereket H. ''Eritrea and the United States''. The Red Sea Press, 1989, p. 2. That is, if one of the superpowers would have launched a nuclear attack, the other would have responded in the same way. This threatened the complete destruction of both countries and probably the entire northern hemisphere. John Lewis Gaddis has described the period as the Long Peace. In the phrase's broader application, applying to the entire post World War II era, the phrase refers to the argument that the possession of nuclear arms by several of the world's larger powers has tended to act to prevent the outbreak of full-scale warfare between any of these several powers, also due to the probability of MAD. The phrase Pax Atomica is derived from the more popular term

Pax Romana The Pax Romana (Latin for 'Roman peace') is a roughly 200-year-long timespan of Roman history which is identified as a period and as a golden age of increased as well as sustained Roman imperialism, relative peace and order, prosperous stabilit ...

, which describes the period of stability under Roman hegemony during the

Roman Age In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

References

Military terminology of the United States Nuclear warfare

Atomica Atomica may refer to: *Atomica, Atom comic book female superhero Rhonda Piñeda * ''Atomica'' (film), 2017 American science-fiction thriller film directed by Dagen Merrill and starring Dominic Monaghan See also * Atomika (disambiguation) {{d ...

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