the theory that the threat of nuclear war is enough to prevent an attack is called .

A single air group, whether afloat or land based, can now deliver to any reachable target a destructive cargo exceeding in power all the bombs that fell on Britain in all of World War II. Today, the United States stockpile of atomic weapons, which, of course, increases daily, exceeds by many times the total equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war in all of the years of World War II. Atomic bombs today are more than twenty-five times as powerful as the weapon with which the atomic age dawned, while the hydrogen weapons are in the ranges of millions of tons of TNT equivalent. Since that date in 1945, the United States of America has conducted forty-two test explosions. On July 16, 1945, the United States set off the world’s first atomic explosion. I need hardly point out to this Assembly, however, that this subject is global, not merely national in character. My recital of atomic danger and power is necessarily stated in United States terms, for these are the only incontrovertible facts that I know. Clearly, if the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today’s existence. The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that every citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in comparative terms, of the extent of this development, of the utmost significance to every one of us. That new language is the language of atomic warfare. I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new, one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. Finally, if there is to be advanced any proposal designed to ease even by the smallest measure the tensions of today’s world, what more appropriate audience could there be than the members of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I know that the American people share my deep belief that if a danger exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all and equally, that if hope exists in the mind of one nation, that hope should be shared by all.

The theory that the threat of nuclear war is enough to prevent an attack is called .