Published on April 29, 2026 (Episode 452)
Introduction
For four years—from July 16, 1945, the date of the first atomic test, to August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device—the history of nuclear weapons might appear to be an exclusively American story. But that is misleading.
From the earliest theorization of the chain reaction, nuclear development was international: a web of scientific collaboration, technological transfer, espionage, and strategic imitation. As my guest David Holloway argues, nuclear weapons have always had an international history—one that can only be understood by examining not just individual states, but their relationships, perceptions, and interactions.
To approach nuclear weapons in this way, he suggests, “requires an effort to understand the different parties involved, their strategies, their policies, their behavior, and, above all, their relationships and interactions.” In this conversation, we explore that history—from Los Alamos to Moscow, from Atoms for Peace to nuclear brinkmanship, and from non-proliferation to whether or not the nuclear question ever transcended international politics.
About the Guest
David Holloway is Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Emeritus) at Stanford University. His work focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, Soviet science and technology, and the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His latest book, Nuclear Weapons: An International History, represents a culmination of decades of scholarship.
Past Episodes
For Further Investigation
David Holloway, Nuclear Weapons: An International History (Yale University Press, 2026)
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 2012)
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (Penguin, 2006)
Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton University Press, 1991)
Reflection Questions
What changes when we study nuclear weapons as an international system rather than a national project?
Did efforts at nuclear nonproliferation fail, or succeed more than anyone might have imagined in 1970?
Does the “nuclear order” constrain politics, or does politics ultimately reshape it?
Tags
Cold War; Nuclear Weapons; International History; David Holloway
