ABSTRACT
Strategists, scientists and international relations theorists share the perspective that the invention of the bomb has opened a new era in world politics. Atomic international relations are afflicted by incertitudes, which in tum influence the way states themselves conceive the reality of a nuclear revolution. The history of international politics provides no reassurance that nuclear weapons will forever serve only a deterrent function. Nuclear weapons are radical biologically and spiritually because they threaten our species with extinction, but they are radical politically because they have spoiled war. The associated dangers of escalation and the possible use of atomic weapons remain, nevertheless, a major concern in case of a superpower confrontation in Third-World conflicts. War ought to be ruled out as a means of settling international disputes between great powers, because the main rivals of the world are abundantly armed with nuclear weapons.
