balance of terror
Standoff through fear
Balance of terror describes a state of mutual deterrence between nuclear powers, where each side's capacity for devastating retaliation prevents the other from attacking first.
The phrase captures the Cold War standoff between the United States and Soviet Union: peace maintained not through goodwill but through the shared certainty of annihilation.
The balance of terror kept both superpowers from launching a first strike.
- Cold War strategySuperpower confrontation without direct combat
- nuclear warfareCombat using fission weapons
- nuclear deterrencePreventing war through retaliation threat
- brinkmanshipPushing conflicts to disaster's threshold
- arms raceEscalating weapons accumulation between nations
superpower rivalry · military alliances · nuclear umbrella · game theory · fallout shelters · doomsday clock · grand strategy · nuclear brinkmanship · red button · nuclear football · Cold War · existential dread · proxy wars · Dr. Strangelove · nuclear proliferation · Cuban Missile Crisis · crisis management · war room
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis
balance of terrorcollective security
Shared defense pact system
mutual trust · peaceful coexistence · harmony · amity · rapprochement
balance of terrorhegemony
Dominant group's control
Pax Americana · Pax Romana · multipolarity · anarchy · power vacuum
balance of terrorhot war
Active armed combat
total war · nuclear war · shooting war · reconciliation · armistice
balance, balances, balanced, balancing, imbalance, unbalanced, terror, terrors, terrorize