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The Korean War began as a struggle rooted in Korea’s division and domestic political conflict, then expanded into a defining proxy war of the Cold War. This account explains how local ambitions, UN intervention, American and Soviet strategy, and China’s security concerns shaped the course and meaning of the war. Readers will understand why interpretations of the conflict differ and how civil war and global confrontation became inseparable.

Nuclear weapons have kept great powers from all-out war while giving them cover to fight smaller conflicts beneath the threshold. The views wrestle with how to keep deterrence credible while honoring moral limits and controlling escalation, and whether failed disarmament makes elimination the only safe endpoint. Understand the paradox and the existential stakes behind every debate about the arsenal.