“Nuclear… We can’t let people throw around that word. I call it the N-Word. There are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them. And, frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else.” 

President Donald Trump spoke these words on Sept. 30, 2025, at a gathering of top military brass in Virginia. At its core was a message of fear, juxtaposing the fear of social cancellation for uttering a racial slur alongside the fear of atomic annihilation. At the same time, Trump’s statement was one of American strength. The United States possesses more nuclear weapons than any other country and has the ability to deliver them anywhere on the globe.

The central theme of fear of nuclear weaponry during Trump’s speech undoubtedly resonated with Harvard University historian Serhii Plokhy. Plokhy, a prolific scholar, has written 18 books on the Second World War, the Cold War, and Ukrainian history. His most recent addition to this oeuvre is The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power, and Survival, a broad overview of how and why nations have acquired atomic weapons from the Second World War to the present. Plokhy gives detailed attention not only to the American and Soviet atom bomb projects of the 1940s and Cold War era, but also traces national developments in Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, South........

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