...thereby punctuating, with mushroom-shaped exclamation points, the end of a world conflict notable not only for its immense scale and destruc負iveness but also for the extent to which the major com苑atants had come to regard massive attacks on civilian populations as a permissible means of waging war.

The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although they were hardly the first instances of wholesale devastation of cities in World War 2, did demonstrate a terrible new level of technological ef苯icien苞y in the implemen負ation of the "strategic bombing" approach to warfare which that conflict had spawned. The two nuclear bombings also provided the underpin要ings of a post-war U.S. security policy based on nuclear deterrence -- that is, on the idea that the United States might well be willing to use against others the same awesome capacity for nuclear destruc負ion that it had used against Japan in August of 1945.