Rather than the nuclear elimination Baruch had hoped for, the decades following his proposal saw a Moscow-Washington arms race that consumed trillions of dollars of investment, a gamble that each additional weapon would enhance deterrence and thereby increase security. At the peak, the 1980s, the Soviet Union and the United States housed a collective arsenal of roughly 60,000 bombs. Over time, the superpowers conceded that yet more weapons athe vast inventories in place did not go hand in hand with more security. Limitations and reductions substituted for buildup as a series of treaties and unilateral steps dramatically reduced the stockpiles. Today Russia and United States each retain roughly 6,000 deployed and stored devices.