Abolishing the taboo: President Eisenhower and the permissible use of nuclear weapons for national security (original) (raw)
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Constrained by Reality: Tactical Nuclear Weapons Under Truman and Eisenhower
Phi Alpha Theta Paper Prize Competition (Undergraduate), 2018
WINNER of the Lynn W. Turner Prize in the 2018 Phi Alpha Theta National Paper Prize Competition (Undergraduate). The introduction of nuclear weapons in 1945 changed warfare forever, not least in the American context. With the Soviets’ challenge to the American “nuclear monopoly” in 1949, American policymakers and strategists were forced to reconsider the implications of using such weapons. Some suggested using smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons (TNWs), intended more for targeting an enemy’s military than its population centers. At several points in the early Cold War period, the US almost employed TNWs, but held back. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower restrained themselves from using these weapons due to political, diplomatic, and practical concerns. Specifically, they feared domestic and international backlash, and the possibility of starting World War III. Additionally, many of the situations in which use of these weapons was considered—especially in Asia—were not conducive to mass military casualties, due to environmental constraints (e.g. terrain and climate), and military realities (e.g. enemy formations and positions). While Presidents Truman and Eisenhower both ultimately restrained themselves from employing TNWs during the Cold War, Truman was clearly more reluctant to consider their use. Though Truman saw nuclear weapons as a valuable diplomatic tool, he also considered them to be cataclysmic and morally reprehensible, and was therefore committed to only using them as weapons of last resort. President Eisenhower, on the other hand, was deeply intrigued by their diplomatic and military value, and sought to make such weapons conventional. His interest in TNWs, however, was repeatedly squelched by potential foreign and domestic reactions and military (in)feasibility. For both presidents, the greatest deterrent to using tactical nuclear weapons in the field was the fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and, later, China. These constraints are evident in the policymaking records from the period, as well as the memoirs and other accounts left by the policymakers themselves.
The Rockets' Red Glare: The Impact of Technology on U.S. Nuclear Strategy from Eisenhower to Carter
The Manhattan Project redefined the landscape of international security. The advent of the nuclear age, in many ways, reshaped the prospect of great power politics and the very nature of war itself. While nuclear weapons have altered the security environment, the literature that revolves around the subject is limited to a few select topics: arms control, deterrence, normative assertions on the (im)morality of nuclear v In Memoriam, Arthur Thomas Priest-Brown vi
The Evolution of the Us Strategy Toward the Nuclear Nonproliferation After the Cold War
Міжнародні відносини, суспільні комунікації та регіональні студії, 2020
The article analyzes the US strategy in the nonproliferation field during three decades (in 1990s – 2018) and during the presidency of four US presidents (Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump). The author considers the key guidelines of US nonproliferation strategy that are described in four Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR) issued by each post-Cold War presidential administration. These documents describe the US nuclear policy in general, but the author focused on analysis of those their sections that were devoted to dealing with the risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons. The National Security Strategies of 1996 and 2002 were also analyzed in the article to clarify the nonproliferation aspects of US strategy that were not explained well in the published excerpts of the first two Nuclear Posture Reviews of presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush. As George Bush faced with the new challenges that required developing updated nonproliferation strategy like he terro...
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 1993
THE CONSTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR REALITY During World War II, the United States was not occupied like Europe, invaded like the Soviet Union, or bombed like Great Britain. Nor was there any plausible suggestion that the home front might be subjected to any of these acts of war. As a result, it has been said that Americans were obliged to fight the war at a distance and "on imagination alone. ''1 Within months of V-J day, civil defense strategists began to make plans to mobilize the American public for World War III. By the late 1940's, these plans included preparations for a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States. Thus Cold War civil defense planning posed the much more daunting problem of fighting an imaginary war. By 1950, the American foreign policy objective of containing what was perceived to be an otherwise irresistible expansion of Soviet power was tied to the strategy of nuclear deterrence. If the Soviets threatened war, the United States would guarantee the peace, if necessary by nuclear retaliation. As students of the early Cold War have stressed for some years, this strategy rested on domestic presuppositions. It was necessary to mobilize the American home front in order to sustain what President Kennedy later called "a long twilight struggle" in support of a new conception of national security. In the nuclear age, the project of securing American national interests would be interminable in principle, unprecedentedly expensive, and uniquely dangerous. The military, economic, and political requirements of Cold War mobilization have received considerable attention. However, it has not been generally appreciated that the policy of containment by means of nuclear deterrence also rested on moral presuppositions. Above all, this strategy was based on the assumption that the 339
Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons
2010
So long as there is a finite chance of war, we have to be interested in outcomes; and although all outcomes would be bad, some would be very much worse than others.-Bernard Brodie Much has been written about nuclear weapons, but what has been learned? Once an essential element of American foreign and defense policy, these matters were neglected after the Cold War and all but forgotten after September 11th. As the Schlesinger Commission concluded, "Because nuclear weapons have been less prominent since the end of the Cold War and have not been used since World War II, their importance and unique role as a deterrent have been obscured though not diminished." 1 Recent incidents of mismanagement of the US nuclear weapons enterprise, the acquisition of atomic weapons by North Korea, Iran's apparent quest for such weapons, the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and negotiation of its replacement with Russia, and the decision to engage in a nuclear posture review have brought the James Wood Forsyth Jr., PhD, currently serves as professor of national security studies, USAF School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He earned his PhD at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He has written on great-power war, intervention, and nuclear issues.