Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 is a path-breaking work that uses biographical techniques to test one of the most important and widely debated questions in international politics: Did the advent of the nuclear bomb prevent the Third World War?
Many scholars and much conventional wisdom assumes that nuclear deterrence has prevented major power war since the end of the Second World War; this remains a principal tenet of US strategic policy today. Others challenge this assumption, and argue that major war would have been `obsolete' even without the bomb.
This book tests these propositions by examining the careers of ten leading Cold War statesmen--Harry S Truman; John Foster Dulles; Dwight D. Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Josef Stalin; Nikita Krushchev; Mao Zedong; Winston Churchill; Charles De Gaulle; and Konrad Adenauer--and asking whether they viewed war, and its acceptability, differently after the advent of the bomb. The book's authors argue almost unanimously that nuclear weapons did have a significant effect on the thinking of these leading statesmen of the nuclear age, but a dissenting epilogue from John Mueller challenges this thesis.
Notes on the Contributors viii Introduction 1(14) Ernest R. May PART I. SUPERPOWERS Longing for International Control, Banking on American Superiority: Harry S. Trumans Approach to Nuclear Weapons 15(24) S. David Broscious Stalin and the Nuclear Age 39(23) Vladislav M. Zubok John Foster Dulles Nuclear Schizophrenia 62(25) Neal Rosendorf `War No Longer Has Any Logic Whatever: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Thermonuclear Revolution 87(33) Andrew P. N. Erdmann Bear Any Burden? John F. Kennedy and Nuclear Weapons 120(21) Philip Nash The Nuclear Education of Nikita Khrushchev 141(30) Vladislav M. Zubok Hope M. Harrison PART II. ALLIES Before the Bomb and After: Winston Churchill and the Use of Force 171(23) Jonathan Rosenberg Between `Paper and `Real Tigers: Maos View of Nuclear Weapons 194(22) Shu Guang Zhang Charles de Gaulle and the Nuclear Revolution 216(20) Philip H. Gordon Konrad Adenauer: Defence Diplomat on the Backstage 236(24) Annette Messemer Conclusion 260(24) John Lewis Gaddis Epilogue: Duelling Counterfactuals 272(12) John Mueller Notes 284(105) Index 389
PROFESSOR JOHN GADDIS is Professor of History at Yale
DR PHILIP GORDON is Director for European Affairs, National Security Council, Washington
PROFESSOR ERNEST MAY is Professor of History at Harvard
PROFESSOR JONATHAN ROSENBERG is Assistant Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University
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