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.
Readership: Scholars and students of International Relations, Development Studies, Political and Social History. Defence analysts, journalists, and policy makers
Edited by John Gaddis, Robert Lovett Professor of History, Yale University, Philip Gordon, Director for European Affairs, National Security Council, Washington, Ernest May, Professor of History, Harvard University, and Jonathan Rosenberg, Assistant Professor of History, Florida Atlantic University
"excellent and scholarly collection" - Lawrence Freedman, TLS
Introduction by Ernest May 1: Andrew P. N. Erdman: `War No Longer Has Any Logic Whatever': Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Thermonuclear Revolution 2: S. David Broscious: Longing for International Control, Banking on American Superiority: Harry S Truman's Approach to Nuclear Energy 3: Vladislav M. Zubok: Stalin and the Nuclear Age 4: Neil Rosendorf: John Foster Dulles' Nuclear Schizophrenia 5: Philip Nash: Bear Any Burden?: John F. Kennedy and Nuclear Weapon 6: Vladislav M. Zubok and Hope M. Harrison: The Nuclear Education of Nikita Khrushchev 7: Jonathan Rosenberg: Before the Bomb and After: Winston Churchill and the Use of Force 8: Shu Guang Zhang: Between `Paper' and `Real' Tigers: Mao's View of Nuclear Weapons 9: Philip H. Gordon: Charles De Gaulle and the Nuclear Revolution 10: Annette Messemer: Konrad Adenauer: Defence Diplomat on the Backstage John Lewis Gaddis: Conclusion. Nuclear Statesmen John Mueller: Epilogue
