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To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction

Online ISBN:
9780801455506
Print ISBN:
9780801452482
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction

Edward Kaplan
Edward Kaplan
Associate Professor of History, the U.S. Air Force Academy
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Published online:
18 August 2016
Published in print:
12 March 2015
Online ISBN:
9780801455506
Print ISBN:
9780801452482
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

Between 1945 and 1950, the United States had a global nuclear monopoly. The A-bomb transformed the nation's strategic airpower and saw the Air Force displace the Navy at the front line of US defense. This book traces the evolution of US strategic airpower and preparation for nuclear war from this early air-atomic era to a later period (1950–65) in which the Soviet Union's atomic capability, accelerated by thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, made US strategic assets vulnerable and gradually undermined air-atomic strategy. The shift to mutually assured destruction (MAD) via general nuclear exchange steadily took precedence in strategic thinking and budget allocations. Soon US nuclear-armed airborne bomber fleets shaped for conventionally defined—if implausible, then impossible—victory were supplanted by missile-based forces designed to survive and punish. The Air Force receded from the forefront of US security policy. The book throws into question both the inevitability and preferability of the strategic doctrine of MAD. It looks at the process by which cultural, institutional, and strategic ideas about MAD took shape and makes insightful use of the comparison between generals who thought they could win a nuclear war and the cold institutional logic of the suicide pact that was MAD. The book also offers a reappraisal of Eisenhower's nuclear strategy and diplomacy to make a case for the marginal viability of air-atomic military power even in an era of ballistic missiles.

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