Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace (review)

The ideal of peace loomed large in Dwight David Eisenhower's presidency. In Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace, however, Ira Chernus points out that from the president's perspective, peace meant both less and more than meets the eye. Rather than seeking a genuine pathway out of perpetual U.S.-Soviet conflict, Eisenhower instead pursued what Chernus calls "apocalypse management," an approach that uneasily combined a variety of goals and methods: peace through the maintenance of international stability, national security via the expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, preservation of American economic strength despite the need for high levels of defense spending, mobilization of the American public through the deployment of scare tactics, and cultivation of European opinion by providing reassurances about the pacific nature of American intentions.

Chernus specializes in the study of rhetoric, and his primary concern lies in analyzing the forms of discourse that the Eisenhower administration developed to express and disseminate an understanding of its nuclear policies during the president's first year in office. Drawing on both published and archival materials, Chernus examines Eisenhower's April 1953 Chance for Peace speech, the administration's discussions concerning Operation Candor, and the rise of the New Look policy before dealing directly with the December 1953 Atoms for Peace speech. He finds few indications that Eisenhower intended a serious pursuit of nuclear disarmament. Instead, the administration deployed the rhetoric of peace primarily as a means of shoring up America's nuclear defenses while simultaneously reassuring the American public, placating world opinion, and lessening U.S.-Soviet tensions enough to head off all-out nuclear war.

As Chernus observes, to the White House "Peace meant apocalypse management: protecting the United States and its efforts to consolidate a liberal capitalist 'free world,' by keeping the cold war perpetually cold. That meant mounting an effective deterrent against any possible Soviet attack. It also meant consolidating the cold war consensus" (p. 51). Not only did Atoms for Peace not advocate nuclear disarmament, but, behind the scenes, the administration also rejected any linkage between its proposal for an international pool of fissionable materials to be used for peaceful purposes and the promotion of arms control.

Although Chernus makes much of the virtues of discourse analysis, his study does not really break new methodological ground. He asserts that while historians "often pay close attention to the intentions and motivations of policymakers," they "have given too little weight to the meanings and uses of words" (p. 5). Methodologically, however, Chernus provides little more than the type of close reading at which historians have always excelled—namely, the evaluation of textual evidence with a sensitivity toward the ways in which individual personalities and perceptions, as well as larger political and cultural currents, shape meaning.

The heart of Chernus's critique lies less in the arena of method than in the realm of interpretation. There, he parts with those scholars who have viewed Atoms for Peace as the beginning of serious nuclear disarmament negotiations. Such explanations, he points out, give too much credence to Eisenhower's diaries and memoirs rather than to the substance of the actual policy discussions. In his diary, Eisenhower claimed that his speech marked a starting point for disarmament, yet the administration's deliberations during the early months of 1954 explicitly avoided any serious commitment to arms control. Thus, Chernus concludes, "The speech's overriding aim was to prepare the way for the New Look and at the same time secure the EDC [European Defense Community] by reshaping public attitudes in the United States and abroad" (p. 100).

Within its self-defined limits, this book provides an intelligent reading of the Atoms for Peace speech and its origins. But its brevity and emphasis on rhetoric sometimes slight other important elements of the Eisenhower administration's nuclear policy, such as the internal rivalries that pitted the defense community—which steadfastly opposed...