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\"Edward Kaplan's To Kill Nations is a fascinating work that packs a thermonuclear punch of ideas and arguments... The work is suitable for anyone from advanced undergraduates to experts in the field.\" ― Strategy Bridge In To Kill Nations , Edward Kaplan traces the evolution of American strategic airpower and preparation for nuclear war from this early air-atomic era to a later period (1950-1965) in which the Soviet Union's atomic capability, accelerated by thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, made American strategic assets vulnerable and gradually undermined air-atomic strategy. Kaplan throws into question both the inevitability and preferability of the strategic doctrine of MAD. He 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. Kaplan 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.

This concluding chapter discusses the wider implications of the present study. For students of bureaucratic politics, this study reinforces the importance of the early Cold War to civil–military relations and illustrates its nature. The services fought each other with little restraint in a ferocious free-for-all, each trying to claw its way to the top of the budget. However, they all remained loyal to the system of civilian control, even when they believed that system was run irresponsibly and dangerously by inexperienced men. This study has additional implications for the realm of strategic studies. It demonstrates that any examination of nuclear strategy and deterrence must consider the historical origins of strategic airpower theory, and understand its incremental development in the face of technology and Soviet power. The study also suggests the need to modify the standard interpretations of US strategy and power in the early Cold War, starting with a reconsideration of the presumed relationship between national strategy and operational planning—between declaratory and action policy.

In 1956, Paul Nitze, author of NSC- 68 and former chief planner at the State Department, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs about nuclear strategy, which introduced a useful distinction between two forms of policy. “Declaratory policy,” the public face of nuclear strategy, consists of the nation’s announced nuclear stance. “Action policy” is how a nation actually prepares to carry out nuclear strategy. These policies are distinct, often uncoordinated, and relevant for that fact.¹ This chapter addresses both types of policies, and their intersection with air-atomic ideas. The most important test of a military theory is its use in war

In peacetime, the ultimate test of military policy lies in its interaction with national policy. Committed executive opposition can slow, stop, or even reverse the bureaucratic momentum behind military policy. Less vigorous opposition or neutrality leads to slowed movement in the same direction. Strong support at the national level pushes an idea, while suppressing competitors. During the 1950s, the USAF’s transition from early to the late air-atomic strategy benefited from— indeed, rested on—the vigorous support of President Eisenhower. His administration carefully studied atomic weapons and their implications, and integrated them into national security policy. These reports presented clear and

The most important change to the air-atomic strategy in the 1950s was the compression of time. The “time factor” forced SAC to act ever more rapidly: defensively so to escape destruction, offensively in order to achieve a meaningful victory. The timescale for decision shrank from months to days to hours. This had uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and unintended consequences. It led to one of the largest and most complex weapons procurements in history, and an unusual military situation. By the end of the 1950s, SAC was well positioned to launch a first strike, but not to absorb one. Its efforts to overcome

The air-atomic concept that drove American air strategy for the two decades after World War II did not spring into being fully formed. Rather, like any complex body of thought, it emerged from several wellsprings. Although the genealogy of airpower ideas can be traced back to antiquity, this chapter’s purpose is more modest. It will show the links between airpower thinking before 1939, subsequent wartime experience, and the first postwar conceptions of atomic warfare. This entire span of ideas was within the living memory of the postwar Air Force’s generals and senior thinkers, and formed the context into which they

Most Americans believe that the Second World War ended because the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced it to surrender.Five Days in Augustboldly presents a different interpretation: that the military did not clearly understand the atomic bomb's revolutionary strategic potential, that the Allies were almost as stunned by the surrender as the Japanese were by the attack, and that not only had experts planned and fully anticipated the need for a third bomb, they were skeptical about whether the atomic bomb would work at all. With these ideas, Michael Gordin reorients the historical and contemporary conversation about the A-bomb and World War II. Gordin posits that although the bomb clearly brought with it a new level of destructive power, strategically it was regarded by decision-makers simply as a new conventional weapon, a bigger firebomb. To lend greater understanding to the thinking behind its deployment, Gordin takes the reader to the island of Tinian, near Guam, the home base for the bombing campaign, and the location from which the anticipated third atomic bomb was to be delivered. He also details how Americans generated a new story about the origins of the bomb after surrender: that the United States knew in advance that the bomb would end the war and that its destructive power was so awesome no one could resist it. Five Days in Augustexplores these and countless other legacies of the atomic bomb in a glaring new light. Daring and iconoclastic, it will result in far-reaching discussions about the significance of the A-bomb, about World War II, and about the moral issues they have spawned.