The United States and National Security, and Domin Essay Example For Students

The United States and National Security, and Domin Essay ant Party in Balance of PowerThe emergence of the United States as a dominant party in balance ofpower equations is a relatively new phenomenon in world history. New militarytechnology coupled with increased global integration has allowed the UnitedStates to reinvent the fundamental assumptions of international diplomacy whilepropelling itself to the top of the hegemonic stepladder. This positioning wasachieved piecemeal during the course of the first two world wars, but it wasntuntil the deployment of the atomic bomb that the U.S.. assumed its position as atrue superpower. The years that followed this unparalleled ascension are themost fascinating times in the history of U.S. international relations. Hopefully,an investigation into this atomic diplomacy, along with a balanced analysis ofthe problems of conceptualizing and implementing containment, will provideinsight for our current efforts to devise a workable post-war national securitypolicy. There is no way to tell the story of post-war national security withoutalso telling the story of George Kennen. Kennen, the foremost expert of SovietAffairs in early post-war America, is almost wholly responsible for the policyof containment. What we must remember under Kennens containment is that nucleardiplomacy is not separate from other national security measures as it is oftentoday. Nuclear weapons were part of an integrated system of containment anddeterrence. Truman told Kennen in early 1947 that our weapons of massdestruction are not fail-safe devices, but instead the fundamental bedrock ofAmerican security (Gaddis 56). They were never intended as first strike weaponsand had no real tactical value. The bomb is purely strategic, and its valuecomes not from its destructive capabilities, but from its political andpsychological ramifications. Kennen was never naive enough to view the bomb asan offensive weapon. In his long memorandum The International Control of AtomicEnergy, Ken nen noted that there could be no way in which weapons of massdestruction could be made to serve rational ends beyond simply deterring theoutbreak of hostilities (Kennen 39). Even at this early point, Kennen began toalso recognize the potential of the bomb to completely wreck balance of powerarrangements. Simply achieving higher potentials of destruction would notnecessarily lead to a better negotiating position with the Soviets. Truman hadnever considered not creating the hydrogen bomb, despite Kennens objections. Trumans justified his adamant support of the super bomb for bargainingpurposes with the Russians. Kennens point, of course, had been that the verydecision to build the hydrogen bomb would inhibit bargaining with the Russianson international control, since the Kremlin was unlikely to negotiate from aposition of weakness. Most of the American national security structure viewedthis as fallacious. Trumans perception was that the United States, as atechnology rich but man power short nation, was operating from a position ofweakness, since of necessity is relied more heavily than did the Soviet Union onweapons of mass destruction to maintain the balance of power. The Soviet atomictest in 1949 had upset that balance. Only by building the super bomb, it wasthought, could equilibrium be regained. It would not be until the Kennedyadministration that Kennen would be vindicated and an awareness would developof the basic unsoundness of a defense posture based primarily on weaponsindiscriminately destructive and suicidal in their implications (Kennen 365). The late mistakes of the Truman administration would be carried overinto the Eisenhower years. Nuclear deployment became the primary Americansecurity measure, naturally leading the Soviets to do the same. The problems ofthe Eisenhower years stemmed directly from the overconfidence in the U.S. nuclear program to achieve tangible military objectives in the face of increasedhostilities. John Foster Dulles, the symbol of bipartisan cooperation on foreignpolicy, began to advocate the nuclear response. The impotence of our standingarmy compared to the Soviets military behemoth was clear to all U.S. policyadvisors. There was no way in which we could match Russia gun for gun, tank fortank, at anytime, in any place. Johns brother Allen Dulles, CIA director underEisenhower, said to do so would mean real strength nowhere and bankruptcyeverywhere (Gaddis 121). Instead, the U.S. response to Soviet aggressions wouldbe made on our terms. J.F. Dulles solution was typical strategic asymmetry, butof a particular kind. His recommendations prompted a world in which we couldand would strike back where it hurts, by means of out own choosing. This couldbe done most effectively by relying on atomic weapons, and on the strategic airand naval power necessary to deliver them (Dulles 147). This unba lancedstrategic equation between the two superpowers was not even the most dangerousflaw of the 1950s. None Provided8 Argumentative EssayGaddis agrees, saying Vietnam was the unexpected legacy of the flexibleresponse: not fine tuning, but clumsy overreaction, not coordination butdisproportion, not strategic precision, but in the end, a strategic vacuum(Gaddis 273). The 1968 campaign was unusual in that, unlike 1952 and 1960, itprovided little indication of the direction in which the new administrationwould move into office. In addition, the world facing the new administration of1968 was one ripe with possibilities of new approaches. To usher in these newstrategies, Nixon choose Dr. Henry Kissenger as his national security advisor. Kissengers conceptual approach to the making of national security policyeliminated the crisis based flexible response system. Crises, he said, weresymptoms of deeper problems that if allowed to fester would prove increasinglyunmanageable (Kissenger 275). Kissenger was one of the first to recognize theshift from a bipolar to multipolar world. This was a natural resultmodernization, and therefore, traditional bipolar nuclear strategy began to loseimportance, like Kissenger had predicted five years earlier. Before this point,United States interests were effectively met by its Pax Americana enforced onthe world by U.S. weapons of war. By 1968, however, Nixon knew he had to dealwith the world in a much less dynamic fashion. What Nixon and Kissenger did with their concept of a multipolar worldorder was to arrive at a conception of interests independent of threats. Gaddispoints out that since those interests required equilibrium but not ideologicalconsistency, it followed that the United States could feasibly work with statesof differing and even antithetic social systems as long as they shared theAmerican interest in countering challenges to global stability (Gaddis 285). This has become the primary guiding doctrine in American foreign policy sincethat time. Once this official policy shift was made, nuclear weapons becameexactly what they originally were: symbols for deterrence. The only continuingreason any nations of the nuclear club still deploy nuclear weapons is to deterhostility from other nations. The depth and complexity of American securitypolicy reaches far beyond the scope of this investigation, but hopefully therole of the atomic bomb in U.S. foreign affairs is somewhat more clear. Today,nuclear diplomacy is dead. The world has somehow adapted to weapons of massdestruction, and the diplomatic and military strategy of nuclear weapons is farfrom the minds of U.S. officials in the State Department. The world has moved onto a new age in international relations. Kissenger said in 1968 that there wasnow no single decisive index by which the influence of states can be measured(Kissenger 277). As much as we might like to indict the policies of nuc leardiplomacy for all its self-indulgent insanity, we must bear in mind that it wassomehow successful. Not one atomic bomb fell onto a nation from Kennen toKissenger, and that should show the altruistic commitment by men of power tokeep the unthinkable thinkable. Category: History