"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.
Edward Kaplan is Associate Professor at the Army War College. He is coeditor of Atlas for Introduction to Military History and editor of High Flight.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. Antecedents 2. Declaration, Action, and the Air-Atomic Strategy 3. Finding a Place 4. The Fantastic Compression of Time 5. To Kill a Nation 6. Stalemate, Finite Deterrence, Polaris, and SIOP-62 7. New Sheriff in Town 8. End of an Era Conclusion Key to Sources and Abbreviations Notes Index
What People are Saying About This
James Wood Forsyth
Edward Kaplan has written a first-rate account of the evolution of America's air-atomic strategy, a subject overlooked by contemporary scholars and policymakers and, most important of all, airmen themselves. Drawing on a wide variety of literatures that inform the study of airpower, nuclear deterrence, and the Cold War, he carefully examines the puzzles that plagued the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations as they struggled to come to terms with the advent of atomic weapons and the conduct of war. As the title implies, the story here is nothing less than the killing of nations; this is a topic neglected at our peril. This book should be read by all those interested in airpower, nuclear strategy, war, and peace.
Tami Davis Biddle
"While the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine had genuine logical robustness internally, it looked (and indeed was) totally insane the moment one stepped just a millimeter outside of it. And everyone had to live with that—not just the Air Force but everyone inside the national security community in Washington, DC. In To Kill Nations, Edward Kaplan makes clear the distinction between articulated, presidential-level declaratory policy and the military planning process, which may stay within the boundaries of the former and may not. The military will always have its own imperatives and institutional drivers. Unless policymakers keep on top of these, they will risk losing control of what actually goes on in planning. Kaplan emphasizes this reality in his detailed history of early U.S. nuclear war planning."