Nuclear weapons and the establishment of world order: The impact of Soviet nuclear capabilities on American objectives in the Cold War, 1945-1955

Although many books have been written on the impact of nuclear weapons on the post World War II era, few analyze their role in the early Cold War while those that do generally emphasize their influence on crisis decisionmaking and the possibility of war. This dissertation instead analyses the influence of nuclear weapons on the development of America's postwar national security policy. The central argument presented here is that the development of Soviet nuclear weapons transformed post war U.S. conceptions of systemic stability, from a world system premised upon liberal internationalism to a competitive two bloc order stabilized by the nuclear terror. This strategic shift led to a reconceptualization of U.S. objectives towards the Soviet Union from incorporating the Soviets into the liberal international order to containing and competing with the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War.;The body of the dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter one establishes the relationship between postwar economic beliefs and national security. It will show that the Truman Administration interpreted the establishment of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe as the first step in the rise of an autarkic bloc and a return to the unstable prewar conditions, and how this led to the development of U.S. Cold War objectives. Chapter two will discuss the development of American strategy towards Eastern Europe, as well as the beginnings of the clandestine machinery. Chapter three studies the impact of the Soviet atomic bomb on U.S. national security planning from 1950-1952 resulting in an initial acceleration of U.S. planning and then a significant retrenchment. In chapter four we see the same pattern replayed in the Eisenhower Administration, fanatical support for liberation erodes into keen concern over Soviet nuclear developments. By 1955, the administration determined that the chief threat to U.S. security came from the Soviet nuclear threat, and even the collapse of the Soviet government would not change this fact.