Power and Protest

Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente

Jeremi Suri

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780674256996
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In a brilliantly-conceived book, Jeremi Suri puts the tumultuous 1960s into a truly international perspective in the first study to examine the connections between great power diplomacy and global social protest. Profoundly disturbed by increasing social and political discontent, Cold War powers united on the international front, in the policy of detente. Though reflecting traditional balance of power considerations, detente thus also developed from a common urge for stability among leaders who by the late 1960s were worried about increasingly threatening domestic social activism.In the early part of the decade, Cold War pressures simultaneously inspired activists and constrained leaders; within a few years activism turned revolutionary on a global scale. Suri examines the decade through leaders and protesters on three continents, including Mao Zedong, Charles de Gaulle, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He describes connections between policy and protest from the Berkeley riots to the Prague Spring, from the Paris strikes to massive unrest in Wuhan, China.Designed to protect the existing political order and repress movements for change, detente gradually isolated politics from the public. The growth of distrust and disillusion in nearly every society left a lasting legacy of global unrest, fragmentation, and unprecedented public skepticism toward authority.

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1

THE STRAINS OF NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION

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Nuclear weapons changed the military landscape after World War II. Their explosive power could destroy cities, and even entire countries, in short order. Amidst widespread nuclear destruction, human civilization might not survive another total war between the great powers. War, in this sense, had become more nearly “absolute” than ever before.¹

As they embodied the potential future consequences of war, nuclear weapons also bolstered the prestige of the two dominant countries after World War II—the United States and the Soviet Union. The leaders of these governments exercised military influence across the globe. They could threaten, if they so desired, to destroy entire nations unilaterally. More significant, the rapid deployment of nuclear power in the late 1940s and early 1950s gave an indication of the extraordinary accomplishments the United States and the Soviet Union could produce when they mobilized their respective scientific, military, and human resources. Nuclear weapons were indeed symbols of national greatness.

Threats of destruction and promises of greatness went hand in hand. They constituted the central contradiction of the nuclear revolution. Nuclear arsenals made the United States and the Soviet Union “superpowers” in the 1950s, but they did not enhance the usable strength of either nation. Leaders soon recognized that they could not exploit their nuclear power to secure political dominance of distant territories. Land conquered by nuclear force would not serve anyone’s purposes, contaminating occupier and occupied alike. The destructive power of nuclear weapons exceeded any proportional definition of political aims. As a consequence, the most powerful states after World War II quickly lost the will to use armed conflict against each other for the “pursuit of policy by other means.”²

The years 1958–1963 stand as a critical juncture in the history of the nuclear world. The United States and the Soviet Union struggled to reconcile their political aims with the risks posed by developments in thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems. A series of dangerous crises reflected tensions not only between the superpowers but also within their societies. Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Nikita Khrushchev attempted to maintain various external commitments in Europe, Asia, and Latin America by issuing nuclear threats that they were ever more afraid to carry through. By the end of 1963 diplomacy had become incredibly dangerous for its predominant participants. A precarious “peace” emerged from the Cuban missile crisis, but not as the result of victory or defeat or even compromise. Instead, it reflected the threat that nuclear weapons posed to each side. The United States and the Soviet Union accepted stalemate over the prospect of mutual destruction.³

The strongest Cold War states approximated overmuscled wrestlers. Through ever-increasing thermonuclear deployments each added mass for the destruction of its adversary. But the continuous addition of mass reduced superpower flexibility. Warily eyeing each other across a broad terrain, the international giants faced an undesirable choice between stalemate and mutual annihilation.

As nuclear stalemate perpetuated divisions in Europe and fears about the future, smaller, less muscular states gained initiative. West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer set an important precedent for others—especially Charles de Gaulle, Mao Zedong, and later Willy Brandt—when he attacked the shallowness of the superpower “peace.” Political leaders and ordinary citizens alike turned their attention to arms control, cultural exchanges, and a general redirection of Cold War politics.

■ Eisenhower and the Nuclear Revolution

No commander-in-chief had better schooling in the dilemmas of nuclear power than Dwight D. Eisenhower. After leading Allied forces in Europe during World War II, he served from 1946 to 1952 as U.S. Army chief of staff, temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first NATO supreme allied commander. Each of these positions provided Eisenhower with intimate knowledge of American nuclear stockpiles and war plans. After his inauguration as president in 1953, he devoted considerable attention to the intricacies of nuclear strategy.

Eisenhower frequently reflected on the horrors of nuclear war. Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly in December 1953, he explained that a conflict involving recently developed thermonuclear capabilities would mean “the probability of civilization destroyed—the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us generation from generation—and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery toward decency, and right, and justice.”⁴

The largest American thermonuclear explosion ever—the “BRAVO” test of 1 March 1954—reinforced Eisenhower’s fears of nuclear conflict. The detonation at Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific Ocean, produced a colossal fifteen-megaton blast. It left a 250-foot deep crater where there had been an island. The force of the explosion reverberated nearly 200 miles away, with radioactive fallout contaminating areas far downwind. In waters an apparently safe distance away, the crew of the Japanese boat Lucky Dragon suffered exposure to the airborne residue from the blast.⁵

The new thermonuclear bombs had become so powerful that even testing them posed grave hazards. Like many other informed observers around the world, Eisenhower quickly realized that the realities of nuclear power made a mockery of any hopes for “victory” through the use of these weapons in war. Days after the BRAVO test he expressed doubt as to “whether any nations as we know them would continue to exist at the conclusion” of hostilities. The prospect of continued growth in nuclear arsenals, he wrote British prime minister Winston Churchill, was “truly appalling.”⁶

Eisenhower hoped to use the very horror of nuclear conflict to deter the destructive potential demonstrated in the test at Bikini. Effective war deterrence, he believed, required the assurance that any act of aggression would incur the harshest penalties. Before entering office Eisenhower had observed that the “possibility of total destruction, terrible though it is, could be a blessing.” “Confronted by that outcome to another world war, all of us, East and West, are in the same boat.” Soviet leaders were rational, not reckless, he explained. They would not “engage in global war because nobody would win it.” During his years in the White House, Eisenhower never wavered from this assessment.⁷

Reliance on nuclear deterrence did not, however, extinguish growing concerns about the harmful effects of these weapons on human civilization. The ecological effects of a thermonuclear explosion—as demonstrated by the BRAVO test—were profound and irreversible. In the mid-1950s scientists in Europe and North America began to observe rising levels of radiation in rain, soil, milk, and even human bones. The entire infrastructure of life on Earth was jeopardized in a way inconceivable only a few years earlier. Radioactive fallout knew no boundaries.⁸

Limits on thermonuclear development—including tests—received growing support among citizens, intellectuals, and policymakers around the world. Influential figures such as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, and Linus Pauling gave strong public testimony on the need for immediate nuclear arms control.⁹ In response to these pressures Eisenhower considered an international moratorium on nuclear explosions during the second half of 1954. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained to the president’s closest advisers that we cannot “sit here in Washington and develop bigger bombs without any regard for the impact of these developments on world opinion. In the long run it isn’t only bombs that win wars, but having public opinion on your side.”¹⁰

In this context of rising thermonuclear fear, Eisenhower made a number of attempts to reduce the dangers of conflict arising from miscalculation, accident, or a simple misreading of intentions. He believed that the time had come for agreed limits on the growth of destructive arsenals. Meeting with the Soviet leadership in Geneva in July 1955, Eisenhower made his intentions clear. “It is essential,” the president explained to the Kremlin’s delegation, “that we find some way of controlling the threat of the thermonuclear bomb. You know we both have enough weapons to wipe out the entire northern hemisphere from fallout alone. No spot would escape the fallout from an exchange of nuclear stockpiles.”¹¹

A few days later Eisenhower offered something more concrete: a simple plan for “open skies” that would limit worries about hidden military production and war preparation. He proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union “give to each other a complete blueprint of our military establishments, from beginning to end, from one end of our countries to the other.” In addition, each state would provide its counterpart with “facilities for aerial photography” of military installations.¹²

The Soviet leadership summarily rejected this call for greater transparency on the grounds that it disproportionately served the interests of the more open American society. Eisenhower’s first foray into arms control provided little immediate return, but it did reveal his deep concern for stabilizing what one writer later called the “delicate balance” of nuclear terror. While he continued to suspect the motives of the Soviet leadership, the president believed that cooperation—even of a very wary and limited kind—was necessary in a world of multiplying nuclear dangers. “Open skies” was a first attempt at building confidence between rivals through arms control rather than arms escalation.¹³

Despite his commitment to controlling the risks of thermonuclear war, Eisenhower continued to rely upon explicit nuclear threats, especially during acute international crises. The president wanted the United States to fight from its particular strengths, rather than react to every enemy move in kind. Instead of raising a huge conventional army that would match those of the Soviet Union and Communist China in size and cost, the Eisenhower administration relied on nuclear forces to respond quickly, conclusively, and perhaps even preemptively against the resources of adversaries. America prepared for conflict over the “long haul,” emphasizing effective but economical striking power with thermonuclear warheads, long-range bombers, and soon missiles as well.¹⁴

Arms control, in this context, promised to stabilize dangerous military trends by reinforcing the evidence that conflict was unwinnable. The nuclear powers would limit their arsenals, according to Eisenhower’s logic, when both recognized that their spending produced new dangers rather than accomplishments at home or abroad. During his second term in office the president displayed growing hope that the Soviet leadership had come to share this perspective. Negotiations among arms control experts and the unprecedented visit of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to the United States in 1959 implied the recognition of an uneasy international equilibrium. Uncertainty about intentions and trustworthiness, however, fed continued pressures for arms races.¹⁵

The president relied on nuclear retaliatory capabilities not just as a deterrent, but also as an inducement to domestic self-restraint. A secure nuclear force would limit what Eisenhower perceived as a dangerous public tendency to overreact in the face of threat. Without firm ceilings on military expenditures, the president feared that the Cold War would produce what he frequently called a “garrison state” in place of the liberal free-market society that the nation sought to protect. The American “way of life,” according to Eisenhower, precluded a bloated and intrusive central government. National security required both Washington’s preparation to defend the state’s critical interests and restraint against excessive government interference in society at large.¹⁶

The “New Look” revision in American strategy, commissioned by Eisenhower, emphasized the economy of nuclear weapons. An arsenal of bombs, aircraft, and later missiles proved far less burdensome for domestic society than large standing armies. The president believed that secure nuclear power would allow for the maintenance of free markets, consumer abundance, and individual rights. More regimented forms of military preparedness would not. Controlled deployment of nuclear weapons, despite all the associated dangers, promised a reliable and cheap American defense.¹⁷

Nuclear weapons stabilized the international system, as Eisenhower expected, through much of the 1950s. Crises continued to flare around disputed areas—especially the island of Taiwan and the Suez Canal—but these confrontations did not escalate. The two largest nuclear states studiously avoided direct military challenges to each other.

In the summer of 1957, though, the pace of military innovation began to shake the foundations of international stability. A Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile test in August, followed by the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite—“Sputnik I”—on 4 October, forced Eisenhower to reconsider the reliability of peace through nuclear strength. Intercontinental missiles greatly increased the speed and breadth of thermonuclear destruction. Each superpower would soon possess the capacity to destroy its counterpart in a matter of minutes—perhaps without sufficient time for retaliation.

The advent of missile technology undermined the sense of security that the continental United States had previously derived from its ocean frontiers. Fast-moving rockets loaded with thermonuclear warheads made a devastating “bolt from the blue” feasible, with destructive capabilities far beyond those of conventional aerial bombardment in World War II. Most significant, the speed of the new missiles allowed the Soviet Union to contemplate a surprise attack that could annihilate U.S. retaliatory capabilities in one fell swoop. The nation would, according to this nightmare scenario, lie prostrate before the enemy.¹⁸

The destructive potential of thermonuclear weapons had already inspired questions about the reliability of U.S. defense commitments overseas. With advances in missile capabilities the worries of Washington’s allies only deepened. Any attempts at an American defense of West Berlin or Paris now raised the prospect of immediate Soviet nuclear attacks on New York or Chicago. Would the United States sacrifice its own survival to protect allies in Europe and elsewhere? In early 1958 Eisenhower’s special assistant for national security affairs, Robert Cutler, wrote a secret letter to Dulles explaining that “doubt is growing in many areas whether U.S. retaliatory power would be used except against attack on the U.S. and U.S. forces.” America’s nuclear arsenal, Cutler continued, did not provide “usable strength for stable deterrence of, or reply to, minor aggression....