Eisenhower’s Nuclear Calculus in Europe

Through a reliance on nuclear weapons, President Eisenhower hoped to provide a defense strategy that would allow the U.S. to maintain its security requirements without creating an economic burden. This defense strategy, known as the New Look, benefited the U.S. Air Force with its focus on strategic nuclear weapons. The U.S. also required European missile bases to deploy their intermediate range ballistic missiles, while efforts continued to develop U.S.– based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Deploying such missiles to Europe required balancing regional European concerns with U.S. domestic security priorities. In the wake of the Soviet Sputnik launch in 1957, the U.S. began to fear Soviet missile capabilities. Using European missile bases would mitigate this domestic security issue, but convincing NATO allies to base the missiles in their countries raised issues of sovereignty and weapons control and ran the risk of creating divisions in the NATO alliance.

<Gates Brown is an assistant professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Gates Brown

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 205
Bibliographic Info: 9 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6950-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3474-6
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1. Creating the New Look: Project Solarium and the Intellectual Foundation of the New Look Defense Policy 11
2. Many Strands into One Rope: Creating a Unified Defense Policy 28
3. Resistance to Massive Retaliation: The Arguments Against Massive Retaliation and the Deficiencies in Eisenhower’s National Security Policies 37
4. The Development of IRBMs 55
5. The Suez Crisis and Bermuda Conference Reconciliation 83
6. A European Solution to an American Problem: Eisenhower’s Initial Reaction to the Soviet Launch of Sputnik 106
7. U.S-U.K. IRBM Agreement 129
8. Unintended Consequences 148
Conclusion 162
Chapter Notes 169
Bibliography 184
Index 195