The Johnson Years

Abstract

Despite the emerging consensus pertaining to the inadmissibility of nuclear war during the Johnson years, it certainly was no impediment to the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons. In a nuclear world, the maintenance of an adequate nuclear deterrent remained a rational policy, but the design for optimum nuclear preparation, sufficient to deter nuclear attack, remained elusive. Notwithstanding the mutual agreement on the irrationality of war, both the United States and the U.S.S.R. perpetuated an unrestricted arms race, largely to guarantee that neither side would use such weapons. For George Kennan, the entire Soviet-American conflict had been reduced largely to “the fantasy world of nuclear weaponry.” The arms race, he wrote, was caught up in a momentum without any discernable objective that required the constant preparation for an ever more destructive nuclear war. Indeed, he argued, if the two powers would roll back their nuclear armaments to some reasonable level, the U.S.S.R. would cease to be a threat to American security. No quarrel with the Kremlin would tolerate a resolution at the price of such a war. To Columbia’s Marshall D. Shulman and Chicago’s Hans J. Morgenthau, it seemed essential that the United States and the U.S.S.R. curtail their nuclear programs, long redundant, and demonstrate more restraint in their military competition.