For eight years President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security. Yet his policies entrenched the United States in a seemingly permanent cold war, a spiraling nuclear arms race, and a deepening state of national insecurity. Ira Chernus uncovers the key to this paradox in Eisenhower's unwavering commitment to a consistent way of talking, in private as well as in public, about the cold war rivalry. Contrary to what most historians have concluded, Eisenhower never aimed at any genuine rapprochement with the Soviet Union. He discourse always assumed that the United States would forever face an enemy bent on destroying it, making national insecurity a permanent way of life. The "peace" he sought was only an endless process of managing apocalyptic threats, a permanent state of "apocalypse management," intended to give the United States unchallenged advantage in every arena of the cold war. The goal and the discourse that supported it were inherently self-defeating. Yet the discourse is Eisenhower's most enduring legacy, for it has shaped U.S. foreign policy ever since, leaving us still a national insecurity state.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Here is the first authoritative study of Eisenhower and his presidential moment which accounts properly for the decisive aspect of religion in his conception of the cold war and its conduct. Chernus has done us all an immense, intellectual favor."—Anders Stephanson, Columbia University
"In this provocative and deeply absorbing book, Ira Chernus argues powerfully that the Eisenhower administration, through its use of what he calls apocalypse management, consistently undermined Americas sense of security. It is a paradigm that endures, moreover, which is what gives this study its great contemporary resonance. A most impressive work."—Fredrik Longevall, Cornell University
"Chernus challenges the reader by presenting a different, more negative view of Eisenhower that will serve as an antidote to the image of the wise, cautious, and benign man that historians have come to know."
—Journal of American History
—Journal of American History
About the Author
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace (2002) and, most recently, of Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin (2006).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By John Baesler
Format:Hardcover
This work by noted religious scholar Ira Chernus is an outstanding analysis of Dwight Eisenhower's way of talking about the Soviet threat at a time when most Americans fully expected (or at least could easily imagine) to see a full blown nuclear war in their lifetime. Eisenhower, Chernus argues, tried to braze Americans for a long conflict that was on the one hand a life-and-death struggle against evil, on the other hand an opportunity for Americans to prove their exceptional democratic values. Put differently, while the secret Doolittle Report on CIA covert operations demanded that America adapt every dirty trick in the communist book, Eisenhower publicly talked about Open Skies and the opportunity for world peace. The pieces never quite fit together.
Together with Kenneth Osgood's Total Cold War, this book represents the cutting edge scholarship (post-Eisenhower revisionism, if you will) on America's Cold War, which started in the 1950s and never ended. I assume that Stanford University Press's prohibitively expensive cover price will keep interested readers from purchasing the book. That is too bad, because the book deserves a wider readership. Get it from your library if necessary!
Together with Kenneth Osgood's Total Cold War, this book represents the cutting edge scholarship (post-Eisenhower revisionism, if you will) on America's Cold War, which started in the 1950s and never ended. I assume that Stanford University Press's prohibitively expensive cover price will keep interested readers from purchasing the book. That is too bad, because the book deserves a wider readership. Get it from your library if necessary!
