As the United States struggled to respond to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower received a top secret report prepared by a committee of leading scientific, business, and military experts. The panel, called the Gaither Committee in recognition of its first chair, H. Rowan Gaither Jr., emphasized the inadequacy of U.S. defense measures designed to protect the civilian population and the vulnerability of the country's strategic nuclear forces in the event of a Soviet attack. The committee concluded that in the event of a surprise Soviet attack, the United States would not be able to defend itself. The years following Sputnik and the Gaither Committee's report were a watershed period in America's cold war history. During the remaining years of the Eisenhower administration, the intensification of the cold war caused the acceleration of an arms race that dramatically raised the stakes of any potential conflict. The Gaither Committee was at the center of debates about U.S. national security and U.S.-Soviet relations. The committee's recommendations led to increases in defense spending and the development of our nuclear arsenal.

Eisenhower's Fine Group of Fellows examines the contributions and management of civilians during the Eisenhower administration. Valerie Adams provides a concise history of the roles played by civilian advisers in developing a national security strategy. By examining the successful utilization of civilians in the Eisenhower administration, Adams draws lessons for the future from our recent past. The cooperation of Eisenhower's administration was exemplary in many aspects, including: the management of ad hoc civilian committees, the utilization of science and technology, and the personal leadership of Eisenhower himself. Eisenhower's Fine Group of Fellows draws a blueprint from the past for the future and is of great interest to historians of the period and forward thinkers.

Argues that Eisenhower was a stronger president than previously believed and was responsible for many important accomplishments in the area of foreign policy and the quest for peace.

Harold Stassen (1907--2001) garnered accolades as the thirty-one-year-old "boy wonder" governor of Minnesota and quickly assumed a national role as aide to Admiral William Halsey Jr. during World War II. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1952, Stassen was named director of the Mutual Security Administration and then became the president's special assistant for disarmament. In this position, Stassen had the power to profoundly shape the country's foreign policy and became influential in early Cold War policy discussions about the limits and uses of conventional and nuclear weapons. In this nuanced biography, Lawrence S. Kaplan demonstrates that Stassen's role in Eisenhower's White House deserves more analysis than it has received from scholars. Stassen came to Washington advocating the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but he quickly came to recognize that this would not happen. He refocused his efforts, working for greater international transparency and communication. The liberal internationalism that Stassen espoused became embedded in Cold War policy for decades, and he consistently provided a voice for peace in an increasingly hawkish national security establishment. Stassen, in many ways, was his own worst enemy; his ambition and ego undermined his efforts and clouded his vision. His feuds with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were legendary, and while Dulles often prevailed in the meeting room, Stassen's vision of nuclear restraint was one that Eisenhower shared. Kaplan's study provides a new perspective on nuclear disarmament during a critical period in US history and sheds light on Eisenhower's approach to international relations.

Under the growing shadow of the Cold War, President Eisenhower announced his 'Open Skies' initiative to Soviet, British and French delegations at the Geneva Summit in 1955. In a climate of intense fear and suspicion, this proposed system of mutual aerial inspection was dismissed by Khrushchev and the Soviet Union as nothing more than an 'espionage plot'. Nevertheless, Eisenhower campaigned for its implementation until the end of his presidency. Here, Helen Bury provides a new interpretation of Eisenhower's 'Open Skies' programme, arguing that it functioned as a corrective to John Foster Dulles' 'New Look' defence strategy - which relied on the threat of massive nuclear retaliation. A critic of the 'military-industrial' complex which was gaining power in American statecraft and which sought to expand military spending, Eisenhower aimed instead to safeguard the economic strength of America. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex is the first in-depth study of the Open Skies policy and essential reading for historians of the Cold War and the International Relations of the United States.

Waging Peace offers the first fully comprehensive study of Eisenhower's "New Look" program of national security, which provided the groundwork for the next three decades of America's Cold War strategy. Though the Cold War itself and the idea of containment originated under Truman, it was left to Eisenhower to develop the first coherent and sustainable strategy for addressing the issues unique to the nuclear age. To this end, he designated a decision-making system centered around the National Security Council to take full advantage of the expertise and data from various departments and agencies and of the judgment of his principal advisors. The result was the formation of a "long haul" strategy of preventing war and Soviet expansion and of mitigating Soviet hostility. Only now, in the aftermath of the Cold War, can Eisenhower's achievement be fully appreciated. This book will be of much interest to scholars and students of the Eisenhower era, diplomatic history, the Cold War, and contemporary foreign policy.

When President Dwight Eisenhower spoke of waging "total cold war," he was proposing nothing less than a global, all-embracing battle for hearts and minds. His wide-ranging propaganda campaign challenged world communism at every turn and left a lasting mark on the American psyche. Kenneth Osgood now chronicles the secret psychological warfare programs America developed at the height of the Cold War. These programs-which were often indistinguishable from CIA covert operations-went well beyond campaigns to foment unrest behind the Iron Curtain. The effort was global: U.S. propaganda campaigns targeted virtually every country in the free world. Total Cold War also shows that Eisenhower waged his propaganda war not just abroad, but also at home. U.S. psychological warfare programs blurred the lines between foreign and domestic propaganda with campaigns that both targeted the American people and enlisted them as active participants in global contest for public opinion. Osgood focuses on major campaigns such as Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and cultural exchange programs. Drawing on recently declassified documents that record U.S. psychological operations in some three dozen countries, he tells how U.S. propaganda agencies presented everyday life in America to the world: its citizens living full, happy lives in a classless society where economic bounty was shared by all. Osgood further investigates the ways in which superpower disarmament negotiations were used as propaganda maneuvers in the battle for international public opinion. He also reexamines the early years of the space race, focusing especially on the challenge to American propagandists posed by the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Perhaps most telling, Osgood takes a new look at President Eisenhower's leadership. Believing that psychological warfare was a potent weapon in America's arsenal, Ike appears in these pages not as a disinterested figurehead, as he's often been portrayed, but as an activist president who left a profound mark on national security affairs. Osgood's distinctive interpretation places Cold War propaganda campaigns in the context of an international arena drastically changed by the communications revolution and the age of mass politics and total war. It provides a new perspective on the conduct of public diplomacy, even as Americans today continue to grapple with the challenges of winning other hearts and minds in another global struggle.