Summary

How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under conditions of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations, James Cameron argues that John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a façade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age. 

Short Bio

James Cameron is an assistant professor of international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at International Security Studies, Yale University and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He defended his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge in 2013.