Description
Book SynopsisThe End of Victory recounts the costs of failure in nuclear war through the work of the most secret deliberative body of the National Security Council, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC). From 1953 onward, US leaders wanted to know as precisely as possible what would happen if they failed in a nuclear warhow many Americans would die and how much of the country would remain. The NESC told Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy what would be the result of the worst failure of American strategya maximum-effort surprise Soviet nuclear assault on the United States.
Edward Kaplan details how NESC studies provided key information for presidential decisions on the objectives of a war with the USSR and on the size and shape of the US military. The subcommittee delivered its annual reports in a decade marked by crises in Berlin, Quemoy and Matsu, Laos, and Cuba, among others. During these critical moments and day-to-day containment of the USSR, the NE
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Kaplan, dean of the School of Strategic Landpower at the US Army War College, explains in this thought-provoking book how the meaning of victory in the postwar era was transformed. For US presidents from Eisenhower to Kennedy, the significance of victory was reassessed because of the work of a little-known subcommittee of the National Security Council called the Net Evaluation Subcommittee.
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Origins
2. Victory
3. Victory's Twilight
4. Prevailing in the Space Age
5. Finding the Optimum-Mix
6. From Forcible Action to Coercion
7. Testing Controlled Response
8. War Termination and NESC's End
Conclusion
