American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68

by Ernest R. May (Editor)

Written in 1950, NSC 68 laid out the rationale for American Cold War strategy. This volume includes the complete text of NSC 68, followed by commentaries from former officials, specialists on American foreign policy, and American and foreign scholars. Ernest May's analytical essays discuss the many ways in which this historical document can be read, remembered, and understood.

Genres: History, American, International Relations, War, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Ernest Richard May was an American historian of international relations whose 14 published books include analyses of American involvement in World War I and the causes of the fall of France during World War II. His 1997 book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis became the primary sources of the 2000 film Thirteen Days that viewed the crisis from the perspective of American political leaders. He served on the 9/11 Commission and highlighted the failures of the government intelligence agencies. May taught full time on the faculty of Harvard University for 55 years, until his death.

Reviews

[James Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in college over 20 years ago and then again when I started working on a book about Paul Nitze. It is just fantastic—I wish someone would revive this series!

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a grad class.
This is super informative and well thought out. Everything you didn't know that you didn't know about NSC 68.
Yeah, very useful, just not the most enthralling book I've ever read.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to read more of these types of single-document-focused volumes, as I always find them stimulating. This short, punchy collection features NSC-68 plus 2-3 page essays and excerpts from contemporaneous policy-makers like Nitze and Kennan, later policy-makers commenting on the relevance of NSC-68 for their tenures, and a variety of scholars. Occasionally the material by scholars gets a little repetitive, but it's a nice sampling of different approaches to Cold War historiography. NSC-68 itself struck me in one big way: the centrality but ambiguity of totalitarianism as a framework for understanding the USSR. If the USSR is totalitarian, as most policymakers seemed to assume, does this mean it was run by rigid fanatics trying to foster utopia around the world by any means necessary? Is ideology just a shield for the accumulation and maintenance of power, as Orwell would suggest? Is Soviet ideology, and the notion of truth itself, completely flexible in the minds of the Soviet leadership? There are elements of all 3 of these beliefs in NSC-68 and other foundational Cold War documents. Sounds like a second book to me...

This is a pretty niche book that I'd say would only be valuable for a foreign policy or Cold War course. I probably wouldn't assign it to undergrads, although excerpts of NSC-68 are definitely worth assigning.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good supplementary textbook for an upper division course on the Cold War. It contains a historical introduction, the text of NSC 68 and a selection of excerpted commentaries from various points of view.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and I can't say I didn't learn a lot....but please never make me read it again.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as part of college curriculum.