American Intellectuals And The Evolution Of American Nuclear Strategic Thoughts:1945-1960

In the1940s and1950s, with the development of nuclear weapons and cold war, American intellectuals devoted plenty of thoughts on the nuclear weapons and national strategy. Under this circumstance, lots of strategic scholars or civilian strategists became well known in the field of social science, such as Bernard Brodie, William Fox, Arnold Wolfers, Jacob Viner, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger, Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter, William Kaufmann, Roger Hilsman, Charles Hitch, Gordon Turner, Walter Hahn,Rogers Gannell, Morton Kaplan and so on. All these scholars expressed their thoughts by publishing books, articles, writing reports, giving lectures and making speeches, and made great achievement which involved nuclear weapons'military and political effects, strategy of nuclear deterrence, the theory of general war and limited war, balance of terror, nuclear weapons'effects to international relations and western allies, civil defense, nuclear disarmament, nuclear arms control, nuclear proliferation and so on.All the thoughts above interacted with the development of nuclear weapons and the United States'national nuclear strategy in cold war era, some of which involved with the nuclear weapons themselves'effects, some were responses to the American-Soviet nuclear contest, some were critics and suggestions to the United States'national nuclear strategy and some were concerns about civilians'safety and life under the nuclear threat. Some opinions may be accepted by the U.S. government and military service and affected the official policy, some may not be accepted, but still could open the government and public's mind on the nuclear issues. In the1950s, the strategic scholars'thoughts and debate on the strategy of "massive retaliation" promoted American government and public's great argumentation on "limited war", which played a very important role in the transition from the strategy of "massive retaliation" to the strategy of "flexible response", which was a limited war strategy backed up by general war ability, in the early1960s.Furthermore, the nuclear issue is not only a historical problem but also a contemporary problem. With the end of the Cold War, the danger of massive nuclear war disappeared basically, however, the danger of nuclear proliferation increased. Irresponsible state actors and non-state actors represented by international terrorists' effort to possess nuclear weapons is making more and more threat to most nations and peoples'security in the world. And since China is surrounded by the most nuclear armed neighbors, and has complicated relations with these nuclear neighbors, some of which are in an unstable situation, China is actually suffering serious nuclear threat today. Based on American intellectuals'strategic thoughts on the nuclear issue in the early time, maybe we can learn some wisdom and knowledge to help solving the problems face by the world and China.