When that first Soviet test (right) came in August 1949, years earlier than had been predicted, the U.S. nuclear weapons program increased dramatically in intensity.  The military believed an "airtight" defense of North America to be impossible, so emphasis remained on the nuclear offensive capability of the Strategic Air Command.  The idea of preventative war was rejected, but should war come, or even just appear imminent, the Air Force hoped to strike the Soviet Union with such force that no nuclear retaliation would be possible.  Generals such as Curtis LeMay had spent the final years of the last war methodically burning down the cities of their enemies; they were determined that the United States not be on the receiving end of this during the next war.  Civil defense planning began as well, but neither the public nor the national security bureaucracy found "duck and cover" drills particularly reassuring.  

It was at the very end of the Truman Administration that the active defense of North America, and not just preemption, began to become a matter of national priority.  As the estimates of the Soviet stockpile grew into double and triple figures, officials in the State Department, the National Security Resources Board, and elsewhere were appalled to learn what the military had known for years: that if the Soviet Union struck first, there might be very little warning and very great destruction.  There were numerous problems with this scenario as well, but the possibility of a "nuclear Pearl Harbor" was just too compelling to ignore, especially with the Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii still a recent memory.  It should come as no surprise that, when faced with this technological nightmare, the World War II generation called for a technological solution in the form of a "Manhattan Project-type" program to expand the air defenses of North America.  Military planners, fearing that funds would be diverted from offensive nuclear forces, continued to argue that creating an impregnable defense was simply not possible, but they were overruled.  Thus, an often-overlooked aspect of the Eisenhower Administration's "New Look" defense policy was the creation of a massive system of active defenses against nuclear attack.

I have already completed about half of the research necessary for a comprehensive study of strategic defense during the era of the "missile gap," i.e. ca. 1954-1962.  Continued government classification of historical records prevents a comprehensive study of strategic defense beyond the early 1960s, but the open-source literature does make it possible to produce at least a survey of the problem into the 1980s and beyond.  I believe such a survey would fill a glaring gap in the existing literature.  It is also possible that in 5-10 years time additional declassification will make possible a detailed study of strategic defense in the 1960s.  Given the intermittent nature and often glacial pace of government declassification, however, this is certainly not something that can be counted upon.  

(Click here for a brief abstract of strategic defense from 1954 to the present.)  

Information Technology and the Historical Profession

Information technology is changing the way history is studied and taught.  My association with these changes began shortly after I graduated in 1995 with undergraduate degrees in both history and computer science.  I created the first web site for the Temple University History Department in 1996 (at the time we were only the third department in the entire college to have one), and in 1997 I created my first course web site as a teaching assistant for Professor Richard Immerman's course on the Vietnam War.  (Both web sites continue to be used in modified forms today.)   I have created a web site for every course I have ever taught in a web-accessible classroom, reviewed a historical CD-ROM for H-Net, and given a paper on “Computers and the Teaching of the Vietnam War” at the annual conference of the American Association for History and Computing.  By far my largest project relating to multimedia history is a massive web site I created over the last year for the Department of Energy, entitled The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History.  (Click here for more information on this project.) 

Technology and National Security

Another rich area in general for military and diplomatic history relating to the 20th century is the relationship between technology and national security.  There is an entire literature out there full of insights on the history of technology, but with a few prominent exceptions, little of it relates directly to military or diplomatic history.  For their part, many military and diplomatic historians have no idea that the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) even exists.  Numerous aspects of the arms races of the 20th century could benefit enormously from studies written from the perspective of "systems of systems" or other approaches associated with the history of technology.  The line between science and technology becomes very blurred when it comes to "big science" projects of the Cold War, such as missile development, the making of the hydrogen bomb, the "space race," computer developments associated with cryptology and air defense, and numerous other projects.  The interrelation of computers and air defense, most notably with the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense centers of the 1950s, is a topic of particular interest to both historians of technology and of the Cold War, or at least it should be.  

The Cold War and Cultural History

Another potential future subject of research is the cultural history of the Cold War.  This is a rich and promising field, and happily one that does not (for the most part) rely on the declassification of government documents.  Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light remains the classic of the genre, but the subject since 1950 is still largely unexplored.  A history of "World War III," as it was variously depicted in fiction and films, is a subject of particular interest to me.  A great starting point for this is the special October 27, 1951, issue of Collier's magazine (right), which was devoted in its entirety to a "Preview of the War We Do Not Want."  

One short-term project that may come to fruition within the next year or two is a brief study, perhaps just an article, relating to music and nuclear war.  The exact number depends on how you count them, but I already have in my possession recordings of well over 200, and arguably as many as 400, songs that are about, or at least mention, some aspect of nuclear power.  Most are from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, which was probably the time of greatest public interest in the subject since the 1950s.  Most of these songs are not what you would call "good," but taken together they provide a fascinating glimpse into how popular culture came to grips with -- and exploited -- nuclear fear.  

World War III

A look out your window will confirm that in fact a third world war never occurred.  As a historical concept, however, "World War III" remains an important and largely unexplored subject.  Decisions made everyday during the Cold War by politicians, diplomats, and generals, were dictated largely by what, at any given time, these people thought a third world war would have been like.  Under what circumstances, if any, did either side believe it could "win" a nuclear war, escape it relatively intact, or even survive it at all?  The answer to this question varied widely throughout the Cold War, and its answer will explain much about the decisions made by either side.  Through it a detailed exploration of the war plans of the potential combatants, the intelligence available to each side, and numerous other factors, it should now be possible to write a detailed history of what the United States government (and public) thought World War III might have looked like, from 1945 through to the early 1960s.  Though government secrecy at present would prevent such a study from extending beyond the early 1960s, this may change as the years go by, and even now it is possible to write a survey of World War III throughout the Cold War which would serve as a valuable contribution to the existing literature.  

In addition to the "war that never was," numerous direct conflicts took place between the superpowers during the Cold War.  The one that is well-recognized is the constant struggle between the many intelligence agencies of both sides.  While much has been written about covert operations and intelligence gathering, continued government secrecy about events dating back even to the 1940s has left the field largely to journalists and memoirists with agendas.  Some historical documentation is now becoming available regarding the important, and often overlooked, analytical side of intelligence work.  

There were also many instances of direct military and paramilitary conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Current and "recently retired" members of the United States military (such as Francis Gary Powers) took part in numerous overflights of the Soviet Union, actions which brought about lethal confrontations in several cases, especially during the early years of the Cold War.  There are rumors of overland penetrations into Soviet territory as well, and covert ground operations were at a minimum definitely mounted in eastern Europe.  The Central Intelligence Agency also took part in paramilitary operations against Soviet military forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.  For their part, Soviet pilots and aircraft (in Chinese markings) battled U.S. aircraft over Manchuria and North Korea during the Korean War, and participated as well in ground-to-air and air-to-air combat against U.S. forces over North Vietnam.  Though both sides were usually aware of the involvement of the other, for a variety of reasons it was rarely in the interests of either side to publicize this fact, and the details in many cases remain shrouded in government secrecy to this day.  

Women and Military History

The most important development in the social history of the United States military in the last half century has been the integration of women and minorities.  I am especially interested in the integration of women into combat roles from the 1980s to the present.  I find also that subjects such as women in combat and the "Tuskegee Airmen" can play an especially important pedagogical role in expanding the horizons of students who may initially be only interested in the "drum and bugle" variety of military history.  

Force and Diplomacy in the 20th Century

My research interests, both present and future, can be most fundamentally defined as relating to force and diplomacy in the 20th century.  Though it has begun to close in recent years, a significant gap still remains between the fields of diplomatic history and military history.  When it comes to the study of national security in the years since World War II, this old dichotomy is simply no longer acceptable.  A "purely military" history of the Korean or Vietnam War would be unable to explain why, for example, the United States showed such great, and at times seemingly-strange, military restraint.  Similarly, a "purely diplomatic" history of, say, the Berlin problem, 1945-1962, would be dramatically incomplete if the constant changes in the military balance during that period were not taken into account.  (How otherwise to explain, for example, why attempting the "Berlin Airlift" was such an obvious first step in 1948, yet a decade later the assumption by both sides was apparently that a renewed blockade would quickly result in war?)  The most important change that needs to made over the next few decades in the study of the history of national security is to interrelate more effectively military and diplomatic history.