On July 16, 1945, the United States set off the world's first atomic
explosion.

    In his "Atoms for Peace" speech of 1953, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower captured the tensions—and the ironies—of the
atomic age. While nuclear devastation threatened all nations,
Eisenhower believed only nuclear preparedness offered protection;
while nuclear weapons loomed as the ultimate war cloud, nuclear
power offered progress and hope.

    In this consideration of Eisenhower's speech and others leading
up to it, Ira Chernus views the "Atoms for Peace" speech,
presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations, not
merely as a legitimation of American foreign policy but as itself an
act of policy. Indeed, he frames the policy in a new interpretation
of Eisenhower's broad discursive goal, which he calls "apocalypse
management," a plan to allow the United States to manage threats
and crises around the world. The full text of Eisenhower's speech is
presented in this volume.

   Chernus sheds new light on the internal consistency of
Eisenhower's thought, which many observers have found
inconsistent, as well as on the ways in which the president's
rhetoric backed him into a policy corner he had not intended to
occupy. Chernus also reviews the domestic impact of the speech
through a detailed examination of media interpretations in the
United States.

   This tightly reasoned, clearly written study offers a new
understanding of the evolution of Cold War nuclear policy, the
power of presidential rhetoric, and the political understanding of
America's "man of peace," Dwight D. Eisenhower.

_________________________________________________________

IRA CHERNUS is a professor of religious studies at the University
of Colorado at Boulder. He is co-director of the Peace and Conflict
Studies Program at the University of Colorado and a frequent
columnist for the History News Service.


The Library of Presidential Rhetoric