Post-War National Security in the United States

The emergence of the United States as a dominant party in balance of power equations is a relatively new phenomenon in world history. New military technology coupled with increased global integration has allowed the United States to reinvent the fundamental assumptions of international diplomacy while propelling itself to the top of the hegemonic stepladder. This positioning was achieved piecemeal during the course of the first two world wars, but it wasn't until the deployment of …

…in 1968 that 'there was now no single decisive index by which the influence of states can be measured' (Kissenger 277). As much as we might like to indict the policies of nuclear diplomacy for all its self-indulgent insanity, we must bear in mind that it was somehow successful. Not one atomic bomb fell onto a nation from Kennen to Kissenger, and that should show the altruistic commitment by men of power to keep the unthinkable thinkable.