Washington, D.C., January 11, 2018 - A new book by long-time colleagues of the National Security Archive, James G. Blight and janet M. Lang, offers a fresh exploration of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and plumbs its lessons on the continuing dangers of nuclear war.
Washington, D.C., November 30, 2017 – U.S. presidents sometimes made nuclear threats in the course of Cold War crises and confrontations, but powerful social norms – not just military considerations – inhibited them from initiating the combat use of nuclear weapons, according to declassified documents posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive.
The United States planned for the military occupation of Cuba in 1962 with a temporary American military governor in charge, according to newly declassified documents
The U.S. Military History Group awarded Nixon’s Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War, with an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Captain Richard Lukaszewick Memorial Book Award. The award recognizes “outstanding” books on US military history from 1945 through 2001. The members of the award selection committee agreed that Nixon’s Nuclear Specter, […]
This post was originally published by The Wilson Center. How a lunch in Rio de Janeiro confirmed a US diplomat’s hunches about Brazilian nuclear weapons research The history of nuclear proliferation is partly a story of countries searching for latent weapons potential, without ever committing to build a complete device. A recently declassified letter from Miller […]
Washington, D.C. February 15, 2017 – The Air Force chief of staff told the Joint Chiefs at a September 1971 meeting that in a nuclear war the United States “could lose two hundred million people and still have more than we had at the time of the Civil War.” The quote comes from a recently declassified and highly revealing diary entry by JCS Chairman Thomas Moorer, published today for the first time by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University. The other chiefs did not challenge Gen.
Missile Defenses Then and Now A declassified Strategic Air Command History from 1968, recently cited in former SAC commander-in-chief Lee Butler’s memoirs, sheds light on the role of anti-ballistic missile defenses in national policies and international relations. According to the SAC history, in the late 1960s, SAC targeted over 100 Minuteman missiles, over 10 percent […]
Ronald Reagan and Nuclear War: The SIOP Briefing and IVY LEAGUE 82*
Washington, D.C., December 20, 2016 – Soviet missile and space programs were among the most frequent topics briefed to the president of the United States by U.S. intelligence during the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, according to a review of recently declassified excerpts of the President’s Daily Brief posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.