Ira Chernus Apocalypse Management book sku-8133854

Ira Chernus's Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity is a hardcover in the Stanford Nuclear Age Series, listed under United States History Books. Chernus argues that although President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security for eight years, his policies entrenched the United States in the Cold War, an escalating nuclear arms race and a continuing sense of insecurity.

The book examines how Eisenhower spoke about the rivalry in public and private. Chernus disputes historians who say Eisenhower sought genuine rapprochement with the Soviet Union: he argues that Eisenhower assumed the United States would always face an enemy bent on its destruction.

In this account, Eisenhower's idea of peace was the ongoing management of apocalyptic threats to secure a United States advantage across the Cold War. Chernus calls that goal and its supporting discourse self-defeating and argues that the discourse continued to shape U.S. foreign policy and national insecurity. SKU: sku-8133854.