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Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie (1988), a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Vietnam War, examined that flawed American commitment by entering the world of one of our flawed heroes, the officer John Paul Vann. It is a fine book, and I have assigned it in my own teaching about the war. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War uses the same strategy. Looking at the career of Air Force general Bernard Schriever, who oversaw the creation of the U.S. nuclear ballistic deterrent in the 1950s and 1960s, Sheehan hopes to uncover the history of American national security in a crucial era. This time, however, the tale is not one of disaster and hubris but of prudence and good sense in the struggle with the old Soviet Union.
Schriever hardly appears in the initial one third of the book. The first 170 pages cover the early years of the Cold War, from the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 until the Korean War of 1950-53, when Schriever was making his way as a junior officer. Sheehan guides us deftly through the complicated diplomacy of the era, showing how the United States and the USSR were jointly responsible for the Cold War. Recognizing the exceptionally nasty nature of the Russian regime, the author nonetheless sees that each country contributed to the arms race. Sheehan notes that the invention and use of nuclear weapons by the United States in World War II justifiably provoked the Soviet Union—the existence of the bomb suggested that America might impose a postwar settlement hostile to Russia, and so the Soviets felt compelled to make their own weapon. "The confrontation was … inevitable," writes Sheehan, "because both sides were ignorant of or misunderstood the real motivations of the other." While not underplaying the horrible character of the Russian leader, Joseph Stalin, Sheehan also makes clear how a paranoid style gripped leaders in the United States and led to preposterous planning by the armed services. Sheehan writes of "the oversimplification and distortion of American thinking," its "exaggeration," and "illusion." This first part of the book, which sets up Schriever's story, is also the best part.
The second part is the most empirically meaty and has the richest story lines. It covers the period 1953 to 1963. With some flair and effectiveness, Sheehan describes how the Air Force leadership was forced to give up its reliance on great bombers to deliver nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Younger officers like Schriever effectively urged the development of missiles, and missile defense was implemented. However, except for Schriever's attitudes toward women, to which Sheehan pays little attention, Schriever is not a compelling figure, and neither are the generals-in-the-making around him. This part of the book is not a history of international statecraft in the 1950s but of military bureaucrats, defense contractors, and experts, all of whom disputed over payloads, circular error probability, and design flaws. Sheehan makes his account readable, and is a good expositor of the basic rocket science, but the exposition is not gripping; nor does he lay out the story in a way that highlights its significance for global affairs.
To the extent that Sheehan clarifies this significance, he does so in the final part of the book, which chronicles how the engineering triumphs involved in building intercontinental missiles fit into foreign policy. For Sheehan, the missiles constructed by each side in the early 1960s initiated a stand-off that lasted for a quarter-century and brought a fragile but durable peace between the two superpowers. Moreover, the know-how that went into Schriever's effort led to the exploration of space and the growth of satellite and communications technology.
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