![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
In 1973, at the age of 44 and the height of the Cold War, James Schlesinger was confirmed as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Defense. While serving as Defense Secretary, Dr. Schlesinger implemented important nuclear policy developments designed to strengthen the deterrence of war and the assurance of allies. His 1974 adjustments to U.S. nuclear policy, known as the Schlesinger Doctrine or the Schlesinger Shift. The Schlesinger Doctrine advanced the basic parameters of U.S. nuclear deterrence policy that contributed to the peaceful ending of the Cold War and have remained constant across Republican and Democratic administrations to the present. It is hard to conceive of a more significant defense-policy legacy.
Notes
1 David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 29.
2 Quoted in Walter Boyne, “Nickel Grass,” Air Force Magazine (December 1998), 59.
3 Keith B. Payne, “The Schlesinger Shift: Return to Rationality,” in Payne, C. Johnston Conover, and Bruce William Bennett, Nuclear Strategy: Flexibility and Stability, Student Paper No. 82 (Santa Monica, CA: California Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, March 1979), 3–48.
4 See U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Testimony by James Schlesinger, Briefing on Counterforce Attacks, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, September 11, 1974, p. 37 (made public January 10, 1975); and U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Testimony by James Schlesinger, “U.S./U.S.S.R. Strategic Policies,” 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, March 4, 1974, 9.
5 James Schlesinger, Annual Defense Department Report, FY 1976 and FY 197T (Washington, DC: USGPO, February 5, 1975), ii–3.
6 Quoted in Schlesinger, Briefing on Counterforce Attacks, 5–6.
7 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1971 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1972), 310.
8 Department of Defense, National Security Study Memorandum 169 Summary Report, June 8, 1973. Declassified on July 7, 1997.
9 James Schlesinger, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Memorandum for the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, July 13, 1973. Declassified July 7, 1997.
10 Henry Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, The White House, January 7, 1974. Declassified October 17, 1974.
11 Richard Nixon, National Security Decision Memorandum 242, The White House, January 17, 1974. Declassified on June 27, 2007.
12 Ibid., 2.
13 Secretary James Schlesinger’s testimony in U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S./U.S.S.R. Strategic Policies, Hearings, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1974), 9.
14 Secretary James Schlesinger, News Conference at the Pentagon, Washington, DC, January 17, 1974, 3, 8, 9.
15 Nixon, National Security Decision Memorandum 242, p. 2.
16 Ibid.
17 Kissinger, Memorandum for The President, January 7, 1974, 2; and, Schlesinger, NSSM 169 Summary Report, 1.
18 Schlesinger, NSSM 169 Summary Report, p. 1.
19 Ibid., 31.
20 As observed by Dr. John Foster, former Defense Department Director of Research and Engineering and head of the “Foster Panel,” in an interview with the author on February 12, 2019.
21 “Tailoring” deterrence is a theme of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. See Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, February 2018, 25–33.