I remember earlier in the semester, my international relations professor claimed that Eisenhower at one point considered a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union as a lesser evil to the economic costs of a continued Cold War. I started thinking about this recently, and eventually found what seems to be the source, a
1983 Washington Post article about some then-recently declassified Pentagon documents. Specifically, this paragraph:
At that time, Eisenhower, in a memo to his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, suggested that the United States would find security only in being able "to inflict greater loss against the enemy than he could reasonably hope to inflict on us. . . . But if the contest to maintain this relative position should have to continue indefinitely, the cost would either drive us to war--or into some form of dictatorial government. In such circumstances, we would be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment we could designate."
Around 1954, the US military started seriously considering a preemptive strike against the Soviets before they could acquire a hydrogen bomb, but in 1955 they determined that it would be impossible to knock out all of the Soviet's nukes before they could retaliate.
But what if history had taken a darker turn? What circumstances would lead Eisenhower to launch an unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union, and what would be the consequences? Would an American victory be possible, or would it result in mutually assured destruction?