Episode 1: Project Solarium: Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Approach to Strategy Making
Often touted as the gold standard in national security strategy making, 1953’s Project Solarium was President Eisenhower’s way of developing a strategy to counter Soviet expansionism. With frequent current calls for a new Project Solarium, was the original project a versatile solution or was it particular to Eisenhower’s presidency? Professor Walter Hudson explains.
By 1947 relations with the Soviet Union were viewed in Washington as an ideological tug-of-war that could only be won by one side. After the initial strategy of Containment had been crafted under President Truman, the US and its NATO allies massively increased defence spending once the Korean War broke out, fearing a series of further acts of Communist aggression. By mid-1953, however, Stalin was dead, the Korean War at its end, while the cost to the US of the Containment strategy adopted in 1950 was becoming unbearable. With Project Solarium President Eisenhower initiated a rethink not only of what American strategy should be, but also how that strategy was made and understood by his Administration.
Professor Walter M. Hudson from the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., guides us through the process adopted in 1953. A former US Army officer, he served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Panama, Korea and Germany, and holds a PhD in military history from Kansas State University. He is the author of Solarium at 70: Project Solarium's Influence on Eisenhower Historiography and National Security Strategy, published in 2023 by the National Defense University.
Recommended reading
Walter M Hudson, Solarium at 70: Project Solarium’s Influence on Eisenhower Historiography and National Security Strategy, Strategic Monographs 11-2023, National Defense University, 2003.
William B.Pickett, George F. Kennan and the Origins of Eisenhower's New Look: An Oral History of Project Solarium. Princeton, 2004.
Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped and Enduring Cold War Strategy, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Valerie Adams, Eisenhower's Fine Group of Fellows: Crafting a National Security Policy to Uphold the Great Equation,Lexington Books, 2006.
Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions, Thomas Dunne Books, 2020.
FEATURING
Paul O’Neill CBE
RUSI Senior Associate Fellow, Military Sciences
Professor Beatrice Heuser
RUSI Senior Associate Fellow, Military Sciences
