Famine and destitution stemming from the Second World War had spread across the European continent and parts of Asia by mid-1945. Recognizing the need for recovery and survival in those regions, President Harry S. Truman at the recommendation of several Cabinet members, summoned ex-President Herbert Hoover for advice on how the United States should proceed in offering aid beyond the earlier efforts of the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration and other relief sources. After an absence from the White House and official government participation for many years, Hoover readily provided crucial advice on addressing famine relief in Europe and Asia based on his previous humanitarian leadership during and after the First World War. Recognizing that further action needed to be taken, Truman asked Hoover, as Honorary Chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee (FEC), to go to Europe and Asia to personally assess the famine relief needs. Hoover and several colleagues travelled 50,000 miles to thirty-eight different nations from March and into June 1946 to witness and evaluate famine needs in the afflicted nations, or arrange for food supply resources from various other countries; making a second trip to a struggling Germany and Austria in 1947. This thesis initially examines the narrative of the period between Hoover's reentry into public service, as requested by Truman, and the chronicle of the FEC missions. At the same time, it considers the purposes of the FEC missions, from both Hoover's and Truman's perspectives, and despite differing political viewpoints, the efforts of the two leaders to merge their activities into a common goal. The aim, amid early Cold War challenges, was to encourage both freedom and democracy in Europe and elsewhere, while sustaining free market economies and guarding against the spread of communism. As Hoover focused his efforts on American based humanitarian aid through the mechanism of food relief to promote economic prosperity, stability, and political freedoms, Truman endeavored to protect democracy as expressed in the Truman Doctrine. Both standpoints coalesced in a synthesis of anti-communism, global stability, and U.S. geopolitical interests. This thesis also will analyze the friendship that developed between Hoover and Truman during the FEC missions. This helped lead to further collaboration between the two leaders, as the President asked the ex-President to assist in the creation of the First Hoover Commission, leading to a Second Hoover Commission under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite ongoing political dissimilarities and occasional disagreements, the friendship of Hoover and Truman strengthened and endured for the remainder of the lives.

Strategic upheavals, such as the emergence or disappearance of geopolitical threats or radical technological changes, generate profound uncertainty and intense debate about a state’s future strategy. How do decisionmakers reexamine and revise strategy amidst these upheavals? Existing theories of strategic change recognize the significance of upheavals, but raise questions about the mechanisms by which decisionmakers embrace or discard new ideas about strategy. contend that understanding strategic change requires attention to narratives––stories about the past and present of international politics that suggest legitimate pathways for future action. I develop a theory of narrative emergence, positing that after upheavals, national security elites compete to mobilize support for their vision of future policy. They use public and private debates to legitimate their positions and build domestic coalitions. I identify four rhetorical strategies––persuasion, rhetorical coercion, co-optation, and transgression––that have different effects in mobilizing or demobilizing coalitions. If one coalition builds cross-cutting support, this can entrench their rhetoric in public discourse over time as part of a dominant narrative that shapes subsequent strategy debates through constraining and enabling effects. I evaluate this theory in the context of two cases of strategic upheaval in the United States, focusing on the puzzles of U.S. nuclear strategy: the arrival of the atomic age and the achievement of strategic parity between the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. In the first case, I use qualitative and text analysis to track the rise of a dominant narrative about nuclear weapons during the early Cold War. In this contradictory narrative which I label “Waging Deterrence,” the bomb was both an unusable, revolutionary deterrent and an essential tool for fighting and winning the next war. I draw on archival sources to trace the emergence of this narrative during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, showing this narrative was not predetermined, but contingent on domestic debates as speakers––Presidents, civilian advisors, military elites, and others––used rhetorical strategies in public and private to co-opt and silence opponents. This narrative constrained the possibilities for strategic revision during the later Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. In the second case, parity’s mutual vulnerability upended this narrative; narratives remained unsettled until the Carter administration, where domestic legitimation contests facilitated the return of Waging Deterrence to justify competitive nuclear postures that had a lasting impact on U.S. nuclear strategy. The project offers a novel mechanism to understand strategic change and highlights the discursive and domestic politics of nuclear strategy, showing that foundational U.S. deterrence concepts emerged in part from domestic legitimation contests that rendered other options illegitimate. It also offers insights into policy debates about the future of nuclear and grand strategy amidst contemporary upheavals, suggesting contested processes of narrative construction will be central to shaping future strategy.

This work examines the actions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first year of the Korean War. Officially created in 1947, the Joint Chiefs saw their first true test as an institution during the conflict. At various times, the members of the JCS failed to issue direct orders to their subordinate, resulting in a divide between the wishes of President Truman and General MacArthur over the conduct of the war. By analyzing the interaction between the Joint Chiefs and General Douglas MacArthur, the flaws of both the individual Chiefs as well as the organization as a whole become apparent. The tactical and strategic decisions faced by the JCS are framed within the three main stages of the Korean War.