ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how nuclear realists, during the 1950s and early 1960s, came to conceive of political institutions and political culture, of political life in the West, at the height of the Cold War. This involves explicating how they assessed the qualities of, and dangers facing, a fundamentally liberal and modern way of life. Despite important differences, both of these proceedings testified to the reach and character of the growing national security state, demonstrating that the fate of liberal democracy was not only decided in the realm of international politics. It provides a sketch of the development of the US national security state and the political debates that accompanied it. For various reasons, however, many intellectual figures refrained from vigorous opposition to bomb politics, which, in the prevailing political culture of the early 1950s, would have come perilously close to being associated with support for Soviet Communism.
