Cold War-era nuclear politics in the United States struggled repeatedly with perceived gaps in capabilities as compared to the Soviet Union. Often seen as vulnerabilities, these gaps included the 1950s bomber gap and then the missile gap, and stemmed from US overestimation of Soviet capabilities and led to weapons buildups to close nonexistent vulnerabilities. This presentation examines American population protection policies during the Cold War, looking in particular at the civil defense gap that emerged in public debates during the 1970s and how the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations tried to address this vulnerability. It suggests these leaders leveraged vulnerability gap narratives to advance diverse political and strategic objectives.
About the speaker: Matthew Hartwell is an associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School. He completed his PhD in 2024 in international relations at American University's School of International Service. His research focuses on nuclear politics and U.S. national security during the Cold War. He was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center.