Garret Albers, Social Studies Teacher, High School
Many of you reading this article are old enough to remember the cinematic classic “War Games” featuring a young Matthew Broderick playing a computer savvy teen who inadvertently hacks a U.S. Military supercomputer and nearly kicks off the nuclear exchange of WWIII. Disaster is averted by telling the supercomputer to simulate Tic Tac Toe. Having played an unwinnable game, the computer comes to the conclusion of most foreign policy experts: the costs of a nuclear exchange are far too high.
This analogy serves our students as an introduction to deterrence theory and the thermonuclear revolution. Simply put, attitudes toward war changed drastically in the aftermath of the successful development of fusion bomb weapons typically referred to as the “super” or thermonuclear weapons. These bombs are significantly more efficient and destructive than the fission bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Students continue on in their understanding of basic deterrence theory by analyzing primary source material from President Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, among others. Their instruction is capped with an in-class simulation that requires the students to solve international disputes, gain economic and military influence, and advance their own interests all while remaining below the nuclear threshold.
Understanding the proverbial mushroom cloud looming over foreign policy decisions is our first step in gaining insight into US Cold War policy and other foreign policy decisions in the modern age. Let us hope that our students remember these lessons if they are ever to hold public office.