Adopting Oppenheimer’s perspective, Kennan argued that the atomic bomb was dangerous precisely because it was mistakenly seen as a cheap panacea for the Soviet threat. Echoing Oppie, he wrote that the “military people” had seized upon the Super as the answer to the Russian acquisition of the bomb: “I fear that the atomic bomb, with its vague and highly dangerous promise of ‘decisive’ results . . . of easy solutions to profound human problems, will impede understanding of the things that are important to a clean, clear policy and will carry us toward the misuse and dissipation of our national
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