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Executive Summary
Project Solarium was a national security exercise that took place in 1953 during the first months of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, taking its name from the White House solarium, where Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, conceived it. According to many scholars, Project Solarium highly influenced Eisenhower’s strategy, and it has come to be regarded as an outstanding example of strategic planning and foresight—indeed as a standard for other American Presidential administrations.
Yet this understanding of Project Solarium emerged gradually over the decades. Most of its associated documents remained classified for over 30 years. Various interpretations by journalists, historians, political theorists, national security professionals—and by some of Project Solarium’s actual participants—as well as shifting political and social contexts helped to shape that understanding.
Understanding Project Solarium means, therefore, to sift through and analyze these interpretations as well. Doing so reveals how strategic ideas emerge over time in a variety of intellectual communities of practice that are often quite different from the community where those ideas originated.
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