Abstract

The influence of religious cultural heritage on nuclear decision-making has often been overlooked. Demonstrating the influence of religious cultural heritage on such decision-making depends on establishing patterns of thought and patterns of behavior. For this reason, it is worth taking note of some illustrative examples of what one might find when systematically approaching case studies of nuclear decision-making which include religious cultural heritage among the independent variables. Drawing on archival sources and physical artifacts, this paper presents six short episodes touching upon nuclear decision-making during the terms of American presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan. These half-dozen vignettes reveal the importance of interpretation in the social sciences, illustrate how religious cultural heritage can condition attitudes toward decisions and interactions concerning foreign cultures or peoples, demonstrate how morality can affect political decision-making, show how politics can affect religious cultural heritage, clarify how the reach of religious cultural heritage can be limited by politics, and reveal that religious cultural heritage can act in multiple directions at the same time; they simultaneously delineate the parameters which a comprehensive theory of decision-making must encompass in order to capture influences arising from religious cultural heritage.