Abstract In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the threat of nuclear war dominated foreign policy making in the Soviet Union and the United States. Consideration of a first strike nuclear attack moved from a secondary position among high-ranking government officials to a primary place of deliberation. This article argues that not everyone accepted the fear and suspicion that engulfed the two superpowers. Acting outside official administrative structures, Henry Saltonstall Dakin, a prominent San Francisco philanthropist, was one of these people. Operating behind the scenes, supporting innovators and risk-takers, and challenging the political status quo, Dakin was, in one of his associate’s words, “the patron of citizen diplomacy,” the person whose encouragement and financial support served to establish a vision of a common humanity during the darkest period of the Cold War.
Wallace L. Daniel (Fri,) studied this question.