Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, right, shown here with President Eisenhower in 1956, became identified with the doctrine of "massive retaliation."
President Eisenhower and members of his Cabinet inspect the YB-52 prototype of the B-52.
In its narrowest sense, the New Look was the name applied to the Department of Defense budget for Fiscal Year 1955, which was the first defense budget prepared entirely by Eisenhower's own Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was based on an extensive reappraisal of U.S. military requirements that began among Eisenhower and his closest advisers immediately following his election in November 1952.[2] It was formalized in National Security Council document 162/2 (NSC 162/2), which Eisenhower approved on October 30, 1953.
Increased reliance on tactical nuclear weapons
Eisenhower said of tactical nuclear weapons that "on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else".[3] NSC 162/2 reflected Eisenhower's desire for a "long-haul" approach to security planning that would maintain a more or less constant level of military preparedness, consistent with the health of the U.S. economy.[4] In this respect, it differed from NSC 68, approved by President Harry S. Truman on September 30, 1950. Truman's advisers believed that Soviet military capabilities would reach a maximum relative to those of the United States and its allies in the mid-1950s.[5]
Eisenhower rejected the idea that one period would be any more dangerous than another and urged his planners to think in terms of a Soviet threat that was economic as well as military. He wanted to avoid, in his own words, "an unbearable security burden leading to economic disaster."[5] With the costly experience of the Korean War in mind, Eisenhower was fearful that U.S. resources would be drained by Soviet-inspired regional conflicts.[2]
Covert operations
The New Look Policy also embodied an increasing reliance on the use of covert operations and espionage. This was not only due to the fact that clandestine forces were cheap when compared to conventional forces, but also because covert techniques were legitimised in the context of the Cold War.[6]
The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) program, relying on small, portable nuclear weapons, also was consistent with the New Look policy. Green Light Teams, U.S. commandos trained in secret exercises in which they carried actual nuclear weapons, were set up. Their missions would have been to infiltrate targets carrying nuclear weapons, to detonate and to be exfiltrated, although the commandos often understood that they were to be sent on kamikaze missions.[7][8]
U.S. government propaganda
Psychological warfare was a nonviolent technique of combatting the Soviets that especially appealed to Eisenhower, with the goal of flooding communist states with anti-Soviet propaganda.[9]
Massive Retaliation and the New Look
The B-47 long-range bomber was the mainstay of U.S. deterrence during most of the New Look.A B-52 long-range bomber. The first models were deployed just as the New Look took shape.
In order to contain defense costs, the New Look brought about a shift in emphasis from conventional military capability to "air-atomic" capability in the form of the Strategic Air Command within a scaled-down overall military establishment. Land and naval forces were cut. Continental air defense was expanded. Although strategic air power attained a lower level than the Truman administration had projected, it became the centerpiece of U.S. security thinking, embodied in the doctrine of "Massive Retaliation." Summarized in the popular slogan "more bang for the buck," Massive Retaliation was intended to be both a deterrent to an enemy and an economy of scale if deterrence failed.[10]
The doctrine was proclaimed in its most absolute form by Secretary of StateJohn Foster Dulles in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations on January 12, 1954, in which he said, "Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power [emphasis added].[11] Dulles continued:
The way to deter aggression is for the free community to be willing and able to respond vigorously at places and with means of its own choosing.
...
Now the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff can shape our military establishment to fit what is our policy, instead of having to try to be ready to meet the enemy's many choices. That permits of a selection of military means instead of a multiplication of means, As a result, it is now possible to get, and share, more basic security at less cost.[12]
Criticism of Massive Retaliation
What Dulles implied was that the United States was prepared to respond to a Soviet-backed conventional threat anywhere with a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union itself.[13] Critics of Massive Retaliation such as historian John Lewis Gaddis have pointed out that the doctrine was not credible in the face of "less-than-total challenges" such as the Soviet intervention in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and that whatever credibility it might have had diminished steadily as Soviet strategic power grew.[14] Furthermore, it theoretically provided the Soviet Union with an incentive to strike first to disarm the United States. The Hungarian Revolution involved a matter internal to the Eastern Bloc, so it is unclear whether any sort of conventional military response would have been undertaken regardless.
"New" New Look
1958 deployment of tactical atomic weapons in Korea.
The refusal of the United States to act to prevent the defeat of France by the communist-led Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, just four months after the Dulles speech, highlighted the political difficulties Eisenhower faced in balancing interference in Asia with his determination to keep the U.S. out of a "hot war".[15] His refusal to intervene using air strikes – a tactic that he decided would have been ineffective in the scenario of Dien Bien Phu – led instead to a third option: a threat of nuclear strikes against strategic Chinese targets, in line with "Massive Retaliation". This was approved on May 26, on the condition that both congress and U.S. allies supported it.[16]
This tactic could not be relied upon to secure US interests in every case however. Defense planners, therefore, began shaping a "new" New Look marked by emphasis on strategic "sufficiency," not superiority; on tactical nuclear weapons to fight "limited wars;" and on standing forces as opposed to reserves.[17] The emphasis was still primarily on nuclear weapons and the justification was still that of economy, but a shift toward what would later be called "flexible response" had begun.
The new approach was embodied in NSC5440 (approved as NSC5501 on January 7, 1955),[18] finalized in December 1954, which stated:
The ability to apply force selectively and flexibly will become increasingly important in maintaining the morale and will of the free world to resist aggression. As the fear of nuclear war grows, the United States and its allies must never allow themselves to get into the position where they must choose between (a) not responding to local aggression and (b) applying force in a way which our own people or our allies would consider entails undue risk of nuclear devastation. However, the United States cannot afford to preclude itself from using nuclear weapons even in a local situation, if such use… will best advance U.S. security interests. In the last analysis, if confronted by the choice of (a) acquiescing in Communist aggression or (b) taking measures risking either general war or loss of allied support, the United States must be prepared to take these risks if necessary for its security.[19]
NSC 5440 was a fundamental revision of the earlier BNSP [Basic National Security Policy]. Its authors (a) renounced massive retaliation, (b) precisely articulated the strategy of "flexible response" as it would become known seven years later, and (c) predicted, in the last sentence, exactly the dilemma which the Eisenhower administration would face in Berlin four years hence.'[19]
↑ Annie Jacobsen, "Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins," (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2019), p. 106
↑ Kenneth A. Osgood, "Form before Substance: Eisenhower's Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy." Diplomatic History 24.3 (2000): 405-433.
↑ Quoted in Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959, p.248.
↑ Id., pp.248–249. McGeorge Bundy, a national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, states that President Eisenhower, although initially put off by the phrase "massive retaliatory power," not only approved the Dulles speech, but had a hand in drafting it. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival, New York: Random House, 1988, p.256. ISBN0-394-52278-8
↑ This was not a new theme for Dulles. In a 1952 article for Life magazine, he wrote: "There is one solution and only one: that is for the free world to develop the will and organize the means to retaliate instantly against open aggression by Red armies, so that, if it occurred anywhere, we could and would strike back where it hurts, by means of our choosing." John Foster Dulles, '"A Policy of Boldness," Life, May 19, 1952, p.151. Quoted in Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973), p.127. ISBN0-316-37235-8 Dulles, however, was not alone in suggesting a nuclear response to a conventional threat. On January 11, 1951, at the height of the Korean War, former Secretary of the Air ForceStuart Symington, then chair of the National Security Resources Board, sent President Truman the draft of NSC 100, which proposed using nuclear weapons not only against China, which was engaged in active combat with U.S. forces, but also against the Soviet Union, which was believed to be conducting the war through China. Truman rejected the memorandum. James Carroll, House of War, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006, pp.193, 202. ISBN0-618-18780-4
↑ John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. ISBN0-19-517448-8
↑ Divine, Robert A. (1981). Eisenhower and the Cold War. Oxford University Press. pp.44–51. OCLC490288715.
↑ See generally, Huntington, pp.88–100. Huntington uses the term "New New Look." So does George E. Lowe, The Age of Deterrence, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1964, p.89. Apparently without access to the then-classified NSC 5440, Huntington placed the beginning of the "New New Look" in December 1955 when Department of Defense planners began budget preparations for fiscal years 1958, 1959 and 1960.
↑ Mitrovich, Gregory (2000). Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956. Cornell University Press. p.166. ISBN0801437113.
1 2 Quoted in Campbell Craig, Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, chapter 3. ISBN0-231-11123-1
Further reading
Bowie, Robert R. and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN0-19-506264-7
Dockrill, Saki. Eisenhower’s New-Look National Security Policy, 1953-61 New York (1996).
Dockrill, Saki (2000). "Dealing with Soviet Power and Influence: Eisenhower's Management of U.S. National Security". Diplomatic History. 24 (2): 345–352. doi:10.1111/0145-2096.00218.
Hammond, Paul Y. Organizing for Defense, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.
Head, Richard G. and Ervin J. Rokke (eds.), American Defense Policy (3rd ed.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1975. ISBN0-8018-1486-3
Kintner, William R. Peace and the Strategy Conflict, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.
Millis, Walter ed. American Military Thought, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1966.
Osgood, Robert E. Limited War, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Schilling, Warner R. ,Paul Y. Hammond and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. ISBN0-231-02556-4
Taylor, Maxwell D. The Uncertain Trumpet, New York: Harper & Row, 1960.
Watry, David M. Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. ISBN9780807157183
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.
John Foster Dulles was an American politician, lawyer, and diplomat. A member of the Republican Party, Dulles served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until his resignation in 1959 and was briefly a Senator from New York in 1949. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, who advocated an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world.
Brinkmanship or brinksmanship is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict. The maneuver of pushing a situation with the opponent to the brink succeeds by forcing the opponent to back down and make concessions rather than risk engaging in a conflict that would no longer be beneficial to either side. That might be achieved through diplomatic maneuvers, by creating the impression that one is willing to use extreme methods rather than concede. The tactic occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labor relations, contemporary military strategy, terrorism, and high-stakes litigation.
Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period.
United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC68, was a 66-page top secret National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It was one of the most important American policy statements of the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the rollback of global Communist expansion a high priority. NSC68 rejected the alternative policies of friendly détente and containment of the Soviet Union.
Charles Erwin Wilson was an American engineer and businessman who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1953 to 1957 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Known as "Engine Charlie", he was previously the president and chief executive officer of General Motors. In the wake of the Korean War, he cut the defense budget significantly.
The Cold War (1953–1962) discusses the period within the Cold War from the end of the Korean War in 1953 to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Following the death of Joseph Stalin earlier in 1953, new leaders attempted to "de-Stalinize" the Soviet Union causing unrest in the Eastern Bloc and members of the Warsaw Pact. In spite of this there was a calming of international tensions, the evidence of which can be seen in the signing of the Austrian State Treaty reuniting Austria, and the Geneva Accords ending fighting in Indochina. However, this period of good happenings was only partial with an expensive arms race continuing during the period and a less alarming, but very expensive space race occurring between the two superpowers as well. The addition of African countries to the stage of cold war, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo joining the Soviets, caused even more unrest in the West.
Paul Henry Nitze was an American businessman and government official who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is best known for being the principal author of NSC 68 and the co-founder of Team B. He helped shape U.S. Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations.
Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and is related to but distinct from the concept of mutual assured destruction, according to which a full-scale nuclear attack on a power with second-strike capability would devastate both parties. The central problem of deterrence revolves around how to credibly threaten military action or nuclear punishment on the adversary despite its costs to the deterrer.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis was a brief armed conflict between the Communist People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Nationalist Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The conflict focused on several groups of islands in the Taiwan Strait that were held by the ROC but were located only a few miles from mainland China.
Massive retaliation, also known as a massive response or massive deterrence, is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack.
Flexible response was a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to address the Kennedy administration's skepticism of Dwight Eisenhower's New Look and its policy of massive retaliation. Flexible response calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical, and conventional levels, giving the United States the capability to respond to aggression across the spectrum of war, not limited only to nuclear arms.
NSC 162/2 was a policy paper of the United States National Security Council approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 30 October 1953 which defined the Cold War national security policy during the Eisenhower administration. NSC162/2 was based upon NSC162, which was the final synthesis of the task force reports of Project Solarium. On 7 January 1955, NSC162/2 was superseded by NSC5501.
William Weed Kaufmann was an American nuclear strategist and adviser to seven defense secretaries, who advocated for a shift from the strategy of massive retaliation against the Soviet Union in the event of a nuclear strike.
Project Solarium was an American national-level exercise in strategy and foreign policy design convened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the summer of 1953. It was intended to produce consensus among senior officials in the national security community on the most effective strategy for responding to Soviet expansionism in the wake of the early Cold War. The exercise was the product of a series of conversations between President Eisenhower and senior cabinet-level officials, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and George F. Kennan, in the Solarium room on the top floor of the White House. Through these conversations, Eisenhower realized that strategic guidance set forth in NSC 68 under the Truman administration was insufficient to address the breadth of issues with which his administration was presented, and that his cabinet was badly divided on the correct course of action to deal with the Soviet Union. He found that internal political posturing threatened to undermine policy planning, and thus U.S. national security.
Nuclear escalation is the concept of a large conflict escalating from conventional warfare to nuclear warfare.
The United States foreign policy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, from 1953 to 1961, focused on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. The United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems to deter military threats and save money while cutting back on expensive Army combat units. A major uprising broke out in Hungary in 1956; the Eisenhower administration did not become directly involved, but condemned the military invasion by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower sought to reach a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, but following the 1960 U-2 incident the Kremlin canceled a scheduled summit in Paris.
The State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, sometimes referred to as the Oppenheimer Panel, was a group created by the United States Department of State that existed from April 1952 to January 1953, during the last year of the Truman administration. It was composed of prominent figures from science, law, education, and the government, and chaired by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Its purpose was to make recommendations regarding U.S. disarmament policy in the context of the Cold War.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
