The rationale behind massive retaliation, as well as the term itself, was first presented by the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in a speech given before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on January 12, 1954. Massive retaliation was essentially a deterrent strategy based on the threat of a direct, unrestrained nuclear response of massive scale in case of communist aggression, possibly aimed at the very centres of the enemy’s economic life. Along with these two key considerations, a set of individual-, state- and system-level factors – such as the President’s own perceptions and beliefs, a certain pre-existing US strategic thinking, technological developments, international events and structures, like the Korean War and the perceived belligerence of the communist bloc – all combine to give a multicausal picture as an explanation for the adoption of the doctrine. A year later, the administration was introducing the ‘massive retaliation’ strategy as the military component of the US’s new foreign and security policy, the ‘New Look’.Īn examination of the factors that informed the new strategy reveals a core of military and economic imperatives which, in the eyes of Eisenhower and his advisers, had to be met if the nation’s long-term security was not to be endangered. ![]() Eisenhower became President of the United States in January 1953, amidst a general public atmosphere anticipating a change in the country’s deteriorating international situation, as well as in the policies that had brought it about. With the Korean War being irreversibly, as it turned out, bogged down in a stalemate, Dwight D.
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