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New Look (policy)

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Secretary of StateJohn Foster Dulles,right, shown here with PresidentEisenhowerin 1956, became identified with the doctrine of "massive retaliation."

TheNew Lookwas the name given to thenational securitypolicy of theUnited Statesduring the administration ofPresidentDwight D. Eisenhower.It reflected Eisenhower's concern for balancing theCold Warmilitary commitments of the United States with the nation's financial resources. The policy emphasized reliance onstrategicnuclear weaponsas well as a reorganisation of conventional forces in an effort todeterpotential threats, bothconventionaland nuclear, from theEastern Blocof nations headed by theSoviet Union.[1]

History

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President Eisenhower and members of his Cabinet inspect the YB-52 prototype of theB-52.

In its narrowest sense, the New Look was the name applied to theDepartment of Defensebudget forFiscal Year1955, which was the first defense budget prepared entirely by Eisenhower's ownJoint 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 inNational Security Councildocument162/2(NSC 162/2), which Eisenhower approved on October 30, 1953.

Increased reliance on tactical nuclear weapons

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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 theU.S. economy.[4]In this respect, it differed fromNSC 68,approved by PresidentHarry S. Trumanon 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 theKorean Warin mind, Eisenhower was fearful that U.S. resources would be drained by Soviet-inspired regional conflicts.[2]

Covert operations

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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]

TheSpecial 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 onkamikazemissions.[7][8]

U.S. government propaganda

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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

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TheB-47long-range bomber was the mainstay of U.S. deterrence during most of the New Look.
AB-52long-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 theStrategic Air Commandwithin 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 aneconomy of scaleif deterrence failed.[10]

The doctrine was proclaimed in its most absolute form bySecretary of StateJohn Foster Dullesin a speech before theCouncil on Foreign Relationson January 12, 1954, in which he said, "Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent ofmassive 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

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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 historianJohn Lewis Gaddishave pointed out that the doctrine was not credible in the face of "less-than-total challenges" such as the Soviet intervention in the1956 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

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1958 deployment of tactical atomic weapons in Korea.

The refusal of the United States to act to prevent the defeat ofFranceby thecommunist-ledViet Minhat theBattle 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 ofDien 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; ontactical nuclear weaponsto 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 asNSC5501on 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]

According to historianCampbell Craig:

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]

Notes

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  1. ^Trakimavicius, Lukas."NATO at 70: Lessons from the Cold War".Atlantic Council.Retrieved2021-12-02.
  2. ^abHerman S. Wolk,"The 'New Look',"Air Force Magazine,v. 65, no. 8, (August 2003).ISSN0730-6784
  3. ^Eisenhower, Dwight D."56 – The President's News Conference".The American Presidency Project, UCSB.Retrieved2020-06-12.
  4. ^Samuel P. Huntington,The Common Defense,New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 67–68.ISBN0-231-08566-4
  5. ^abQuoted in Huntington, p. 66.
  6. ^Bungert, Heike; Wala, Michael; Heitmann, Jan, eds. (2003). "Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century".Studies in Intelligence.20034120:73–74.doi:10.4324/9780203498859.ISBN978-0-7146-5395-2.ISSN2155-6474.
  7. ^"U.S. Trained a Kamikaze Nuclear Team: They Were to Carry Bombs in Backpacks if The Cold War Blew Up. Squad Members Knew It Was Suicide".philly-archives.Retrieved2016-04-19.
  8. ^Annie Jacobsen, "Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins," (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2019), p. 106
  9. ^Kenneth A. Osgood, "Form before Substance: Eisenhower's Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy."Diplomatic History24.3 (2000): 405-433.
  10. ^Huntington, pp. 79–80.
  11. ^Quoted in Bernard Brodie,Strategy in the Missile Age,(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959, p. 248.
  12. ^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
  13. ^This was not a new theme for Dulles. In a 1952 article forLifemagazine, 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.ISBN0-316-37235-8Dulles, however, was not alone in suggesting a nuclear response to a conventional threat. On January 11, 1951, at the height of the Korean War, formerSecretary of the Air ForceStuart Symington,then chair of theNational Security Resources Board,sent President Truman the draft ofNSC 100,which proposed using nuclear weapons not only againstChina,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
  14. ^John Lewis Gaddis,Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National SecurityNew York: Oxford University Press, 1982.ISBN0-19-517448-8
  15. ^Divine, Robert A. (1981).Eisenhower and the Cold War.Oxford University Press. pp. 44–51.OCLC490288715.
  16. ^Divine 1981,pp. 50–51.
  17. ^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.
  18. ^Mitrovich, Gregory (2000).Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956.Cornell University Press. p.166.ISBN0801437113.
  19. ^abQuoted in Campbell Craig,Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear WarNew York: Columbia University Press, 1998, chapter 3.ISBN0-231-11123-1

Further reading

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Library resourcesabout
New Look (policy)
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