The Fifties

by David Halberstam

The adjunct to the New Look, first identified by Dulles in January 1954, was the doctrine of “massive retaliation.” (What Dulles actually said was that local defense measures would now be replaced throughout the world “by the further deterrence of massive retaliatory power.”) That meant we would react instantaneously, to even the smallest provocation, with nuclear weapons; therefore, an enemy would most assuredly not dare provoke us. The policy seemed to guarantee that all future wars would be short and inexpensive. But such military critics as Matt Ridgway were hardly impressed. He saw the world as far more disorderly, with all kinds of threats and enemies, requiring flexibility in the ways we might respond. Nor did he see nuclear weapons as a practical option in the many messy situations that were already developing around the world. The great powers were already locked in what was a de facto atomic stalemate, Ridgway and others argued. But what about insurgencies and brushfire wars that did not necessarily fit into the superpower nuclear equation? Was the New Look a viable strategy there, or was it primarily a bluff? Dulles’s speech about massive retaliation was not a great success abroad. Our allies were terrified by it. We seemed to them to threaten turning small wars into much larger ones.