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Massive retaliation, also known as a massive response or massive deterrence, is a
military doctrine Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. It is a guide to action, rather than being hard and fast rules. Doctrine provides a common frame of reference acros ...
and
nuclear strategy Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons. As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In add ...
in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack.


Strategy

In the event of an attack from an aggressor, a state would massively retaliate by using a force disproportionate to the size of the attack. The aim of massive retaliation is to deter another state from attacking first. For such a strategy to work, it must be made public knowledge to all possible aggressors. The aggressor also must believe that the state announcing the policy has the ability to maintain
second-strike capability In nuclear strategy, a retaliatory strike or second-strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of its ...
in the event of an attack. It must also believe that the defending state is willing to go through with the deterrent threat, which would likely involve the use of
nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
s on a massive scale. Massive retaliation works on the same principles as
mutual assured destruction 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 ...
(MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out nuclear retaliation. However, when massive retaliation became policy, there was no MAD yet since the Soviet Union lacked
second-strike In nuclear strategy, a retaliatory strike or second-strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of its ...
capability throughout the 1950s.


History

The idea of "massive retaliation" was first formally articulated by the
Eisenhower administration Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following a landslide victory ...
Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles John Foster Dulles (, ; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959 and was briefly ...
in a speech on January 12, 1954. Dulles stated:
We need allies and
collective security Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement, political, regional, or global, in which each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and therefore commits to a collective response to threats ...
. Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power... Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.
At the time, Dulles's speech was controversial. Dulles did not explicitly used the words "massive retaliation;" instead, he spoke about relation as a much less threatening term. In his speech, Dulles also stated that "local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power". It is in that quote that the idea of massive retaliation being articulated is seen, but the use of the specific words are absent. Dulles never used the exact words because the term "massive retaliation" has an aggressive tone and caused much negative feedback from the public, which deemed it as a controversial subject. Dulles speech in 1954 was what formed the basis for the term massive retaliation, which would back up any conventional defense against conventional attacks with a possible massive retaliatory attack involving nuclear weapons. One of the primary ideas that makes up the term "massive retaliation" is to make known to the enemy that the degree of retaliation is not confined by the magnitude of the attack. This would feasibly strike fear into the opposing side preventing any further or future attacks from happening. The U.S. has always been a national power and the idea of what a full blow retaliation attack could do to an opposing country has kept many hesitant to prod the U.S. into a state of attack. It was made clear by the end of Dulles speech that he and many other government officials viewed the "reactive measures" as a tactic of the past that would do no good for the U.S. in the near future, and that the dependence on these measures could actually lead to the destruction of the U.S. The primary goal of "massive retaliation" was a type of preventative measure that was seen as a necessary step to prevent the U.S. from getting into any more wars that would cost American lives. Dulles speech aroused feelings of anger and skepticism from Americans listening from home. With the World War II being newly ended, many Americans were still fearful of the possibility of a nuclear war and this caused skepticism in a tactic that could provoke just that. The ultimate goal of introducing a tactic such as massive retaliation by powerful government officials such as Dulles and Eisenhower was to provide a military tactic that would sustain peace and prevail against communism.


Criticism

Two members of the
RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is finance ...
criticized the doctrine as too aggressive and identical to the first strike. Herman Kahn stressed that many military planners adhering to the "splendid first strike" believed that if the Soviets did provoke the U.S. then they should launch a large strike at "a time and place of our choosing." This is "the massive retaliation theory as enunciated by ... Dulles."''On Thermonuclear War'', (Princeton & New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960), p 36-37. Similarly, Bernard Brodie noted that Dulles' doctrine "reflected a characteristically military dissatisfaction, one made familiar previously in the MacArthur hearings." It represented nothing new about the defense of America or Europe but it was startling because it seemed to reject restraint symbolized by Korea for areas of not vital interests. In the event of a similar Korean incident, the Dulles's doctrine implied much more than bombing the North Korean armies with thermonuclear weapons. We seem to be resolved to launch "a full-fledged strategic nuclear bombing attack on China!" And "we should probably have to include the Soviet Union as well." The Dulles's doctrine, Brodie concludes, "of course, is a preventive war, save that we have waited for an excuse, a provocation," and hence of time not entirely of our choosing.


Effects

In theory, as the Soviet Union had no desire to provoke an all-out nuclear attack, the policy of massive response likely deterred any ambitions it would have had on Western Europe. Although the United States and
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...
bloc would be hard-pressed in a conventional conflict with the
Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republi ...
forces if a conventional war were to occur, the massive response doctrine prevented the Soviets from advancing for fear that a nuclear attack would have been made upon the Soviet Union in response to a conventional attack. It can, however, be argued that aside from raising tensions in an already strained relationship with the
Soviet bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that exist ...
, massive retaliation had few practical effects at that time. Before the development of the US
nuclear triad A nuclear triad is a three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines, and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles. Specifically, these components are land-based ...
, the threat of massive retaliation was hard to make credible, and was inflexible in response to foreign policy issues, as everyday challenges of foreign policy could not have been dealt with using a massive nuclear strike. In fact, the Soviet Union took many minor military actions that would have necessitated the use of nuclear weapons under a strict reading of the massive retaliation doctrine. A massive retaliation doctrine, as with any nuclear strategy based on the principle of
mutually assured destruction 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 ...
and as an extension the
second-strike capability In nuclear strategy, a retaliatory strike or second-strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of its ...
needed to form a retaliatory attack, encouraged the opponent to perform a massive
counterforce In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or ...
first strike. This, if successful, would cripple the defending state's retaliatory capacity and render a massive retaliation strategy useless. Subsequent developments such as
thermonuclear warhead A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lo ...
miniaturization, accurate silo-based
ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons ...
s, accurate
submarine-launched ballistic missiles A submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) is a ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines. Modern variants usually deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which carries a nuclear warhead ...
,
stealth Stealth may refer to: Military * Stealth technology, technology used to conceal ships, aircraft, and missiles ** Stealth aircraft, aircraft which use stealth technology **Stealth ground vehicle, ground vehicles which use stealth technology ** St ...
technology applied to
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warh ...
s, and GPS munitions guidance have resulted in a much more credible second-strike capability for some technologically advanced nations. Still, if both sides of a conflict adopt the same stance of massive response, it may result in unlimited escalation (a "nuclear spasm"), each believing that the other will back down after the first round of retaliation. Both problems are not unique to massive retaliation, but to nuclear deterrence as a whole.


Policy shift

In 1957, three years after his announcement of massive retaliation, Dulles compromised his doctrine. In recent years, he wrote in ''Foreign Affairs'', there has been no alternative to massive retaliation, but now the response can be confined to limited targets. Historian of the Cold War,
Marc Trachtenberg Marc Trachtenberg (born February 9, 1946) is a professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 and taught for many years for the hist ...
, finds that since the very announcement, Dulles was moving toward the flexible response. Nevertheless, Eisenhower until the end of his term continued to dismiss out of hand the very idea of restraint in general war. In 1959, he said: "Once we become involved in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, we could not stop until we had finished off the enemy." There was no point to talking about "negotiating a settlement in the midst of the war," no alternative, therefore, to hitting "the Russians as hard as we could." President John F. Kennedy abandoned the policy of massive retaliation during the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
in favor of
flexible response 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 deterre ...
. The Soviet nuclear MRBMs in Cuba had very short flight time to their US targets and could have crippled the SAC bomber bases before the aircraft could take off and launch massive retaliation against the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. Under the Kennedy Administration, the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
adopted a more flexible policy in an attempt to avert nuclear war if the Soviets did not cooperate with American demands. If the United States' only announced military reaction to any Soviet incursion (no matter how small) was a massive nuclear strike, and the U.S. didn't follow through, then the Soviets would assume that the United States would never attack. This would have made the Soviet Union far more bold in its military ventures against U.S. allies and would probably have resulted in a full-scale
nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear wa ...
.
Thomas Schelling Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14, 1921 – December 13, 2016) was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College ...
's deterrence theory discusses this more sharply: "signalling", or the use of threats internationally to deter an enemy from an attack or to make demands. If signals weren't being properly addressed by the Soviet Union, if the threats were not intimidating or coercing them to remove the missiles from Cuba, then the Soviet Union would simply not have believed that the U.S.'s policy of massive retaliation held any water. By having other, more flexible policies to deal with aggressive Soviet actions, the U.S. could opt out of a nuclear strike and take less damaging actions to rectify the problem without losing face in the international community. Another reason for this was the development of a Soviet
second strike In nuclear strategy, a retaliatory strike or second-strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of it ...
capability, in the form of silo-based ICBMs and later SLBMs.


Retaliation plan for North Korean nuclear threat

In 2015, the United States and South Korea came to a new agreement regarding the handling of North Korean nuclear threats. The agreement gave South Korea both options to prevent a missile strike, and the ability to strike back quickly with force. The strategy is known as Massive Punishment and Retaliation, and in this, a quick retaliatory strike would be carried out on North Korean officials. This Korean Massive Punishment and Retaliation plan brought back the deterrence strategy previously used. The United States-South Korea partnership understands the implications of a preemptive strike, and put efforts into defense and response. The United States placed a
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), formerly Theater High Altitude Area Defense, is an American anti-ballistic missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their termina ...
(THAAD) in South Korea to protect the country from missile strikes from the North. This defense system is capable of intercepting
ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within t ...
s of all ranges. The missile defense system coupled with the plan of a massive retaliatory strike has given South Korea a better sense of security against the North. The threat of a massive retaliation from the South was a deterrent for the North. Following the installation of the THAAD in South Korea and the election of President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
in 2016, the policy of massive retaliation was growing. In 2017, North Korean missile tests and threats from Supreme Leader
Kim Jong-un Kim Jong-un (; , ; born 8 January 1982) is a North Korean politician who has been Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012. He is a son of Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea's sec ...
further increased tensions. Following a North Korean threat of an attack on the United States military base in
Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...
, it prompted a response from President Trump in which he stated:
“They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening ... and as I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” - Donald J. Trump. August, 2018.     
This threat of massive retaliation, and the president's stated policy of applying “maximum pressure” on the North Koreans was soon followed by a summit between the two leaders. The focus of this summit was the end goal of ending the testing of nuclear weapons in North Korea. With the threat of massive retaliation from both the United States and South Korea still looming, the summit initially seemed to have a positive response, with the testing of nuclear devices coming to a halt. This however was followed by fallout, as it was believed that there was an increase in production of weapons following the summit. This ultimately ended with no advancement to denuclearization in North Korea, and no preemptive or retaliatory strikes by either side.


See also

*
Dead Hand (nuclear war) Dead Hand (russian: Система «Периметр», , lit. "Perimeter" System, with the GRAU Index 15E601, Cyrillic: 15Э601), also known as Perimeter, is a Cold War-era automatic nuclear weapons-control system (similar in concept to the A ...
*
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
*
Deterrence theory 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 ...
* Essentials of Post–Cold War Deterrence *
Game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
*
National missile defense National missile defense (NMD) is a generic term for a type of missile defense intended to shield an entire country against incoming missiles, such as intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) or other ballistic missiles. This is also used ...
*
NSC 162/2 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 base ...
*
Nuclear peace Nuclear peace is a theory of international relations which argues that the presence of nuclear weapons may in some circumstances decrease the risk of crisis escalation, since parties will seek to avoid situations that could lead to the use of nucle ...
* Peace through strength *
Samson Option The Samson Option ( he, ברירת שמשון, ''b'rerat shimshon'') is the name that some military analysts and authors have given to Israel's deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a "last resort" against a country ...
*
Weapon of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...
*
Nuclear Deterrence Operations Service Medal The Nuclear Deterrence Operations Service Medal is a service medal of the United States Air Force and United States Space Force established on 27 May 2014. The medal recognizes service by personnel in various career fields who have served in units ...


References


Citations

* Watry, David M. ''Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War.'' Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014.


External links


Massive Retaliation
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