Abstract
The basic mechanism of deterrence is psychological, that is the threat that ‘creates’ in an opponent ‘fear, anxiety, doubt’ — ‘although you can hurt us terribly, if you do we will pay you back by hurting you worse.’1 Deterrence was by no means a new concept to postwar American policy makers and strategists. Franklin Roosevelt told his close advisers at a White House meeting on 14 November 1938 that the expansion of American air power would deter Hitler and Japan. The president was well aware of the advantages of utilising the concept of deterrence as a means of furthering his foreign policy goals.2 Similarly, the United States Army Air Department spelled out the strategic role of air power on 15 September 1939: ‘the only reasonable hope of avoiding air attack is in the possession of such power of retaliation as to deter an enemy from initiating air warfare.’3
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Notes and References
Donald Snow, Nuclear Strategy in a Dynamic World (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 23–4.
For an excellent study of deterrence, see Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1961), ch. 1.
For FDR’s view, see Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power (NY: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 78–85.
Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907–1960, vol. 1 (Alabama: Air University Press, 1989), p. 95.
See Graebner, ‘The Source of Postwar Insecurity’, p. 3; see also Robert H. Ferrell (ed.), The Diary of James C. Hagerty — Eisenhower in Mid Course, 1954–1955 (Blommington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 133.
David Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’ in Graebner (ed), National Security pp. 131–8 and for fuller accounts on the despatch of B-29s, see Avi Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1989) pp. 195–270.
For Truman’s atomic strategy, see Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon — The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945–1950 (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), esp. chs 10–15 ff.
Harry R. Borowski, A Hollow Threat — Strategic Air Power and Containment Before Korea (Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 32–3, 131–2, 137–8, 149–55; Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’ pp. 135–6;
Thomas M. Coffey, Iron Eagle — The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay (NY: Avon Books, 1986), p. 262.
Paul Boyer, ‘“Some Sort of Peace”: President Truman, the American people, and the atomic bomb’, in Lacey (ed.), The Truman Presidency, pp. 174–202; see also Pollard, ‘The national security state reconsidered’, p. 219; Robert Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman 1949–53 (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1982), pp. 152–5;
William Pemberton, Harry S. Truman: Fair Dealer & Cold Warrior (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989), p. 131.
Condit, JCS History vol. 2, pp. 298, 294–98 ff; Steven Ross, American War Plans 1945–1950 (NY and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1988), pp. 110–19.
Steven Zaloga, Target America: The Soviet Union and the Strategic Arms Race, 1945–1964 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993), p. 79.
May (ed.), Interpreting NSC 68, p. 105; see also Jerald A. Combs, ‘The Compromise that Never Was: George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and the Issue of Conventional Deterrence in Europe, 1949–1952’ Diplomatic History 15:3 (summer 1991), pp. 361–86.
Alec Nove, Stalinism and After (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 133;
Carl A. Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership — with an epilogue on Gorbachev (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 68.
The Evolution of Foreign Policy’, Department of State Bulletin, 30 25 January 1954, pp. 107–10 in Trachtenberg (ed.), The Basic Documents, pp. 279–84. See also, ‘Deterrent Strategy’, Box 80, Dulles papers, SML; Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (London: Andre Deutsch, 1974), pp. 127, 198–9.
Sloan, Eisenhower, p. 75; Richard A. Aliano, American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy: The Politics of Changing Military Requirements, 1957–1961 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 36–7.
Brian Bond, Liddell Hart — A Study of his Military Thought (London: Cassell, 1977), p. 172.
Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, pp. 145–6; see also Bernard Brodie, ‘A Commentary on the Preventive War Doctrine’ 11 June 1953 [RAND Internal Working Document] in Marc Trachtenberg (ed.), The Development of American Strategic Thought: Writings on Strategy 1952–1960, vol. 1 (NY and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1988), p. 133;
Russell D. Buhite and W.M. Christopher Hamel, ‘War for Peace: The Question of an American Preventive War against the Soviet Union, 1945–1955’, Diplomatic History 14:3 (summer 1990), pp. 367–84; Trachtenberg, ‘Wasting Asset’, pp. 32–44.
Laurence Martin, Arms and Strategy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p. 14.
William Kaufman, ‘The Requirements of Deterrence’, in W. Kaufman (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956) in Trachtenberg (ed.), Strategic Thought, vol. 2, p. 14.
Provision 11, NSC 5602/1, 15 March 1956, FRUS 1955–7, vol. 19, p. 246; see also David Rosenberg, ‘“A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours”: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954–1955’, International Security 6:3 (winter 1981/2), pp. 13–5.
Henry Cabot Lodge, As It Was: An Inside View of Politics and Power in the ’50s and ’60s (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), p. 12.
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© 1996 Saki Dockrill
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Dockrill, S. (1996). The ‘New Look’ in Nuclear Deterrence Strategy. In: Eisenhower’s New-Look National Security Policy, 1953–61. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372337_4
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