Lecture # 14

Defence & Strategic Studies

Muhammad Jawad Hashmi

 Topic
• Massive Retaliation & Flexible Response
 Massive Response
• Massive retaliation, also known as a massive
response or massive deterrence, is a military
doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state
commits itself to retaliate in much greater force
in the event of an attack.
• 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.
• Part of US Military’s Nuclear Doctrine after the
WWII
• The aim of massive retaliation is to deter another state from initially
attacking.
– 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
– The defending state is willing to go through with the deterrent threat,
which would likely involve the use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale.
• Massive retaliation works on the same principles as mutual assured
destruction (MAD), that even a minor conventional attack on a
nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out nuclear retaliation.
• However at the time when massive retaliation became policy, there
was no MAD, because the Soviet Union lacked a second strike
capability throughout the 1950s.
• After becoming nuclear powers, both USA & USSR lacked the means
to effectively use nuclear devices against each other.
– Nuclear triads increased their ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the
interior of the opposing country.
• The term "massive retaliation" was coined by Eisenhower
administration Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech on
January 12, 1954.
– “We need allies and collective security. 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.”
• The doctrine of massive retaliation was based on the West's increasing
fear at the perceived imbalance of power in conventional forces, a
corresponding inability to defend itself or prevail in conventional conflicts.
• Upon a conventional attack on Berlin, for instance, the United States
would undertake a massive retaliation on the Soviet Union with nuclear
weapons. The massive response doctrine was thus an extension of
mutually assured destruction to conventional attacks, conceivably
deterring the Soviet Union from attacking any part of the United States'
sphere of influence even with conventional weapons.
 Impact
• A massive retaliation doctrine, as with any nuclear strategy based on
the principle of mutually assured destruction and as an extension
the second-strike capability needed to form a retaliatory attack,
encouraged the opponent to perform a massive counterforce 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 miniaturization,
accurate silo-based ICBMs, accurate submarine-launched ballistic
missiles, stealth technology applied to cruise missiles, 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.
 Shifting to Flexible Response
• Flexible Response, also called Flexible Deterrent Options (FDO)
• U.S. defense strategy in which a wide range of diplomatic, political,
economic, and military options are used to deter an enemy attack.
• 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 Deterrent Options in March 1961 was adopted as an
official national security policy of the United States.
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) adopted the
strategy in 1967.
• Flexible response calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical,
and conventional levels, giving the United States the capability to
respond to aggression across the spectrum of warfare, not limited
only to nuclear arms.
 Stages of Flexible Response
• A staged plan was devised to counter any Soviet military action other than
a first strike. It consisted of three stages:
• Direct defense: In case of a conventional Soviet attack (meaning non-
nuclear or this would be considered a first strike) initial efforts would be
to try and stop the Soviet advance with conventional weapons. This
meant that the foreseen Soviet attack on West-Germany would be tried to
be forced to a halt by NATO's European forces, Allied Command Europe.
• Deliberate Escalation: This phase was entered when conventional NATO
forces were succumbing under the Soviet attack. This was actually
expected as intelligence indicated Soviet divisions outnumbered NATO
divisions by far. In this phase NATO forces would switch to a limited use of
nuclear weapons, such as recently developed tactical nuclear
weapons (like nuclear artillery).
• General Nuclear Response: This was the last phase or stage which more
or less corresponded to the mutual assured destruction scenario,
meaning the total nuclear attack on the Communist world. If the Soviets
had not already done so, this would make them switch to all-out attack as
• Flexible Response gave the president the ability to
select from nonmilitary options, as well as military
options, when responding to a crisis and allowed the
United States to meet each hostile action with a
proportional reaction.
– The lines of attack included diplomatic measures (such as
pursuing strong relations with potential allies while being
ready to withdraw embassy personnel on short notice)
– Political measures (such as increasing the dialogue with the
press and releasing frequent public policy statements)
– Economic measures (such as increasing or canceling
American aid to other countries)
– Perhaps most important, military measures (such as
modernizing the U.S. missile fleet
– Increasing conventional capabilities, and intensifying training
for special forces).
• The strategy was quite costly, however, because developing and
maintaining sizable conventional and unconventional weapons, as well as
various kinds of military personnel, required considerable expenditures.
• During the Cold War, Flexible Response contributed to both the
avoidance of nuclear conflict and the proliferation of limited yet vicious
military clashes.
• The strategy had the effect of increasing the credibility of the U.S.
military, because it was able to leverage an appropriate proportional
response to different kinds of crises (which would deter an enemy’s
appetite for smaller, limited wars), while also reassuring allied countries.
• Like most Cold War strategies, Flexible Response yielded mixed results.
Although the combination of diplomacy, economic sanctions, and a
threatening military posture solved some crises, including the Cuban
missile crisis and the 1965 coup d’état in the Dominican Republic, the
same combination failed to bring about a positive resolution to
the Vietnam War.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/210124/Flexible-Response