Flexible Deterrent Options

Defense strategy based on a country's ability to resort to a wide range of political, economic, and military weapons to deter an attack at any level perpetrated by an enemy state. Adopted by the Kennedy administration as official national security policy in 1961, the flexible deterrent options approach (also known as flexible response) aimed to reassess the strategic relationship between the United States and its nuclear rival, the Soviet Union.

Instead of relying heavily on a devastating nuclear assault to fight potential Soviet military provocations, [Page 267]under the flexible deterrent options, the United States would be able to meet each hostile action with a proportional reaction. A Soviet-financed communist insurgency in Asia, for example, could be opposed with conventional (nonnuclear) U.S. or allied troops without the risk of escalating the conflict to a full-fledged nuclear war or being forced to give up fighting the insurgency.

The strategy was quite expensive, however, because developing and maintaining top-notch conventional and unconventional weapons, as well as various kinds of military personnel, required considerable expenditures. In the cutthroat environment of the Cold War, flexible response ended up contributing to both the avoidance of nuclear conflict and the proliferation of limited yet vicious military clashes.

The New Look

By the early 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were fighting a Cold War that permeated the furthest reaches of the world and affected billions of people. Both sides possessed a large number of nuclear bombs, and the means to deliver them by intercontinental bomber jets to any location on the globe were becoming rapidly available.

The United States did not yet have a comprehensive military strategy that would regulate the use of both conventional and unconventional weaponry. Nuclear proliferation required the elaboration of such a strategy, however, and the task fell to the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was sworn in as president in 1953. In October of that year, Eisenhower approved a top-secret National Security Council policy paper that officially inaugurated a new “grand strategy” called the “New Look.” According to this document, in the event of an attack by the communist powers (the Soviet Union and China), the United States reserved the right to respond with nuclear missiles, even if the provocation did not involve such weaponry.

The strategy centered around the idea of the asymmetrical response, whereby communist provocations would be met with overwhelming force at a time and place of America's choosing. A powerful response, it was argued, would cut U.S. defense costs by making the fomenting of local conflicts a very risky business for the Soviets. Indeed, throughout Eisenhower's presidential term, U.S. defense spending declined steadily in terms of the percentage of gross national product it represented. By 1960, however, U.S. public opinion was turning against the New Look. The strategy's perceived heavy reliance on nuclear weapons and its failure to respond to communist-inspired third-world revolutions made many feel that a new, more flexible approach was needed.

Reassessment

Campaigning against Eisenhower in the spring of 1960, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy systematically criticized the administration's handling of foreign affairs. Almost as soon as he moved into the White House, President Kennedy instructed his advisers to begin drafting a new strategy to safeguard the U.S. role in the world.

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