New Look (policy)

It reflected Eisenhower's concern for balancing the Cold War military commitments of the United States with the nation's financial resources.

[3] NSC 162/2 reflected Eisenhower's desire for a "long-haul" approach to security planning that would maintain a more or less constant level of military preparedness, consistent with the health of the U.S.

[7][8] Psychological warfare was a nonviolent technique of combatting the Soviets that especially appealed to Eisenhower, with the goal of flooding communist states with anti-Soviet propaganda.

Although strategic air power attained a lower level than the Truman administration had projected, it became the centerpiece of U.S. security thinking, embodied in the doctrine of "Massive Retaliation."

[10] The doctrine was proclaimed in its most absolute form by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations on January 12, 1954, in which he said, "Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power [emphasis added].

... Now the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff can shape our military establishment to fit what is our policy, instead of having to try to be ready to meet the enemy's many choices.

[12] What Dulles implied was that the United States was prepared to respond to a Soviet-backed conventional threat anywhere with a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union itself.

The refusal of the United States to act to prevent the defeat of France by the communist-led Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, just four months after the Dulles speech, highlighted the political difficulties Eisenhower faced in balancing interference in Asia with his determination to keep the U.S. out of a "hot war".

Defense planners, therefore, began shaping a "new" New Look marked by emphasis on strategic "sufficiency," not superiority; on tactical nuclear weapons to fight "limited wars;" and on standing forces as opposed to reserves.