348 ChaPter^7
Washington. Indeed, Eisenhower and Dulles continued to expect the worst
from the Soviets and planned accordingly.
At the same time, Eisenhower was committed to slowing down the huge
increases in military spending, which he feared would overheat the economy.
With such military and economic goals in mind, the administration came up
with a new Cold War strategy, a “New Look” that envisioned “massive retal-
iation” against Communist foes rather than grinding ground wars. Eisenhower
would shrink the size of the army, reduce some American commitments
abroad, cut the defense budget and, to compensate, rely heavily on atomic
weapons that would be delivered by the Air Force. On October 30th, 1953,
the new policy was authorized in NSC 162/2, which gave American forces a
mission of “offensive strategic striking power.” The United States must be
ever-prepared to inflict “massive retaliatory damage” to either deter the Soviet
Union from acting aggressively or, failing that, to counter a Russian attack.
This commitment to offensive action, however, was, still, based on the rec-
ognition that Russia was not likely to act recklessly and that the U.S. had far
more power than the Soviets did. As the authors of NSC 162/2 admitted,FIGuRE 7-1 President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles, 1956