Policy Shift
President John F. Kennedy abandoned the policy of massive retaliation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in favor of flexible response. Under the Kennedy Administration, the U.S. adopted a more flexible policy in an attempt to avert nuclear war if the Soviets did not cooperate with American demands. If the United States' only announced military reaction to any Soviet incursion (no matter how small) were a massive nuclear strike, and the U.S. didn't follow through, then the Soviets would assume that the United States would never attack. This would have made the Soviet Union far more bold in its military ventures against U.S. allies and would probably have resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. By having other, more flexible policies to deal with aggressive Soviet actions, the U.S. could opt out of a nuclear strike and take less damaging actions to rectify the problem without losing face in the international community.
Read more about this topic: Massive Retaliation
Famous quotes containing the words policy and/or shift:
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)