Source: The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2, p. 813
President Kennedy's Address at Graduation Exercises of the U.S. Military Academy, Public Papers of the Presidents, Kennedy, 1962, p. 453:
"Korea has not been the only battle ground since the end of the Second
World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines,
in Algeria and Cuba, and Cyprus and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese
Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation
has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity,
ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins,
war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression,
seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him.
It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called 'wars
of liberation,' to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain
the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and
ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it,
and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade
if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different
kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."