Introduction:
At the conclusion
of the Korean war the policy of containment adopted by president Truman
was coming under scrutiny, particularly from statesman John Foster Dulles.
The failures of Dean Achenson, Truman's secretary of state were a direct
result of containment policy, according to Dulles. Containment had only
served to produce hopelessly stalemated situations. The United States'
inability to contain communism in Europe, as well as in Korea lead Dulles
to believe that a new foreign policy needed to be adopted. To this end
Dulles developed the idea of massive retaliation against communist aggression
in all forms
(Brands, H. Cold Warriors. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988: (9-10)). It
was the idea of massive retaliation which gave rise to Brinkmanship.
John
Foster Dulles
Brinkmanship was the US's policy of coming to the "brink" of nuclear war
with the soviets through the use of massive retaliation. Aggressive anti-Soviet
policy from the Eisenhower administration to the Kennedy Administration
produced many precarious situations, in which nuclear war threatened. In
each of these situations, however, war was avoided. To this end Guhin states:
"war was avoidable because a variety of United States and Soviet interests
made it an unattractive option, not merely because the United States possessed
a particular weapon of terrifying power" (Guhin, Michael.
John
Foster Dulles, A Statesman And His Times. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1972: (223)). Brinkmanship was effective because
of its atomic threat, but also because war was not the preferable course
of action for either the United States or the Soviet governments.
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