Brinkmanship: Diplomacy That Won The Cold War Is Needed Today

Nevertheless, in 1953 General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. Eisenhower took his delegate command style to the White House. His Secretary of State became extremely powerful because total authority was given to him. His name was John Foster Dulles (Washington Dulles Airport was named after this powerful man). Realizing the inherent menace of an aggressive Soviet Union and the real threat that one of the Soviet satellite countries (East Germany, Poland, Hungry, etc.) might launch a nuclear missile to achieve immediate success, John Foster Dulles created the policy called brinkmanship.

With brinkmanship, the United States’ foreign policy became:

“If a missile fired from any of the Soviet Union satellite countries strikes any NATO European country or the United States, the United States would consider the missile as being fired by the Soviet Union and thereby the United States would immediately attack the Soviet Union.”

Later Dulles expanded his policy to state that any invasion of any country by a Soviet Block Country would also be considered an attack upon the United States by the Soviet Union and that attack would be met with massive nuclear retaliation. This policy of escalation assured the Soviet Union that even the smallest move on a NATO power meant all out war.

With this single diplomacy policy, the Soviet Union was forced to take personal control of all weapons and to insist that none of their satellite countries do anything that might cause a major war. We forced our principle adversary to accept the responsibility of the rouge countries and their radical leaders to behave and to not attack us. Again, the Soviet Union stopped their people from attacking us.

Now take that thinking to today. It will not be another country that will attack the United States. It will be some small splinter group of terrorists that will attack America. The next time the attack might actually be nuclear. The question is how do we stop them and, if the terrible event does happen, what sort of retaliation will there be? If we let down our guard, the terrorists will soon strike us again. That is not a fear. That is a fact and a reality.