47. Editorial Note
On December 8, Secretary Dulles addressed the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association at Chicago which he later cited, in a December 28 memorandum to Bowie, as an explication of United States post-Geneva policy. (Department of State, PPS Files: Lot 66 D 70, Foreign Policy) In the course of this speech on the “new phase of the struggle with international communism,” the Secretary gave further sanction to the doctrine of “less-than-massive retaliation” that he had spoken of in March. See Document 15.
Quoting passages from his earlier speeches and articles, Dulles said that to give the idea of collective security a sensible and effective content, “the arsenal of retaliation should include all forms of counterattack with a maximum flexibility.” To deter aggression, the free world needed to have a choice of responses available and not be in the position “where the only response open to it is general war.” According to the Secretary, such a program was now a reality. The United States had developed with its allies “a collective system of great power which can be flexibly used on whatever scale may be requisite to make aggression costly. Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression. But if we have to use that capacity, such use would be selective and adapted to the occasion.” (Department of State Bulletin, December 19, 1955, pages 1003–1007)