Mass or massive retaliation

Posted by ESC on July 15, 2000

In Reply to: Weapons of mass destruction posted by ESC on July 14, 2000

: : To readers of this list:

: : I am interested in the origins of the phrase
: : "weapons of mass destruction." Does anyone
: : have any idea of its earliest usage, or
: : where I might look for info?

: : Thanks very much.
: : Nina

: I haven't been able to find that particular phrase. But here's a lead. It was probably a Cold War term.

: "Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley" by Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Soukhanov (Oxford University Press, New York, 1997) says: "The U.S. and USSR had emerged from the war (World War II) as the planet's two 'superpowers,' leading the 'Free World' and 'Communist Bloc' in the 'Cold War' , a struggle that featured such things as the doctrine of 'MASS RETALIATION' (1954, the threat to meet foreign military aggression with a nuclear response), and the research and diplomacy aimed to give one side an advantage in the 'nuclear arms race.'"

I'm still holding to the theory that the term "weapons of mass destruction" is a cousin to "mass retaliation" and "massive retaliation" and was probably coined about the same time.

"massive retaliation -- national strategy that threatens to meet foreign military challenge with nuclear attack. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said in a speech on January 12, 1954, to the Council on Foreign Relations: 'Local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power.' Immediately and universally, via microphone and printing press, 'massive retaliatory power' was edited to 'massive retaliation' and American policy had a label.

Actually, there was little new in Dulles's statement. The Eisenhower Administration had been in office for a year when Dulles made the speech and had already begun to de-emphasize 'conventional' or nonnuclear strength while stressing the nuclear...And five days before Dulles' speech, Eisenhower himself in the State of the Union address had stressed the need for 'massive capability to strike back' against any aggression..." From Safire's New Political Dictionary by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).