Word: instants
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Eisenhower had said that involvement in Indo-China would be the greatest kind of tragedy.) Within the fortnight, Dulles clarified the U.S. position in a quick series of speeches and statements: the U.S. could not countenance the loss of Indo-China, and was prepared to apply its doctrine of instant retaliation to Communist China if Peking should take a direct hand...
...temperature of an atom bomb at the instant of explosion is fabulously high, but as the fireball expands, it cools off rapidly. If it cools too fast, any fusion reaction that it has started will die out. But if the high temperature lasts long enough, it will "ignite" the light elements. Then the fusion reaction will continue, generating energy to keep the materials hot until a large part of the light-element charge has been fired...
Almost all week long, John Foster Dulles was busy explaining and elaborating on the "instant retaliation" policy. His explanations were directed at the press, at the Congress, and at the public...
...strike in the new defense strategy. But on the following Tuesday, fresh outbreaks of criticism prompted what seemed to be a second Administration retreat. At a news conference, Secretary Dulles proceeded to take the guts out of his earlier pronouncement. "In no place did I say we would retaliate instantly," he explained, "although we might indeed retaliate instantly under conditions that call for that." In an article in Foreign Affairs released the same day, Dulles wrote, "the potential of massive attack will always be kept in a state of instant readiness, but our program will retain a wide variety...
Even Democrats agreed that this was a substantial innovation. Chester Bowles, former ambassador to India, wrote, "the doctrine of 'instant retaliation' ... appears to be a far reaching shift in our foreign policy." But the Democrats were disturbed, and Bowles went on to ask some troubling questions. "If we place our principle reliance in Asia upon a method of retaliation which carries with it what are probably unacceptable risks, and at the same time reduce our capacity for more limited, local responses, as the new policy seems to do, will we not in fact invite, rather than deter local aggression...