History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Volume 3: Strategy, Money, and the New Look 1953-1956

This publication, Volume III of the History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, is concerned with the first three and a half years of the Eisenhower administration-1953-1956. The hallmark of these years was the constant struggle of the administration to hold down the cost of national defense and balance that cost against an array of post-Korea cold war challenges. For President Eisenhower the budget balancing priority was almost an obsession. His firm belief that a sound and fundamental economy was the bedrock on which all national policy had to be based manifested itself powerfully in all considerations of the national budget, and especially in the national defense budget, the dominant element. This volume, therefore, seeks to demonstrate and develop the interlocking relationship between the economy, strategy, and money in the making of a national security policy that came to be known as the New Look. The New Look had its antecedent in the immediate pre-Korean War policies of the Truman administration, which had begun to emphasize the role of airpower and nuclear weapons in an effort to diminish reliance on the manpower-intensive ground forces and hold down the cost of national defense. The Korean War frustrated the overt implementation of this policy because of its demands for large ground forces, but important advances occurred in the buildup of strategic nuclear airpower during the war that would facilitate that transformation. Thus, for its New Look strategic air component, the Eisenhower administration inherited and embraced, within the constraints of the budget, needed essential elements-a fast-growing Strategic Air Command being equipped with jet bombers, rapidly expanding stockpiles of nuclear weapons, beginnings of ballistic missile development, and revolutionary advances in electronics. All of these could make it possible for the New Look to fulfill its widely perceived promise of a bigger bang for a buck.