Cold War Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===American military buildup=== {{Main|Flexible response}} [[John F. Kennedy]]'s foreign policy was dominated by American confrontations with the Soviet Union, manifested by proxy contests. Like Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy supported containment to stop the spread of Communism. President Eisenhower's [[New Look (policy)|New Look]] policy had emphasized the use of less expensive nuclear weapons to [[Deterrence theory|deter]] Soviet aggression by threatening massive nuclear attacks on all of the Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons were much cheaper than maintaining a large standing army, so Eisenhower cut conventional forces to save money. Kennedy implemented a new strategy known as [[flexible response]]. This strategy relied on conventional arms to achieve limited goals. As part of this policy, Kennedy expanded the [[United States special operations forces]], elite military units that could fight unconventionally in various conflicts. Kennedy hoped that the flexible response strategy would allow the US to counter Soviet influence without resorting to nuclear war.{{sfn|Herring|2008|pp=704β705}} To support his new strategy, Kennedy ordered a massive increase in defense spending. He sought, and Congress provided, a rapid build-up of the nuclear arsenal to restore the lost superiority over the Soviet Unionβhe claimed in 1960 that Eisenhower had lost it because of excessive concern with budget deficits. In his inaugural address, Kennedy promised "to bear any burden" in the defense of liberty, and he repeatedly asked for increases in military spending and authorization of new weapons systems. From 1961 to 1964, the number of nuclear weapons increased by 50 percent, as did the number of B-52 bombers to deliver them. The new ICBM force grew from 63 intercontinental ballistic missiles to 424. He authorized 23 new Polaris submarines, each of which carried 16 nuclear missiles. Kennedy also called on cities to construct fallout shelters.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nash |first1=Philip |title=Nuclear Weapons in Kennedy's Foreign Policy |journal=[[The Historian (journal)|The Historian]] |date=1 December 1993 |volume=56 |issue=2 |pages=285β300 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6563.1994.tb01309.x}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Warren |first1=Aiden |last2=Siracusa |first2=Joseph M. |title=US Presidents and Cold War Nuclear Diplomacy |chapter=Kennedy's Nuclear Dilemma|pages=95β124|date=2021 |publisher=[[Springer Nature]] / [[Palgrave Macmillan]] |location=Cham, Switzerland |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-61954-1 |isbn=978-3-030-61954-1 |s2cid=234294333 |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-61954-1}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page