The US Navy, Norway and the New Look: Adjusting to a “Northen Strategy”, 1954–57

Abstract

To President Eisenhower, the Korean War had demonstrated that conven-tional wars against communist-inspired forces were likely to be both costly and inconclusive.³ By 1954, the new Republican administration had completed its first review of “basic national security policy,” designed to solve Eisenhower’s great equation of maintaining a strong defence at a bearable cost. To do this, emphasis was to be placed on strategic air power, the integration of nuclear weapons into tactical units and the estab-lishment of a strategic reserve in the continental United States.⁴ At the same time, overall manpower ceilings were to be substantially reduced and greater reliance placed on allies for initial ground defence. A JCS Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense in December 1953 succinctly summarised the rationale behind the change of policy.

…there is a need for a reorientation of our military strategy toward placing greater reliance upon the capabilities of new weapons as a means for exploiting our technological advantages over ihe USSR, of reducing the effect of the manpower differential between us and the Soviet bloc, and of enabling us to reduce our over-all military expenditures. To this end, our superiority in atomic weapons musl be exploited to the maximum.⁵