Massive retaliation, also known as a massive response or massive deterrence, is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack. Strategy In the event of an attack from an aggressor, a state would massively retaliate by using a force disproportionate to the size of the attack. The aim of massive retaliation is to deter another state from attacking first. For such a strategy to work, it must be made public knowledge to all possible aggressors. The aggressor also must believe that the state announcing the policy has the ability to maintain second-strike capability in the event of an attack. It must also believe that the defending state is willing to go through with the deterrent threat, which would likely involve the use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale. Massive retaliation works on the same principles as mutual assured destruction (MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out nuclear retaliation. However, when massive retaliation became policy, there was no MAD yet since the Soviet Union lacked second-strike capability throughout the 1950s. History The idea of "massive retaliation" was first formally articulated by the Eisenhower administration Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech on January 12, 1954. Dulles stated:We need allies and collective security. Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power... Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.At the time, Dulles's speech was controversial. Dulles did not explicitly used the words "massive retaliation;" instead, he spoke about relation as a much less threatening term. In his speech, Dulles also stated that "local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power". It is in that quote that the idea of massive retaliation being articulated is seen, but the use of the specific words are absent. Dulles never used the exact words because the term "massive retaliation" has an aggressive tone and