In late 1954, for example, Radford testified privately before a congressional committee that he felt some of Eisenhower's proposed defense cuts would limit the military's capability for "massive retaliation", but he kept his disagreements out of public view, working from within and seeking the funding to save specific strategic programs.
This hypothesis assumes the hardliners are no longer guided by self-preservation and are oblivious or indifferent to the risks of provoking Kenya into a retaliation that would degrade their capabilities further.
His book, The Strategy of Conflict, showed that a party can strengthen its position by overtly worsening its own options, that the capability to retaliate can be more useful than the ability to resist an attack, and that uncertain retaliation is more credible and more efficient than certain retaliation.
The sweet spot for avoiding nuclear apocalypse is when both sides have enough nuclear capability to ensure their retaliation will have full effect — but without having so much strike capability that it creates a fear in your opponent that the other guy can get enough of a jump on you to take both you and your retaliatory ability out in one fell swoop.
Both men reaffirmed their countries' alliance and opposition to North Korea's nuclear capability; the North threatened a "thousandfold" retaliation if attacked.
In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, broadcast before the Super Bowl on Sunday night, the president also said that administration officials "don't see any evidence" that Iran had the "intentions or capabilities" to mount an attack on United States soil in retaliation for a strike on its nuclear facilities.
The constant war between the virion's capabilities for finding and infecting the cell, and the retaliation by the host, leads to evolutionary dynamics known as Red Queen Van Valenn 1974) and ecological cycles called Lotka-Volterra/Kill-the-Winner (Bratbak et al. 1990).
The Jordanian airforce recently claimed to have degraded Isis's capabilities by 20 per cent after air strikes against militants were intensified in retaliation for the death of pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh.
They should judge the candidates not on the basis of doctrinal purity, nor in retaliation for perceived betrayals of some platonic ideal of their party's past, but on capability.
McNamara was also at the centre of a drive to alter U.S. military strategy from the "massive retaliation" of the Eisenhower years to a "flexible response," emphasizing counterinsurgency techniques and second-strike nuclear-missile capability.
