ARMED FORCES: Man Behind the Power

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"He made a helluva talk—without notes," said one participant. "And his biggest contribution was tying all this into one thing, showing that you simply couldn't expect to push down trouble in one place and not expect it to pop up somewhere else." The result for Radford was that Ike forgot the old feuds, decided to jump Radford all the way to replace the retiring General Bradley as J.C.S. chairman. "If Radford will work for the country as hard as he worked for the Navy," Ike told his colleagues, "then he'll do a fine job."

The New Look. When Radford took over, he found that J.C.S. procedures were so tangled that only Korean war decisions could find their way out of the J.C.S. to the Defense Secretary, and many an important paper, e.g., a policy for guided missiles, was lost in the backlog. On his first day, Radford got the new team of Chiefs to work in his own office, without staffs, without secretaries, shirtsleeves rolled up; with pencils and paper that they had brought along, they began writing out memoranda on post-Korean force levels and budget needs.

All through the Federal Government there was a new ferment, as everybody from Eisenhower on down headed the same way: toward a long-term concept of force-in-being that soon came to be known as the New Look. The key to the New Look was atomic warfare—tactical as well as strategic—whereby U.S. power could be strengthened while manpower levels held steady. The inevitable implication of the New Look was a re-emphasis on air-sea power (Air Force, Navy) and de-emphasis of ground power (Army) that led eventually to the Army's ill-fated "Revolt of the Colonels" (TIME, June 4, 1956). "Our New Look prepares for the long pull and not just for a year of crisis," said Radford, soon after the Korean armistice. "The New Look can be supported not just one year, nor two years, but for ten years, or even 20 years, if necessary."

The New Diplomacy. While the U.S. was generally grasping the logic of the New Look, Admiral Radford was often out in front urging a firm military-diplomatic line against Communism. In 1953 Radford advised Eisenhower to revise Harry Truman's two-way U.S. blockade of the Formosa Strait. His points: Why guarantee the Chinese Reds against attack from the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa? Eisenhower weighed the risks, took the decision, forced Red China to deploy hundreds of thousands of defense troops along the South China coast. Two years later Radford and Dulles not only endorsed Ike's public promise—backed by congressional resolution—to defend Formosa by force, but wanted the U.S. to declare its specific intent to defend the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu as well. The President, sensing Britain's opposition as well as the military value of being indefinite, in effect overruled his two strategic advisers.