The New Look policy was formalized in National Security Council document 162/2 on the 30th of October 1953. This document represented the first defense budget for Fiscal Year 1955 prepared entirely by Eisenhower's own Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles articulated the core principle of Massive Retaliation stating that local defenses must be reinforced by massive retaliatory power to deter aggression effectively. He argued that the free community should respond vigorously at places and with means of its own choosing rather than trying to match every enemy choice.
The New Look Policy embodied increasing reliance on covert operations and espionage as cheap alternatives to conventional forces while cutting land and naval forces significantly. The policy shifted emphasis from land and naval forces toward air-atomic capability through the Strategic Air Command with the B-47 long-range bomber becoming the mainstay of U.S. deterrence during most of the New Look era.
Historian John Lewis Gaddis criticized Massive Retaliation for lacking credibility against less-than-total challenges like the Soviet intervention in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution because whatever credibility existed diminished steadily as Soviet strategic power grew during the late 1950s. Critics argued that the doctrine theoretically gave the Soviet Union an incentive to strike first to disarm American capabilities before they could respond.
Defense planners began shaping a new version of New Look marked by emphasis on strategic sufficiency rather than superiority starting budget preparations for fiscal years 1958, 1959 and 1960 in December 1955 according to historian Campbell Craig. George E. Lowe used the term New New Look to describe this evolution in his book The Age of Deterrence published in 1964.