Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wanted to remind the West of his nation's power. On October 30, 1961, he broke a moratorium on nuclear testing. A Russian bomber dropped the largest bomb the world had ever seen. Its explosion was the equivalent of more than 50 million tons of TNT, more than all the explosives used in World War II. It was so powerful that people 50 miles from ground zero were blown off their feet.

President Kennedy, angered by the new Soviet tests, announced that the United States would proceed in its development of nuclear weapons. But public opinion in the West was turning against the nuclear arms buildup. In Europe, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other "ban the bomb" groups began to emerge. Kennedy and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, meanwhile, were having second thoughts about the strategy of massive retaliation -- now it meant the United States would be initiating the use of nuclear weapons against an equally equipped Soviet Union.

McNamara presented U.S. military planners with an appealing alternative: No Cities/Counterforce. Soviet cities were no longer to be targeted, only Soviet military forces. But the new strategy was dismissed by the Soviets as self-deluding.
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