It was the largest single increase in taxes on trade during peacetime and precipitated massive retaliation by foreign governments on U.S. products.

WSJ: Arthur B. Laffer: Taxes, Depression, and Our Current Troubles

But I am against focusing entirely on offense and on unrealistic and ineffective threats of massive retaliation, either cyber or kinetic, as the foundation of cyber strategy.

FORBES: DOD Cyber Strategy Remains Ambiguous on Threats and Responses

When Mr Olmert decided to launch a massive retaliation for a cross-border kidnapping by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers, he enjoyed wide support in parliament and in the country.

ECONOMIST: Israel

Rather than the deterrent effect expected from IW (much as the Japanese planners of the surprise attack against Pearl Harbor had hoped), a reckless application of information operations could provoke massive retaliation.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center for Security Policy | Chinese Information Warfare: A Phantom Menace or Emerging Threat? | Page: 14

The threat of massive retaliation in the nuclear context only deterred all-out nuclear war, but not the many other conflicts that plagued the latter half of the 20th Century that did not rise to the level of provoking a nuclear response.

FORBES: DOD Cyber Strategy Remains Ambiguous on Threats and Responses

So the question is: Does the United States have any other option short of some sort of massive military retaliation?

CNN: Jamie McIntyre on Bush's missile defense system

With Lebanon's economy poised precariously on the brink of ruin, Hizbullah may not wish to alienate its countrymen by risking massive Israeli retaliation.

ECONOMIST: But there is little they can do

In the early 1960s, U.S. nuclear strategists realized that a national strategy entirely reliant upon the threat of massive nuclear retaliation was not credible, that most challenges would not rise to the level of justifying nuclear response and that the Soviets would seek to take advantage of that fact.

FORBES: DOD Cyber Strategy Remains Ambiguous on Threats and Responses

The post-Cold War world is much more complex, the threats are much less clear and in that kind of a situation, the United States feels that in its defense and in the defense of its allies, it has to have more options than just the option of a massive military retaliation.

CNN: Jamie McIntyre on Bush's missile defense system