Missile Gap - Introduction

Introduction

The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957 highlighted the technological achievements of the Soviets and sparked some worrying questions for the politicians and general public of the USA. Although US military and civilian agencies were well aware of Soviet satellite plans, as they were publicly announced as part of the International Geophysical Year, Eisenhower's announcements that the event was unsurprising found little support among a US public still struggling with McCarthyism.

Political opponents seized on the event, and Eisenhower's ineffectual response, as further proof that the US was "fiddling as Rome burned." John F. Kennedy stated "the nation was losing the satellite-missile race with the Soviet Union because of ... complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies."

Kennedy, and other officials, stated claims that exaggerated Soviet missile counts by as much as 1,000 times what actually existed. Instead of having thousands of functioning missiles, the Soviets actually only had four prototypes. The fear generated by these false claims allowed a massive expansion of spending and authoritarian cold war measures that may otherwise have been impossible to justify to the voters.

Read more about this topic:  Missile Gap

Famous quotes containing the word introduction:

    “My objection to Liberalism is this—that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind—namely, politics—of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.”
    —Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)

    “We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: “When did the queen reign over China?” This whimsical and harmless scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.”
    —Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    “For better or worse, stepparenting is self-conscious parenting. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
    —Anonymous Parent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)