Reconsidering Sputnik by Lanius Roger D.; Logsdon John M.; Smith Robert W

Author:Lanius, Roger D.; Logsdon, John M.; Smith, Robert W.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1195817
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

1. The author wishes to thank Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C. of the University of Notre Dame, Dwayne A. Day of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, Ronald Doe! of Oregon State University, and the faculty and graduate student members of the Cold War History Group of the University of California, Santa Barbara, for reading earlier drafts of this paper and for providing valuable criticism.

2. Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s {New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995}, p. 216.

3. Robert Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 110.

4. Historians have emphasized Eisenhower's prudent response to the “Sputnik panic” and the missile gap crises which followed. In what has become a widely accepted view, Eisenhower refused to panic in the face of considerable congressional and public pressure for a massive arms build-up in reaction to Sputnik. Because of his commitment to balanced budgets and his determination to avoid an arms race, Eisenhower resisted political pressure to recklessly pursue a “Manhattan approach” to ICBM development or to pursue expensive space spectaculars based on shoring-up American prestige. According to this perspective, U-2 intelligence convinced Eisenhower that the United States deterrent remained unaffected by the Soviet success. Nonetheless, Eisenhower's refusal to divulge the source of his confidence (the U-2) meant that he could not convince the public of the prudence of his policies. For a concise summary of the traditional view, see Giles Alston “Eisenhower: Leadership in Space Policy,” in Shirley Anne Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993). The standard work on the Cold War in space is Walter A. McDougall, … The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985). Robert Divine especially emphasizes the importance of domestic politics in propelling the space race. See Divine, Sputnik Challenge. For other historians who support this interpretation, see Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), esp. pp. 423–61; Jack Manno, Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 3945–1995 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1982); Zuoyue Wang, “American Science and the Cold War, The Rise of the U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1994, pp. 100–82; Paul B. Stares, Space Weapons and U.S. Strategy: Origins and Development (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 38–58; and Sherry, Shadow of War, pp. 214–37. On Eisenhower's response to the missile gap see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the first fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 236–358; Peter J. Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

5. McDougall emphasizes that the challenge Sputnik posed to America's image and prestige transformed the conflict into “total Cold War.” By presaging nuclear parity and suggesting Soviet scientific superiority, Sputnik turned the superpower rivalry into a colossal public relations contest: “The Cold War now became total, a competition for the loyalty and trust of all peoples fought out in all arenas of social achievement.

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