Download or read book Eisenhower and the Missile Gap written by Peter Roman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncertainty about Soviet intentions and capabilities after the launch of Sputnik required changes in U.S. strategic nuclear policy; Peter J. Roman draws from recently declassified archives to examine of one of the most unstable periods in the Cold War. Roman argues that presidential leadership from 1957 to 1960 was crucial to national security. Dwight D. Eisenhower was, he argues, actively involved in all nuclear policy making. His responses to the extreme uncertainty of the late 1950s shaped American nuclear policy for decades, and in its internal deliberations his administration anticipated much of the subsequent public debate. Eisenhower and the Missile Gap investigates a variety of issues, actors, and institutions to explain how a government deals with high levels of technological uncertainty. Several significant themes emerge: the evolution of American perceptions of vulnerability; problems in intelligence collection and analysis; the integration of new weapons systems into strategy; the influence of the armed forces; the impact of organizational interests on policy and force decisions; Eisenhower's internal and external leadership style; and presidential management of defense and foreign policy.
Download or read book John F Kennedy and the Missile Gap written by Christopher A. Preble and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capitalizing on fear of nuclear war, months after Kennedy's inauguration he won Congressional authorization for two supplemental appropriations that increased the defense budget by more than 15 percent. This study of the political uses of an alleged threat to national security, argues that the missile gap was a myth.
Download or read book The Gaither Committee Eisenhower and the Cold War written by David Lindsey Snead and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the United States struggled to respond to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower received a top secret report prepared by a committee of leading scientific, business, and military experts. The panel, called the Gaither Committee in recognition of its first chair, H. Rowan Gaither Jr., emphasized the inadequacy of U.S. defense measures designed to protect the civilian population and the vulnerability of the country's strategic nuclear forces in the event of a Soviet attack. The committee concluded that in the event of a surprise Soviet attack, the United States would not be able to defend itself. The years following Sputnik and the Gaither Committee's report were a watershed period in America's cold war history. During the remaining years of the Eisenhower administration, the intensification of the cold war caused the acceleration of an arms race that dramatically raised the stakes of any potential conflict. The Gaither Committee was at the center of debates about U.S. national security and U.S.-Soviet relations. The committee's recommendations led to increases in defense spending and the development of our nuclear arsenal.
Download or read book Living with Peril written by Andreas Wenger and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living with Peril explains in detail how the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations adapted to the reality of a Soviet nuclear force capable of destroying the United States and against which there was no effective defense. Wenger illuminates the development, implementation, and evolution of U.S. government policies designed to avoid war and to respond to the vulnerability of nuclear destruction. Drawing from a wealth of sources, Wenger provides an insightful and original perspective on the origins of cold war nuclear diplomacy. This is crucial reading for students and scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and diplomatic history.
Download or read book The Missile Gap written by Edgar M. Bottome and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces and analyzes the complex and often contradictory forces that led to a popular belief in the United States that the Soviet Union possessed a commanding superiority over the United States in ballistic missiles during the period 1958-1961.
Download or read book How Ike Led written by Susan Eisenhower and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Dwight D. Eisenhower led America through a transformational time—by a DC policy strategist, security expert and his granddaughter. Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, Ike was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, as well as his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He was a man of judgment, and steadying force. He sought national unity, by pursuing a course he called the "Middle Way" that tried to make winners on both sides of any issue. Ike was a strategic, not an operational leader, who relied on a rigorous pursuit of the facts for decision-making. His talent for envisioning a whole, especially in the context of the long game, and his ability to see causes and various consequences, explains his success as Allied Commander and as President. After making a decision, he made himself accountable for it, recognizing that personal responsibility is the bedrock of sound principles. Susan Eisenhower's How Ike Led shows us not just what a great American did, but why—and what we can learn from him today.
Download or read book The Other Space Race written by Nicholas Michael Sambaluk and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Other Space Race is a unique look at the early U.S. space program and how it both shaped and was shaped by politics during the Cold War. Eisenhower’s “New Look” expanded the role of the Air Force in national security, and ultimately allowed ambitious aerospace projects, namely the “Dyna-Soar,” a bomber equipped with nuclear weapons that would operate in space. Eisenhower’s space policy was purely practical, creating a strong deterrent against the use of nuclear arms against the United States. With the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, the political climate changed, and space travel became part of the United States’ national discourse. Sambaluk explores what followed, including the scuttling of the “Dyna-Soar” program and the transition from Eisenhower’s space policy to John Kennedy’s. This well-argued, well-researched book gives much needed perspective on the Cold War’s influence on space travel and it’s relation to the formation of public policy.
Download or read book Eyes in the Sky written by Theresa B Tabak and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dino A. Brugioni, author of the best-selling account of the Cuban Missile crisis, Eyeball to Eyeball, draws on his long CIA career as one of the world's premier experts on aerial reconnaissance to provide the inside story of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's efforts to use spy planes and satellites to gather intelligence. He reveals Eisenhower to be a hands-on president who, contrary to popular belief, took an active role in assuring that the latest technology was used to gather aerial intelligence. This previously untold story of the secret Cold War program makes full use of the author's firsthand knowledge of the program and of information he gained from interviews with important participants. As a founder and senior officer of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, Brugioni was a key player in keeping Eisenhower informed of developments, and he sheds new light on the president's contributions toward building an effective and technologically advanced intelligence organization. The book provides details of the president's backing of the U-2's development and its use to dispel the bomber gap and to provide data on Soviet missile and nuclear efforts and to deal with crises in the Suez, Lebanon, Chinese Off Shore Islands, Tibet, Indonesia, East Germany, and elsewhere. Brugioni offers new information about Eisenhower's order of U-2 flights over Malta, Cyprus, Toulon, and Israel and subsequent warnings to the British, French, and Israelis that the U.S. would not support an invasion of Egypt. He notes that the president also backed the development of the CORONA photographic satellite, which eventually proved the missile gap with the Soviet Union didn't exist, and a variety of other satellite systems that detected and monitored problems around the world. The unsung reconnaissance roles played by Jimmy Doolittle and Edwin Land are also highlighted in this revealing study of Cold War espionage.
Download or read book Diplomacy Shot Down written by E. Bruce Geelhoed and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Cold War is littered with what-ifs, and in Diplomacy Shot Down, E. Bruce Geelhoed explores one of the most intriguing: What if the Soviets had not shot down the American U-2 spy plane and President Dwight D. Eisenhower had visited the Soviet Union in 1960 as planned? In August 1959, with his second term nearing its end, Eisenhower made the surprise announcement that he and Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev would visit each other’s countries as a means of “thawing some of the ice” of the Cold War. Khrushchev’s trip to the United States in September 1959 resulted in plans for a four-power summit involving Great Britain and France, and for Eisenhower’s visit to Russia in early summer 1960. Then, in May 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 surveillance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The downing of Powers’s plane was, in Geelhoed’s recounting of this episode in Cold War history, not just a diplomatic crisis. The ensuing collapse of the summit and the subsequent cancelation of Eisenhower’s trip to the Soviet Union amounted to a critical missed opportunity for improved US-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War. In a blow-by-blow description of the diplomatic overtures, the U-2 incident, and the aftermath, Diplomacy Shot Down draws upon Eisenhower’s projected itinerary and unmade speeches and statements, as well as the American and international press corps’ preparations for covering the aborted visit, to give readers a sense of what might have been. Eisenhower’s prestige within the Soviet Union was so great, Geelhoed observes, that the trip, if it had happened, could well have led to a détente in the increasingly dangerous US-Soviet relationship. Instead, the cancelation of Ike’s visit led to an escalation in hostilities that played out around the globe and nearly guaranteed that the “missile gap” would reemerge as an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. A detailed account of an episode that defined the Cold War for a generation, Diplomacy Shot Down is, in its insights and revelations, something rarer still—a behind-the-scenes look at history in the unmaking.
Download or read book Eisenhower s Sputnik Moment written by Yanek Mieczkowski and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a critical Cold War moment, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency suddenly changed when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. What Ike called "a small ball" became a source of Russian pride and propaganda, and it wounded him politically, as critics charged that he responded sluggishly to the challenge of space exploration. Yet Eisenhower refused to panic after Sputnik—and he did more than just stay calm. He helped to guide the United States into the Space Age, even though Americans have given greater credit to John F. Kennedy for that achievement. In Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, Yanek Mieczkowski examines the early history of America’s space program, reassessing Eisenhower’s leadership. He details how Eisenhower approved breakthrough satellites, supported a new civilian space agency, signed a landmark science education law, and fostered improved relations with scientists. These feats made Eisenhower’s post-Sputnik years not the flop that critics alleged but a time of remarkable progress, even as he endured the setbacks of recession, medical illness, and a humiliating first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite. Eisenhower’s principled stands enabled him to resist intense pressure to boost federal spending, and he instead pursued his priorities—a balanced budget, prosperous economy, and sturdy national defense. Yet Sputnik also altered the world’s power dynamics, sweeping Eisenhower in directions that were new—even alien—to him, and he misjudged the importance of space in the Cold War’s "prestige race." By contrast, Kennedy capitalized on the issue in the 1960 election, and after taking office he urged a manned mission to the moon, leaving Eisenhower to grumble over the young president’s aggressive approach. Offering a fast-paced account of this Cold War episode, Mieczkowski demonstrates that Eisenhower built an impressive record in space and on earth, all the while offering warnings about America’s stature and strengths that still hold true today.
Download or read book Dwight Eisenhower and American Foreign Policy during the 1960s written by Richard M. Filipink and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-24 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dwight Eisenhower had a measurable impact on the foreign policy decisions of his Democratic successors during the 1960s due to his reputation as a military and foreign policy expert as well as his continued popularity when and after he left office. Eisenhower sought to influence his successors’ policies for a number of reasons, including his underrated partisanship, his desire to protect the reputation of his administration, and his real concerns about the ability of his successors to successfully counter the communist challenge to American interests. Despite his steadily declining health, Eisenhower played both a public and behind-the-scenes role in shaping American foreign policy during the 1960s that had long-term consequences for the country. This book traces the interactions between Eisenhower and his two successors from the pre-inaugural meetings with John F. Kennedy, their direct contacts on Cuba, the use of intermediaries such as John McCone and General Andrew Goodpaster, and the constant contact initiated by Lyndon B. Johnson. Through these direct and indirect contacts, Eisenhower constrained the choices available to Kennedy and Johnson and shaped the politics and policies of the United States until the final months of his life.
Download or read book The Other Missiles of October written by Philip Nash and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shedding important new light on the history of the Cold War, Philip Nash tells the story of what the United States gave up to help end the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. By drawing on documents only recently declassified, he shows that one of President Kennedy's compromises with the Soviets involved the removal of Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey, an arrangement concealed from both the American public and the rest of the NATO allies. Nash traces the entire history of the Jupiters and explores why the United States offered these nuclear missiles, which were capable of reaching targets in the Soviet Union, to its European allies after the launch of Sputnik. He argues that, despite their growing doubts, both Eisenhower and Kennedy proceeded with the deployment of the missiles because they felt that cancellation would seriously damage America's credibility with its allies and the Soviet Union. The Jupiters subsequently played a far more significant role in Khrushchev's 1962 decision to deploy his missiles in Cuba, in U.S. deliberations during the ensuing missile crisis, and in the resolution of events in Cuba than most existing histories have supposed.
Download or read book The Sputnik Challenge written by Robert A. Divine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched a 184-pound metal ball called Sputnik into orbit around the Earth, and America plummeted into a panic. Nuclear weapon designer Edward Teller claimed that the United States had lost "a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor," and magazine articles appeared with such headlines as "Are We Americans Going Soft?" In the White House, President Eisenhower seemed to do nothing, leading Kennedy in 1960 to proclaim a "missile gap" in the Soviet's favor. Rarely has public perception been so dramatically at odds with reality. In The Sputnik Challenge, Robert Divine provides a fascinating look at Eisenhower's handling of the early space race--a story of public uproar, secret U-2 flights, bungled missile tests, the first spy satellite, political maneuvering, and scientific triumph. He recreates the national hysteria over the first two Sputnik launches, illustrating the anxious handwringing that the Democrats (led by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson) aggressively played for political gain. Divine takes us to private White House meetings, showing how Eisenhower worked closely with science adviser James Killian, allowing him to take the lead in creating a civilian agency--NASA--which provided intelligent and forceful leadership for American space programs. But the President also knew from priceless intelligence from U-2 flights over the U.S.S.R. that he had little to fear from the touted missile gap, and he fought to limit the growth and multiplication of military missile programs. Eisenhower's assurance, however, rested on classified information, and he did little to instill his confidence in the public. Nor could he boast of his early support for the secret spy satellite program (which quickly replaced the U-2 plane after Gary Powers was shot down in 1960). So the public continued to worry, feeding the national movement for educational reform as well as congressional maneuvering over funding for numerous strategic projects. Eisenhower, Divine writes, possessed keen strategic vision and a sure sense of budgetary priorities, but ultimately he flunked a crucial test of leadership when he failed to reassure the frightened public that their fears were groundless. As a result, he ultimately failed in his goal to limit military spending as well--which led to a real missile gap in reverse. Incisively written and deeply researched, The Sputnik Challenge provides a briskly-paced history of the origins of NASA, the space race, and the age of the ICBM.
Download or read book Secret Empire written by Philip Taubman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the most dangerous years of the Cold War, a handful of Americans secretly built machines that revolutionized spying and warfare while protecting the United States from a surprise nuclear attack. This is their story, told in full for the first time. of photos.
Download or read book Penetrating the Iron Curtain Resolving the Missile Gap with Technology written by Central Intelligence Agency and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1950s the US faced the first real challenge since World War II to its strategic superiority over any nation on earth. First it seemed that the Soviet Union was challenging us by producing and deploying a large strategic bomber force. Then, even as that perception was disproved, it became evident that the Soviets were placing their major effort toward developing strategic missiles against which, once launched, there was no defense. As the Eisenhower Administration strove to formulate policy to address the new circumstances, the Intelligence Community provided no clear picture of the scale, rate of production or breadth of deployment of Soviet missiles. The perceived missile gap that ensued was based on a comparison between US ICBM strength as then programmed, and reasonable, although erroneous estimates of prospective Soviet ICBM strength that were generally accepted by responsible officials. The administration increasingly turned to the CIA with assignments to collect, produce, and disseminate missile intelligence to policymakers. It was a challenging mission that put CIA up against a Soviet Union, a country from which little information, clues, secrets, or whispers emanated, and any that did might only be intended to deceive. The goal was not only to guess what was behind the curtain, but also to find all ways possible to approximate with ever greater certainty. These papers provide an enhanced analysis by and for scholars interested in that important, historic controversy. On the way to the solution, the process became overshadowed and sidelined by competing political, corporate, diplomatic, technological, and intelligence goals, providing us today with a fascinating template that is not far afield of the complexities facing modem intelligence missions and acts.
Download or read book Penetrating the Iron Curtain written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the mid-1950s the US faced the first real challenge since World War II to its strategic superiority over any nation on earth. The attempt to collect intelligence on the Soviets began with an initial period of poor collection capabilities and consequent limited analysis. With few well-placed human sources inside the Soviet Union, it was only with the CIA's development of, what can only be called, timely technological wizardry--the U-2 aircraft and Corona Satellite reconnaissance program--that breakthroughs occurred in gaining valuable, game-changing intelligence. Coupled with the innovative use of aerial and satellite photography and other technical collection programs, the efforts began to produce solid, national intelligence."--Https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/historical-collection-publications/index.html.
Download or read book Ike s Bluff written by Evan Thomas and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evan Thomas's startling account of how the underrated Dwight Eisenhower saved the world from nuclear holocaust. Upon assuming the presidency in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower set about to make good on his campaign promise to end the Korean War. Yet while Eisenhower was quickly viewed by many as a doddering lightweight, behind the bland smile and simple speech was a master tactician. To end the hostilities, Eisenhower would take a colossal risk by bluffing that he might use nuclear weapons against the Communist Chinese, while at the same time restraining his generals and advisors who favored the strikes. Ike's gamble was of such magnitude that there could be but two outcomes: thousands of lives saved, or millions of lives lost. A tense, vivid and revisionist account of a president who was then, and still is today, underestimated, Ike's Bluff is history at its most provocative and thrilling.
