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 Eisenhower and the Missile Gap written by Peter J. Roman and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Eisenhower's 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.
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 309 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 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 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 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 Eisenhower s Sputnik Moment written by Yanek Mieczkowski and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 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 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.
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 Assured Destruction written by David Bath and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assured Destruction: Building the Ballistic Missile Culture of the U.S. Air Force documents the rapid development of nuclear ballistic missiles in the United States and their equally swift demise after the Cuban Missile Crisis, revealing how these drastic changes negatively influenced both the Air Force and the missile community. David W. Bath contends that the struggle to create and control nuclear ballistic missiles threatened both the dominance of the United States during an intensifying Cold War and the strategic airpower mission of the newly created Air Force. The book details the strenuous efforts required to create and prepare a missile arsenal before the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred only five years after the first missile was declared operational. It uses the personal recollections of former missileers and the professional military education theses they wrote to highlight some of the concerns that have faced the missileers who operated and worked on these powerful weapons from 1957 to the present. The highlight of the book, however, is the personal stories of the missileers who served during the missile crisis, revealing the efforts that they went to in order to prepare these unique and untried weapons for what many thought might become the third world war.
Download or read book The Age of Eisenhower written by William I Hitchcock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller, this is the “outstanding” (The Atlantic), insightful, and authoritative account of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security; fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy; and advanced the agenda of civil rights for African-Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War and avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam. Yet he also charted a significant expansion of America’s missile technology and deployed a vast array of covert operations around the world to confront the challenge of communism. As he left office, he cautioned Americans to remain alert to the dangers of a powerful military-industrial complex that could threaten their liberties. Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William Hitchcock’s “rich narrative” (The Wall Street Journal) shows us why Ike’s stock has risen so high. He was a gifted leader, a decent man of humble origins who used his powers to advance the welfare of all Americans. Now more than ever, with this “complete and persuasive assessment” (Booklist, starred review), Americans have much to learn from Dwight Eisenhower.
Download or read book The Missile Next Door written by Gretchen Heefner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s the Air Force buried 1,000 ICBMs in pastures across the Great Plains to keep U.S. nuclear strategy out of view. As rural civilians of all political stripes found themselves living in the Soviet crosshairs, a proud Plains individualism gave way to an economic dependence on the military-industrial complex that still persists today.
Download or read book Eisenhower written by Jean Edward Smith and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his magisterial bestseller "FDR," Smith provided a fresh, modern look at one of the most indelible figures in American history. Now this peerless biographer returns with a new life of Dwight D. Eisenhower that is as full, rich, and revealing as anything ever written about America's 34th president.
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 Nuclear Folly A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis written by Serhii Plokhy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The definitive history.…With his masterly book, Mr. Plokhy has sounded a warning bell." — The Economist A harrowing account of the Cuban missile crisis and how the US and USSR came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets’ or the Americans’ part would lead to mutual destruction. Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.
Download or read book One Hell of a Gamble Khrushchev Castro and Kennedy 1958 1964 written by Aleksandr Fursenko and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998-08-17 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on classified Soviet archives, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and the KGB, "One Hell of a Gamble" offers a riveting play-by-play history of the Cuban missile crisis from American and Soviet perspectives simultaneously. No other book offers this inside look at the strategies of the Soviet leadership. John F. Kennedy did not live to write his memoirs; Fidel Castro will not reveal what he knows; and the records of the Soviet Union have long been sealed from public view: Of the most frightening episode of the Cold War--the Cuban Missile Crisis--we have had an incomplete picture. When did Castro embrace the Soviet Union? What proposals were put before the Kremlin through Kennedy's back-channel diplomacy? How close did we come to nuclear war? These questions have now been answered for the first time. This important and controversial book draws the missing half of the story from secret Soviet archives revealed exclusively by the authors, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and his leadership circle. Contained in these remarkable documents are the details of over forty secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and his Soviet contact, records of Castro's first solicitation of Soviet favor, and the plans, suspicions, and strategies of Khrushchev. This unique research opportunity has allowed the authors to tell the complete, fascinating, and terrifying story of the most dangerous days of the last half-century.
Download or read book Intelligence Revolution 1960 written by Ingard Clausen and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overview: Provides a history of the Corona Satellite photo reconnaissance Program. It was a joint Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force program in the 1960s. It was then highly classified.
