The Cold War presented the United States with a unique decision. The Soviet Union had created a space program and the United States needed to decide if a space program would be beneficial for them. The Soviets sent probes out to space, and soon American probes followed. There are many reasons that the U.S. could have made this decision, but two reasons are more prominent that the others. Firstly the United States found it necessary to compete with the Soviets, and they could not accept the fact that the U.S.S.R had something that they didn’t. Secondly, JFK and his administration thought that space was the final frontier, and it would provide valuable scientific research. Ultimately, John F Kennedy and the United States decided to create a space …show more content…
Samuel Crompton says,”Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition.”(Crompton 56). The real reason that the United States joined the Space Race was to compete with the soviet union. JFK makes this very clear. The Soviets were ahead of us and this was unacceptable, being behind technologically was detrimental to morale.The Cold War wasn’t really a war at all. It was just an arms race, the space race was just an extension of the arms race. It was never really intended to have any scientific, technological, or strategic benefits. Dwight D. Eisenhower may have planned for the space program to focus on science, but when kennedy took the office he used NASA as a piece of propaganda. He never had any intention of using the space program for research. When Kennedy was first deciding whether or not to create a space program he sent a memo to his vice president Lyndon B. Johnson asking him to research a few things. None of JFK’s questions had anything to do with science or technology. They were all about the Soviet Union 's space program. The first questions was, “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket land on the moon, or by a rocket go to the moon and back with a man.”(Kennedy). JFK’s sole interest was beating the Soviets. He didn’t care about any other benefits. Everything else came second to beating the
The United States had bought Alaska from Russia partly so that the tsar would not be offended by a refusal. This kind of relation between the two became a rarity later on, especially in the twentieth century. The tense ambiance of this period gave no room for a civil affiliation between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. After World War II, the two nations battled it out in a conceptual war known as the Cold War. It was characterized by a competition between the nations’ political philosophies- the USSR wanted communism to dominate the world, while the US wanted democracy to prevail. However, the war did not come about suddenly- it was congealed over a period of time by multiple factors. As World War II ended, the
The 1960’s were full of questions, and one of the biggest questions the world was pondering about was regarding the Space Race: was the USA going to beat their communist enemy, the Soviet Union? The Space Race was a series of events that helped to symbolize and determine in the worlds’ eyes which form of government was better, communism (Soviets) or democracy (United States)? In the beginning of the race, the Soviets had the lead, and it was not looking good for America. Then the United States picked up the pace and spent well over eight billion dollars funding the space studies. This period of time made many scientists and astronauts heroes in the eyes of Americans. The Space Race was a combination of determination, intelligence, space projects, and American pride, all used to reach our exploration goals and surpass the Soviets.
The long lasting Cold war has come to an end. As a result, new risks were taken to build and influence a new world, whether it would be new perceptions, leaders or ideas. In “President Ronald Reagan’s Successful Strategy of Negotiating from Strength,” John Lewis Gaddis argues President Ronald Reagan’s leadership skills brought the Cold War to an end, but he fails to realize that the end of the Cold War is forced by the economic issues of the time, domestic politics and the rise of nationalism.
On December 26th 1991, presidents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed the Belavezha Accords, effectively ending the existence of the Soviet Union. Since then, questions of whether the Soviet Union had been reformable and thus worth saving have been raised. Detractors of the Soviet Union claim the intrinsic irreformable nature of the Soviet Union as being the reason for which the USSR folded on itself without much of a struggle. However, defenders of the USSR say that not only was the USSR reformable, but that it had already begun to reform itself under Gorbachov, before President Yeltsin signed the Union’s death warrant.
After World War II (1939-1945), the United States and the Soviet Union became the strongest superpowers of the world. Although they shared a common enemy of the Nazi’s during the war, they did not share similar beliefs and interests economically and politically. The main difference between these powers was that the Soviets followed Karl Marx’s ideology of communism while the United States had a democracy and followed capitalism. This caused the two powers to become enemies post-war, later dividing up the world into two sides; The U.S. creating an alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and the Soviets creating an alliance called the Warsaw Pact. With the fear of starting a nuclear war, the contrasting factions entered
The Soviet Union and the United States served as Allies during World War II. At the end of the war however each side wanted to deal with the aftermath differently. The United States was in favor of a peaceful and cooperative relationship with Germany and their Allies. The Soviet Union wanted revenge on the crimes and atrocities that were committed against them. The United States wanted to push democracy in Eastern Europe yet the Soviets countered this by saying the United States was hypocritical, since at that time the United States supported the Latin countries that were governed by dictatorships. The Soviets were under the impression that this was an effort to boost the UNITED STATES economy.
War. Humans have thrived from war for as long as we can remember. The United States has been fighting wars ever since we found the new country in North America that we now call the United States. We fought against our selves for the freedom of others. We fought in several world wars. We have always fought. But in the late 1940's “war” changed forever. This was well known as the Cold War. Why was this so different? “ The world had never experienced anything like it. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was a half century of military build-up, political maneuvering for international support (Hanes, Sharon M., and Richard C. Hanes).” This means that the world has always seen war as either hand to hand combat or gun to gun combat. With soldiers and foot patrols, but this was basically an arms race. Who was to blame for this struggle? I believe that the Cold War was caused by both nations.
The Americans took a much more urgent approach after seeing what the U.S.S.R. was truly capable of. The United States would respond with various satellites including those of the Explorer Series and more. However, the Soviet Union would again one-up the United States, and all of their now seemingly feeble satellite launches, by putting the first man into outer space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. Now the quest gained an even more competitive drive and the United States soon put Alan B. Shepard into space twenty-three days later. The Space Race was truly a trek for the firsts of history, essentially just exterrestrial one-ups throughout an extended period of time. That very same year, John F. Kennedy founded NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, just for that purpose, to explore the world beyond their own, while maintaining the central aim, to beat the Soviets outright. JFK was a leading power in this race, and “by giving NASA programs top priority, his actions essentially played on American fears of communism and implicitly inferred that the Eisenhower administration had not done enough to meet the Sputnik challenge. Too many Americans were beginning to feel a need to vindicate the ‘long-standing communist boast that theirs was the superior system for galvanizing human productivity’” (Koman 43). Winning this space race was way more than just an extraterrestrial victory, it would hopefully squander the communists’ hopes and assert true American dominance. The United States sought to eliminate any presumption of communist superiority and did so in the near future by winning this Cold War space race, thanks to the execution of a truly unimaginable
The end of the Cold War was one of the most unexpected and important events in geopolitics in the 20th century. The end of the Cold War can be defined as the end of the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had existed since the end of the World War II. The conclusion of the Cold War can be attributed to Gorbachev’s series of liberalizations in the 1980s, which exposed the underlying economic problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states that had developed in the 1960s and 70s and prevented the USSR from being able to compete with the US as a superpower. Nevertheless, Reagan’s policies of a renewed offensive against communism, Gorbachev’s rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine and the many nationalities
Nearly 70 years ago, when the Soviet Union reigned in Europe along with the US, they were still in relative peace with the other world power. In fact, the “Big Three,” American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had frequent meetings to discuss strategy and happenings in Europe at the time. Allies they had been, but then something changed though, and growing tensions forced the powers to drift apart. Eventually, it led to the US and the Soviet Union becoming enemies, trapped in a global struggle between political, military, economic, and ideological structures. What caused this opposition, and how is it still going on today?
The Soviet Union sent the first satellite in orbit in 1957, to start the marathon of deceptions to be the first country to the moon. The Soviets had a serious head start, sending a dog, Laika, into space, becoming the first country to send a living being into space. The U.S. had some serious catching up to do, and we did not want to be second to the Soviets in anything. Because of the dangerous drive that the U.S. imputed into the quest for domination in space, we were able to top the Soviets, and prove our power once again. Although we ended up victorious in the space race, the country needed to be convinced to join the competition. President Kennedy delivered a riveting speech to Rice university, thoroughly convincing the country of the importance of space exploration. He used many good arguments, and tugged on emotional and ethical heartstrings. His arguments were accurate,
A Cold War is not a war involving physical combat, but rather a war of political aggression between various countries involving threats, military build ups, and spying. After World War two, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union impacted other countries around the world. This conflict eventually became known as the Cold War. During this time, two conflicting political philosophies, communism and capitalism, became global and had long lasting effects on many countries, including Cuba. In general, the Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, but Cuba remains negatively impacted until this day. Understanding the international tensions of that time period in history is necessary for understanding how Cuba became so affected by the Cold War. Economic sanctions by the United States caused an embargo on products imported into and exported from Cuba. These embargoes limited Cuba’s ability to provide social services such as education and health care. Cuba was adversely impacted by the Cold War because of international tensions, economic sanctions, and a decrease in
American nationalism during the Space Race fueled support for NASA, resulting in great technological and scientific advancements during the Cold War. The hyper-competitive atmosphere surrounding the Cold War heightened already existing rivalry between the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s science programs. As the two superpowers struggled for technological dominance, the American people were swept into a frenzy of nationalism. The Science News-Letter pointed out that the Space Race was driven by, “nothing more or less than the ego-driven pressures of competition.” The idea of the Soviet Union both having a superior space program as well as having the capacity to attack the United States with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) brought the U.S. space program off the ground.
There was so many costs when it came to accomplish this goal. J.F.K had said “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” He was right, there would be all sorts of expenses/costs such as time/effort, loss of life , or beating the soviet union in the space race, and lastly money . This program
Surprisingly, the United States’ space program started with the Cold War. The Cold war pushed the United States and the Soviet Union into a space race in which both nations rapidly developed space programs and tried to best each other in space exploration (Cold War 1). The Kennedy Space Center was built in Florida as a control center which handled many of the shuttle launches into space (NASA 1). The Space Center was built in Florida for many specific reasons including climate and location (Matson 1). The rapid development of the Space program and the Kennedy Space Center significantly changed the development of the surrounding communities in various ways. The development of NASA and the Space Center was undoubtedly one of the most ambitious and influential undertakings of its time.