APUSH - Spiconardi

HEATING UP THE COLD WAR

SPUTNIK• The first artificial earth satellite

launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union

• The United States re-evaluated itself as it took a blow to American Exceptionalism

• U.S. felt education, science, and technology was lagging

• U.S. began to question itself

RESPONSES TO SPUTNIK

• National Defense Education Act An act to strengthen the national defense and to encourage and assist in the expansion and improvement of educational programs to meet critical national needs

• Funneled millions of dollars into American universities to promote research

• NASA

• Eisenhower established a national aeronautics agency to administer non-military space research and exploration

KITCHEN DEBATE• At the American National Exhibition

in Moscow (1958), the U.S. showcased American consumer goods and leisure equipment.

• The exhibit hoped to equate freedom and consumption

• Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev debate the merits of capitalism and communism in a model American kitchen

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

• Military-Industrial Complex

• Term coined by Pres. Eisenhower that describes a symbiotic relationship between the military, economy, and politics

• As the military becomes a larger client for manufactures, the nation will invest more of the economy into military contracts

• National budgets would be heavily weighted in the military's favor in order to support the economic stability that this relationship seems to create

MASSIVE RETALIATION• Massive Retaliation Sec. of

State John Foster Dulles declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be retaliated against with a nuclear assault

• During Eisenhower’s presidency, the size of the armed forces fell by almost half, but nuclear warheads rose from 1,000 to 18,000

We need allies and collective security. Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power... Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty landpower of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.

KENNEDY

• Elected in 1960, John F. Kennedy was a “cold warrior’

• Claimed that Sputnik and the testing of soviet ICBMs demonstrated that the country had lost the national sense of purpose to successfully fight the Cold War

• JFK warned that Republicans had allowed a “missile gap” to develop between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

BAY OF PIGS INVASION

• Being a “cold warrior,” Kennedy viewed the world through the eyes of the Cold War

• Cuba had been economically dependent on the U.S. until Fidel Castro began to nationalize industries and American landholdings in the Cuba

• In 1961, Kennedy authorized the CIA to launch an invasion with anti-Castro Cubans at a site known as the Bay of Pigs

• FAILURE

• Of the 1,400 invaders, 100 were killed, and 1, 100 captured

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS• In 1962, American spy planes discovered

that the Soviets were installing IRBMs and MRBMs in Cuba

• The Kennedy administration viewed this action as intolerable

• Kennedy’s military advisors had suggested an attack on Cuba

• Kennedy decides to blockade Cuba

• For thirteen days the world was on the brink of nuclear war

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

• Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a deal

• Soviets would withdraw missiles from Cuba and U.S. would withdraw missiles from Turkey (which they never did).

• Cuban Missile Crisis softens JFK on the Cold War

• Calls for greater cooperation with the Soviets

• Sends word to Castro via a journalist that he hoped for a more constructive relationship with Cuba