Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The Soviet successes in space had a triple impact on the United States, with the final result that the whole movement of American life was turned in a new direction. The psychological impact was the least important in spite of its force. More significant was the influence on American education and economic development.

The economic impact of Sputnik and Vostok was such as to direct immense resources, through government spending, toward research in science and technology. By 1964, after six years of its existence, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had settled down to an annual budget of over five billion dollars a year. Sums as large were directed by government sources into research and development in science, medicine, and technology. As a consequence, the whole pattern of American education was changed and so was the relationship between government and education, as well as between the public and education. The educational system was brought into the tempestuous atmosphere of the frantic American marketplace and was being ransacked from the highest levels down to high school and even below for talented, trained, or merely eager people. As the demands for such people grew and their remunerations and opportunities increased, the substantial minority who were not talented, trained, or eager found fewer and fewer opportunities to make a living and began to sink downward toward a steadily growing lower class of social outcasts and underprivileged, the socially self-perpetuating group of the impoverished.

At the same time, within the Soviet Union, similar revolutionary changes were taking place, as millions were called from rural and depressed urban areas to educational opportunities and upward advancement in technological skills and social rewards. The Socialist pretenses of equal rewards were gradually abandoned, with increased emphasis on individual enterprise, advancing hierarchies of wealth and power, and disparate compensations for ambition, application, talent, and adaptability. On the whole, as we shall see, there was a development of Soviet and American ways of life not only in convergence toward each other, but, in a sense, away from life in most other nations.

During this period of convergence of the Soviet and American ways toward more highly developed scientific and technological systems, there was, simultaneously, a superficial sharpening of their political struggle and a less obvious opening of numerous bridges of cooperation between them. Such bridges appeared first in those areas of scientific and educational life where they were developing away from the majority of other nations. It appeared in such a remarkable example of international cooperation as the International Geophysical Year (July 1957 to the end of 1958) and, more specifically, in the Soviet-American agreements on cultural and educational changes, such as that for 1958-1959 signed in January 1958. These brought scientists, teachers, musical performers, industrialists, and even tourists from one country to the other.

In November 1958, two unconnected events began the process that led in four years to the Cuban missile crisis and the relaxation of the Cold War. On November 27th, Khrushchev, filled with self-confidence and truculence, sent a note to the Western Powers demanding settlement of the Berlin problem, under threat that the Soviet Union, at the end of six months, would itself sign a peace treaty with the East German government, would withdraw its own forces from the area, and hand over its rights in Berlin (including control of the Allied access routes into the city) to the East German government. Because the Western Powers did not recognize the East German regime, this action would not only force such recognition but would force them to negotiate with East Germany over rights, based on victory and agreement with the Soviet Union, which were not negotiable, particularly with it.

When Khrushchev sent this “ultimatum” on November 27, 1958, NATO had only twenty-one divisions, one-third of them West German, to defend its position in Europe. But the next day, America’s Atlas ICBM, for the first time, shot full range of 6,325 miles.

While the six months of Khrushchev’s “ultimatum” were ticking off, the two hostile camps began to disintegrate internally, in western Europe and in the Far East.

In the Far East, the first year of Red China’s Five-Year Plan, the so-called “Great Leap Forward,” began to collapse within six months of its beginning. Apparently to cover this up, the Chinese government began to adopt a very aggressive attitude toward the Nationalist Chinese government on Formosa (Taiwan), and prepared to mount an all-out assault on its forces on the Chinese territorial islands of Matsu and Quemoy, which were still under Chiang Kai-shek’s control. The strong support Dulles gave to Chiang, including reinforcement by an American naval carrier task force, and his psychological readiness to go to “the brink of war,” spread down to all parts of the world. The Red Chinese threat gradually petered out, and they made extensive demands on Moscow for military, technical, and financial assistance. About the same time, France made demands on the United States to prevent any possibility of Europe becoming involved in a nuclear war arising from unilateral American actions in the Far East, or elsewhere, in which France had not been consulted. These two demands, from Peking and Paris, soon showed the disintegrative features developing within the two Superblocs.

Red China’s demands for assistance from Moscow could not be met, for the simple reason that the Kremlin could not fill the demands of the Soviet Union itself, caught as it was in a three-way vise of a faltering agricultural system, the increasing demands of the Russians themselves for improved standards of living, and the needs of the missile and space races with the United States. Accordingly, the Chinese-Soviet technical-assistance agreement of February 1959 offered only five billion rubles over the next six years, approximately half the amount that had been provided during the previous six years. Within six months, Red China began aggressions against its inaccessible borders with India and was making increasingly unfavorable comments about Khrushchev’s doctrines of “peaceful coexistence with capitalism” and the “inevitable victory of Socialism without war.”

In this same six months, the United States was having growing difficulties with France within NATO. In September 1958, De Gaulle asked that a tripartite directorate be established of the United States, Britain, and France to provide consultation on a global basis wider than the European limited control exercised through NATO. This demand was very well founded, since America’s actions in Quemoy or in the landing of American marines in Lebanon (in July 1958) might have led to war with the Soviet Union and a Soviet attack on western Europe over an area and issue in which France had not been involved or consulted.

De Gaulle’s request was rejected. As soon as the imperious general had been inaugurated as the first President of the Fifth French Republic (January, 1959), he took steps to extricate France from some of the French commitments to NATO: The French Mediterranean fleet was removed from NATO control, the use of France as a base for nuclear weapons, either from planes or missiles, was refused, and French participation in a unified European air defense system was denied.

In two-day talks in Paris, December 19-20, 1959, the two Presidents, Eisenhower and De Gaulle, went over the ground again and reached a stalemate: Eisenhower rejected De Gaulle’s suggestion for a three-Power global policy directorate, and De Gaulle rejected Eisenhower’s desire for an integrated air and naval defense system for Europe.

While these positions were developing, a significant turning point in Soviet-American relations appeared during Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, September 15-17, 1959. The Kremlin leader was full of his usual talk of the inevitable future victory of Socialism and the need for peaceful co-existence until that time. He welcomed competition in economic or technological affairs, in athletic or cultural matters, but he ruled out the need for war or the legitimacy of aggression by either side. At first he refused to be impressed with the wealth and power of America, implying that it was not surprising to him and that the Soviet Union could do it better at some future date. But gradually a very important change occurred. In spite of himself, he was impressed. He ceased to pretend to himself that the things he saw were some special exhibits set up, regardless of cost, to delude him. Gradually the incredible truth dawned in his mind: many Americans actually lived like this, in what the ordinary Russian would regard as unbelievable luxury. The real revelation came when he visited farms in Iowa, saw the equipment and way of life of these successful American farmers, and found out the economic statistics of American agriculture at its best. For years afterward he talked of these matters, and, as recently as April 1964, he told the Hungarians about it and advised them to emulate the American farmers.