“Not Because They Are Easy; But Because They Are Hard”

It’s hard not to get goosebumps when reading President Kennedy’s speech on America’s exploration of space. In reading his speech is it is easy to see why Kennedy was such a great communicator. It is also easy to see why Americans were convinced that winning a space race with the Soviet Union was necessary. Yet, in order to be consistent with my criticisms of the Soviet Union in previous blogs, it must be asked whether America was any less inclined to fall into the fantasy world regarding science than was the Soviet Union.

From these readings, and from learning about Kennedy from other classes, it seems quite clear that Kennedy wanted his administration to be something much different from Eisenhower’s. “The Best and the Brightest” wanted a different America, yet it seems that they weren’t exactly sure what they wanted this America to look like, and despite their confidence, it seems that they had even less idea about how to actually change America. President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and many others pushed for the development of the space program without an understanding of what they actually wanted to accomplish. If one was to cynically look at Kennedy’s statement that space travel is necessary “because it is there”, it could be said that this was the extent of Kennedy’s space policy. Lots of smart people spent a great deal of time and a whole lot of money to achieve anything that looked like success in space, mostly for show. The United States was engaged in a war with the Soviet Union, perhaps also simply “because it was there”, and the perception of winning the Cold War was more important than reality. I’m not making the argument that America shouldn’t pursue space exploration, but the way it was done in the Kennedy administration was reckless. Instead of creating policies that made sense financially and scientifically, the American government was obsessed with creating any type of accomplishment that could outshine the Soviet’s success. Kennedy’s speech and administration make the argument that space travel can bring people of the world together, but Kennedy appears to have used space travel to rip humanity farther apart.

The Kennedy administration was not only less than forthright about the space race, but it was also elusive on questions regarding the Cold War and Weapons of Mass Destruction. In the 1960 presidential campaign Kennedy claimed that the Eisenhower administration had allowed a missile gap to take form with the Soviet Union. These statements were not really true, as there were varying reports, as seen in the readings, of the actual Soviet missile count, and the United States certainly had a more advanced nuclear arsenal, regardless of the number of weapons the Soviet Union had. Yet, upon taking office, Kennedy and McNamara pushed and pushed for missiles until it became blatantly clear that the United States had put itself in a completely dominant situation. Once again there was an enormous enthusiasm for what was scientifically and militarily possible, without regard for the consequences. Previously, I discussed McNamara and his emphasis on the ‘fog of war’. These readings clarify his statements, as McNamara himself valued efficiency in changing the Pentagon as oppose to perspective in examining what the Pentagon was actually trying to accomplish.

The arms race eventually evolved into the theory of mutually assured destruction. The idea that if both the Soviet Union and the United States both had second strike capability, that neither side would find it rational to use nuclear weapons. Once could point to this theory and say that it has been successful because there has been no use of nuclear weapons since the end of World War Two. But it seems that making this argument is like saying that “everyday the Rooster crows and then the sun comes up. Therefore the rooster made the sun come up” There may have been an infinite amount of unknown factors as to why nuclear weapons were never used and why the Cold War ended peacefully. As seen during the Cuban Missile crisis, nuclear war was always possible, and a nuclear conflict only needs to happen once to bring unprecedented suffering to humanity. Additionally, the nuclear build up pursued by Kennedy has left the world with many more nuclear weapons that could be used by terrorists or rogue nations. Mutually assured destruction is a weak attempt at explaining why nuclear war hasn’t happened, and it is no a way an accurate prediction of why nuclear won’t happen in the future.

President Kennedy had a bold vision for America in space, but he had a far less bold vision for America in the Cold War. He chose the easy path of matching the Soviet’s propaganda about science, space, and weapons build up, instead of stepping back and doing what was hard; leveling with the America people about what was really in average American interests, and what was actually the best path towards peace. President Bush had a similarly bold vision in Iraq, and he has had great troubles not because he is insincere or corrupt, but because he chose to do what was easy and use violence instead of doing what was hard and reexamining American foreign policy. America has a military twenty times the size of any other nation, and it is difficult to argue that this actually benefits America. Tens of thousands of Americans died in Korea and Vietnam in the Cold War, and 3,000 more have died so far in the war on terror. In 2007, as it was in 1961, it easy to continue to use America’s economic and military dominance to settle disputes through violence, while it is hard to reexamine America’s foreign policy and truly strive towards peace.