Sixty years ago, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union got the jump on the United States in what would later be called the “space race” when it had successfully launched into orbit the first man-made satellite – Sputnik. The launching of Sputnik was also a confirmation, as claimed by the Kremlin, that the Soviets indeed possessed the technology to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Clarence A. Manning, a regular contributor for The Ukrainian Weekly, noted in a commentary: “The United States has treated this as a scientific process and has not regarded it as a race. The Soviets again in accordance with their policy did so and when they launched the satellite without warning, they blandly explained that this was not the promised satellite for which they had contracted. They were well aware that its effect upon the entire world would be even greater, if they broke their agreement than if they had done everything in due and proper order. Once again they were right and they have followed it up with renewed threats against Turkey and the free world and in the diplomatic sphere they have again taken a long step to strengthen their position especially in the Middle East. In the meanwhile they have renewed their promises, whatever they are worth, to share scientific information with the West.”
The data that was collected by Sputnik was expected to be shared with the West, and already there were doubts that the data would somehow be compromised by the Soviets. Dr. Manning urged U.S. leaders “to take account of the situation and to face it coldly and not through a cloud of hysteria or of unwarranted optimism.”
The U.S. should determine how it would react in the case of an outbreak of hostilities, and how this new science is applied to the field of international diplomacy and psychological warfare, he said.
Dr. Manning added: “Here the United States, following its hopes that the difference between freedom and slavery, between the free world and Russian Soviet imperialism can be adjusted peacefully, must also reconsider its policy. It has hoped to free the satellite nations peacefully and has failed to support except by resolution efforts of the struggling oppressed peoples. It was content to allow the continued separation of Korea lest any other policy precipitate World War III. It allowed the division of Vietnam for the same reason. Thus it gives at least superficial support to [Nikita] Khrushchev’s plea for peaceful coexistence, since it interprets that in the normal language and not as an excuse for Soviet Russian political penetration… Khrushchev is willing to jeopardize the peace of the world with his threats of war and open Soviet military aid against the ‘imperialist aggressors.’ The United States can only answer that threat by a counter threat that Soviet Communist interference in any form outside the Soviet Union will be met by open and armed American support for the endangered countries and that the entrance into those countries’ governments of Russian-dominated Communist representatives will be answered by bombs upon Moscow and the liberation of all the non-Russian oppressed people within the Soviet Empire.
“This may seem the way to the holocaust. It will be, if the Russian Soviet leaders in the Kremlin are sure of the loyalty of their slaves, are sure that they have crushed the last spark of the human craving for freedom within their domain. If they are not sure and they remember the lessons of Budapest and the repercussions within the Soviet army itself and in Ukraine, they will hesitate and without a blow haul in their horns. The defeat given to the United States by the launching of Sputnik may be salutary in that it leads the United States once more to drop its illusions that all is well in the world. It should have the effect of a Pearl Harbor to convince the United States that freedom is indivisible and that the world cannot exist half slave and half free.”
Source: “The meaning of Sputnik,” by Clarence A. Manning, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 19, 1957.