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What If America Had Beaten the Soviets Into Space?
MarkWhittington writes "April 12 is the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first space flight. Coming less than four years after Sputnik, Gagarin's orbital space voyage galvanized the United States and led to President Kennedy announcing the race to the Moon six weeks later. The question arises: what if America had beaten the Soviet Union into space instead?"
It was 50 years ago, get over it.
The hang-wringing in the western press about this seems to me to be largely due to an inability to fit the event into the triumphalist narrative that has endured in government and media since the end of the cold war. The idea that capitalism, specifically our version of capitalism is best always, everywhere and forever.
Its disquieting to such dogmatists to be reminded of even a single success from an alternative way of doing things. Even if that way of doing things ultimately imploded on itself decades later, it makes a rational person question the absolutism of the narrative, and thus the narrators must try and dissect and blunt the impact of the threatening event.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
A war begins with a nuclear strike, but does not end with it. Soviets were always inferior to the West in military might, and - unlike the West - actually knew it. If you look at Soviet military policies and doctrines, they were mainly centered around a major defensive war, and an occasional "pacification" or low-scale direct intervention in a proxy war. This was furthermore compounded by the Marxist doctrine, according to which proletarian revolutions in capitalist states were only a matter of time, so all that is needed is to survive until such time they happen, and fund various subversive movements (all kinds - from anti-war protesters to black supremacists to communists proper) to bring the date closer.
If I had to bet on who would use a nuclear weapon first given the opportunity, between US and USSR, I'd definitely pick US (heck, they actually did that before!).