8 июн 1961 г. - Eisenhower was replaced by J.F. Kennedy

Описание:

Eisenhower was replaced by J.F. Kennedy. JFK’s campaign had attacked the Eisenhower for being soft towards communism and for letting a missile gap develop. His promise to close this gap was popular with voters, and one of the reasons why he won.​

On coming to power, the new Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, investigated the missile gap. Once in power for 3 weeks the Democrats discovered that the gap was actually in America’s favour. However, Kennedy felt unable to go back on his election promise. So by 1963 the USA had 550 ICBMs while the Soviets had fewer than 100.​

Once in power Kennedy dropped Eisenhower’s ‘massive retaliation’ policy because even massive retaliation could not guarantee destruction of every Soviet missile. And if only two or three remained untouched, they would still cause immense damage if they hit America. There was, therefore, no advantage in having more missiles than the enemy. So Kennedy adopted a new policy - to have the same number of missiles than the soviets, rather than more. Neither could defeat the other without being destroyed itself. There would be a ‘balance of terror’ between them. This policy was known as MAD (‘mutually assured destruction’​

Добавлено на ленту времени:

Дата: