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CHAPTER 13: DECADES OF CHANGE: 1960-1980OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYKENNEDY AND THECOLD WARPresident Kennedy came into officepledged to carry on the ColdWar vigorously, but he also hopedfor accommodation and was reluctantto commit American power.During his first year-and-a-halfin office, he rejected American interventionafter the CIA-guidedCuban exile invasion at the Bay ofPigs failed, effectively ceded thelandlocked Southeast Asian nationof Laos to Communist control, andacquiesced in the building of theBerlin Wall. Kennedy’s decisionsreinforced impressions of weaknessthat Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchevhad formed in their only personalmeeting, a summit meeting atVienna in June 1961.It was against this backdrop thatKennedy faced the most seriousevent of the Cold War, the Cubanmissile crisis.In the fall of 1962, the administrationlearned that the Soviet Unionwas secretly installing offensive nuclearmissiles in Cuba. After consideringdifferent options, Kennedydecided on a quarantine to preventSoviet ships from bringing additionalsupplies to Cuba. He demandedpublicly that the Soviets remove theweapons and warned that an attackfrom that island would bring retaliationagainst the USSR. After severaldays of tension, during which theworld was closer than ever beforeto nuclear war, the Soviets agreed toremove the missiles. Critics chargedthat Kennedy had risked nuclear disasterwhen quiet diplomacy mighthave been effective. But most Americansand much of the non-Communistworld applauded his decisiveness.The missile crisis made himfor the first time the acknowledgedleader of the democratic West.In retrospect, the Cuban missilecrisis marked a turning pointin U.S.-Soviet relations. Both sidessaw the need to defuse tensions thatcould lead to direct military conflict.The following year, the UnitedStates, the Soviet Union, and GreatBritain signed a landmark LimitedTest Ban Treaty prohibiting nuclearweapons tests in the atmosphere.Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia),a French possession beforeWorld War II, was still another ColdWar battlefield. The French effort toreassert colonial control there wasopposed by Ho Chi Minh, a VietnameseCommunist, whose VietMinh movement engaged in a guerrillawar with the French army.Both Truman and Eisenhower,eager to maintain French support forthe policy of containment in Europe,provided France with economic aidthat freed resources for the strugglein Vietnam. But the French suffereda decisive defeat in Dien Bien Phu inMay 1954. At an international conferencein Geneva, Laos and Cambodiawere given their independence. Vietnamwas divided, with Ho in powerin the North and Ngo Dinh Diem, aRoman Catholic anti-Communist ina largely Buddhist population, headingthe government in the South.Elections were to be held two yearslater to unify the country. Persuadedthat the fall of Vietnam could lead tothe fall of Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia,Eisenhower backed Diem’srefusal to hold elections in 1956 andeffectively established South Vietnamas an American client state.Kennedy increased assistance,and sent small numbers of militaryadvisors, but a new guerrilla strugglebetween North and South continued.Diem’s unpopularity grew andthe military situation worsened. Inlate 1963, Kennedy secretly assentedto a coup d’etat. To the president’ssurprise, Diem and his powerfulbrother-in-law, Ngo Dien Nu,were killed. It was at this uncertainjuncture that Kennedy’s presidencyended three weeks later.THE SPACE PROGRAMDuring Eisenhower’s second term,outer space had become an arena forU.S.-Soviet competition. In 1957,the Soviet Union launched Sputnik— an artificial satellite — therebydemonstrating it could build morepowerful rockets than the UnitedStates. The United States launchedits first satellite, Explorer I, in 1958.But three months after Kennedybecame president, the USSR putthe first man in orbit. Kennedy respondedby committing the UnitedStates to land a man on the moonand bring him back “before this decadeis out.” With Project Mercuryin 1962, John Glenn became the firstU.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth.After Kennedy’s death, PresidentLyndon Johnson enthusiasticallysupported the space program. Inthe mid-1960s, U.S. scientists developedthe two-person Geminispacecraft. Gemini achieved severalfirsts, including an eight-day missionin August 1965 — the longestspace flight at that time — and inNovember 1966, the first automaticallycontrolled reentry into theEarth’s atmosphere. Gemini also accomplishedthe first manned linkupof two spacecraft in flight as well asthe first U.S. walks in space.The three-person Apollo spacecraftachieved Kennedy’s goal anddemonstrated to the world that theUnited States had surpassed Sovietcapabilities in space. On July 20,1969, with hundreds of millions oftelevision viewers watching aroundthe world, Neil Armstrong becamethe first human to walk on the surfaceof the moon.Other Apollo flights followed, butmany Americans began to questionthe value of manned space flight. Inthe early 1970s, as other prioritiesbecame more pressing, the UnitedStates scaled down the space program.Some Apollo missions werescrapped; only one of two proposedSkylab space stations was built.DEATH OF A PRESIDENTJohn Kennedy had gained worldprestige by his management of theCuban missile crisis and had wongreat popularity at home. Manybelieved he would win re-election284285