U-2 And Its Repercussions
(The author of this comment is a professional student of American military affairs.) PEACETIME SPYING is politically hazardous. It affects national attitudes in much the same way that the...
...So did the Echo comnmunications satellite and the first Midas photographic satellite...
...If the world did look this way to the Soviet premier, then it is no wonder that what happened at the summit did happen...
...Imagine a plane at 60,000 feet...
...Invasions of privacy prompt indignation...
...The U.S...
...Targeting was its mission...
...If this is true, then each weapon should be thought of in context with the problem of controlling and eventually destroying it...
...The USSR had its five-ton satellite up on the eve of the conferences—and our U-2 down...
...Nothing cools passion like feasibility...
...It is in this connection that the whole U-2 incident seems so dreadfully wrongheaded...
...never takes any measures to protect its citizens against a Soviet strike...
...THE WORLD as Khrushchev saw it at the summit may have Iooked roughly this way: 1. U.S...
...Yet what is most important is to overcome fear...
...5. U.S...
...The fact is that all leaders understand that they can bring on a new Dark Ages...
...At least we have the word of the Secretary of State to this effect...
...The first has to do with the role of fear...
...Arms are designed to maintain peace, just as is arms control...
...True too that the USSR had known, through Radar contact, about the U-2 for years...
...The point is that if the Administration really is interested, as it claims, in the issue of arms control, then a chance should be given to try to negotiate the point...
...shows up at disarmament conferences perennially unprepared...
...If there were more faith in men's minds and less in technology, this might be possible...
...In the case of the U-2, I rather doubt that this was done...
...President Eisenhower had intended to enter like a lion...
...The Central Intelligence Agency apparently continues to wield the political power inherent in secrecy and remoteness...
...But this is irrelevant...
...2. U.S...
...has its cloudy days...
...The U-2 was a reconnaissance plane...
...Hence, the U-2 could be expected to come down one day...
...3. U.S...
...A gesture to put matters back on the right foot might be to offer the USSR overflight rights in the U.S...
...How MANY TIMES have you flown in the last month when skies were really clear both above and beneath you...
...Had the U-2 been in fact the obvious instrument of defense against surprise attack that everyone, including the President, has claimed it was, then the U-2 incident might not have been so serious...
...That is why the big blunder with respect to the U-2 may have been made when the plane was sent up, rather than after it came down...
...Therefore the last of the nihilists were Goebbels and Hitler...
...This brings me to two final points...
...True, a reconnaissance plane is a low-risk vehicle...
...The Triton, our nuclear submarine, had gone around the world underwater and come up on schedule...
...Fear is driving us towards an increasingly aggressive stance, as one might expect that it would...
...4. U.S...
...If this conclusion is correct, and frankly it does seem embarrassingly inescapable, then the USSR's barbaric rudeness seems a bit more comprehensible...
...Fear is an action incendiary...
...knows the USSR capabilities for mobile systems of missiles are not great 313 because missiles will have to be put on limited rail facilities...
...But a man plus a machine is, after all, a mating of the unstable with the unreliable...
...It was not preparing for a second, but primarily for a first strike...
...The second point is that armament and disarmament are not opposite sides of the same coin as is frequently supposed...
...Guess at the number of days per year on which the pilot could photograph the ground accurately enough to pick up plane disposition or conventional troop movement that just might be an indication of a surprise attack...
...did enter the summit meetings like a lamb, this was due more to technological failure than to intention...
...It was preparing a counterforce strategy...
...Personally, I believe that for the moment disarmament is not as promising as certain types of rearmament in terms of maintaining the peace...
...In any case it should have been handled differently...
...The U-2 eclipses the chance for the moment, the chance to discover what it is that the USSR really does want to negotiate—which may, of course, be nothing...
...It affects national attitudes in much the same way that the peeping tom affects the neighborhood...
...is zeroing in on the new missile bases within the USSR by means of the U-2...
...has taken to preconference sabre-rattling, and has alerts in their midst...
...The U.S...
...Everything has been mentioned in the press but this simple inescapable fact...
...At least, had I been a Russian, this is how I would have interpreted the flight...
...Because "prevention of surprise attack" could scarcely be construed to be a primary mission, this factor of marginal unreliability was politically of the greatest importance...
...The Air Force was supposed to have shot a 9000-mile missile into the Indian Ocean—but it failed to make the schedule...
...Even with what they might find out about SAC dispositions, this might be worth our while...
...Since the ancillary products of spying make its political costs high, I, for one, would like to see these weighed...
...is becoming increasingly afraid...
...Moreover, although the U.S...
...The Agency's certification of need was enough...
...But if the U-2 looked more like an offensive than a defensive instrument, then I for one am shocked by the cavalier fashion in which it was flown on the eve of the summit...
...They make for anger and desperate unreasonableness...
...Conclusion: The contribution of the U-2 was, as Secretary Gates has testified, to pick up missile sites, to check on new missiles, and new industry, to calibrate airfields...
...CIA dictated the U-2 decision...
Vol. 7 • July 1960 • No. 3
