A whistle-stop tour through a hundred decisive days of the twentieth century, from launching the Kodak Brownie camera in 1900 to signing the Kyoto Treaty on climate change in 1997
General Douglas MacArthur, 1951: 'While no man in his right mind would advocate sending our ground forces into continental China, and such was never given a thought, the new situation did urgently demand a drastic revision of strategic planning if your political aim was to defeat this new enemy as we defeated the old.'
US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, 1953: 'There is a risk that, as in Korea, Red China might send its own army into Indo-China. The Communist Chinese regime should realize that such a second aggression could not occur without grave consequences which might not be confined to Indo-China.'
KOREA, ASIA. On June 25, 1950, the Korean Civil War began with an invasion by the Communist north of pro-American South Korea. Following the world's first jet fighter dogfights over the Yalu River (including participation by Biuzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon in the following decade) the border between Korea and the newly formed People's Republic of China, the reaction from the United Nations was much swifter and clearer than it was in later decades. A resolution politiely but pointedly invited the north to leave the south and restore the earlier division of the troubled peninsula. To enforce the invitation a military alliance was formed to assist the south. Led by the United States and encompassing over a dozen countries (including the aggrieved Republic of Korea plus Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom) the orders of engagement centered on restoring the division of the peninsula that existed since 1945 and the surrender of Japan.
Meanwhile the dogfights to the north of the country intesified and publicised. As footage of heavily armoured MIG-15 fighters with 37mm cannons reached the capitals of the victors of World War Two (the feisty Russian pilots within went unnoticed to begin with) some rather uncomforable coughs appeared that their swept wings arose from an assiduous mix of Nazi technological ingenuity and British enginnering savvy with Rolls Royce engines that London had donated to Moscow in a fit of gratitude during the Second World War.
The alliance may have sounded expansive - drawing together prominent countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americans and Europe - but tellingly two superpowers were absent. That neither China not the USSR supported the resolution proved an ominous and early sign that the post-war United Nations might just be as politicised as the flawed League of Nations in the 1930s.
Arguably the underlying problems were reinforced during 1950 by a series of mixed signals from Washington questioning whether they would defend Korea in the event of conflict. Days before the invasion the US Secretary of State (Dean Acheson) even told Congress that fighting in Korea was unlikely. Both American and Soviet troops had withdrawn in 1949 (where they had been since 1945 as part of the Japanese surrender) and would not return.
Initially the American-led forces defending the south were repulsed. Within weeks only Pusan in the far South near the South China Sea was under United Nations control. It took until the autumn for sufficient American supplies and personnel (approaching 200,000 troops) to arrive in theatre and make a difference. MacArthur's decisive response was to fight back not face-to-face in the south but with an amphibious landing at Inchon in the north. The landing was bold and audacious and successful. Seoul was liberated (again) and the United Nations returned to a wobbly if workable ascendancy over most of the peninsula, including north and south.
Sadly MacArthur miscalculated the reaction of one of the superpowers that at the United Nations had signballed their unsupportive attentions - China. Increasing proximity of UN troops around the Chinese border (especially where the Yalu River was negotiable) alarmed the new People’s Republic much more than MacArthur or anyone had thought. Seeing so many troops looking so much in control Chairman Mao concluded that a pro-American state directly on China's border was the equivalent of an American declaration of war on China. Perhaps it was a leap in logic to some thinking but it dominated enough thinking in Beijing to lead to a serious dose of poltical and military problems.
In January of 1951, barely half-a-year into what at one staged looked likje a police action, Chinese 'volunteer' forces invaded to help North Korean forces recapture Seoul. The Americans were shocked and contemplated (at least MacArthur did) using nuclear weapons in response behind the invading troops to disrput their communication and logistic tail. Worse was the political fallout from dubious intelligence reckonings. Chinese invasion was pretty much the opposite of what General MacArthur had advised President Truman in the autumn of 1950 – the famous conference in Wake Island - when the General promised America specifically and the United Nations generally would soon secure victory.
Within months of the Chinese thrust the over-reaching and under-informed MacArthur was removed from command by President Truman on April, 1951. Perhaps ironically or perhaps predictably (the Old Soldier always reckoned it was an obvious stall anyway) to lack of supplies. But by then the saviour of the Phillipines and the grandfather of West Point military academy had faded away and normalcy settled around the split country, which was to say a series of lower-level hostilities along a myriad of messy points. The indecisive fracas continued until July 1953 when an armistice was settled (though not a formal end to hostilities and the war remained officially in progress for the rest of the century and beyond). At least, scraping around for something og comfort, the South was spared years of a violent seperatist insirgency. But by then over a million died in three years and Seoul was ruined even though things were much as they had been in the years from 1945-1953 – a peninsula bitterly and decisively divided along the 38th parallel.
US President Truman, 1946: ‘I’m tired of babying the Soviets. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language, another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand: ‘How many divisions have you?’ ‘
Charlton Ogburn, speaking to US Secretary of Defence Dean Rusk, 1950: ‘The French through their folly have left us with two ghastly course of action: (1) to wash our hands of Vietnam and allow the Communists to overrun it; (2) To continue to pour treasure (and perhaps eventually lives) into a hopeless cause.
VIETNAM, ASIA. September 3 1950 was one of several significant milestones sucking America into their fateful involvement in Vietnam’s civil war and to the turmoil of south-east Asia in the later twentieth century. This day saw the establishment of United States Military Assistance Advisory Group, or MAAG. It was established in Saigon in the south of the country. Through this creation America committed more and more resources and made withdrawal from the country and the region more and more difficult.
It is perhaps a tribute to the tenacity of the Vietnamese people that a country so small – its population is similar in size to Britain or France in Europe – has had such big ripples and absorbed such attention in the twentieth century world. America gravitated instinctively, if imprudently, to backing one part of the divided country.
MAAG’s purpose was simple: administer American aid to France and anti-Communist Vietnamese forces. Advising on strategy was also included. Between this day and 1964 MAAG ‘administered’ – which to many views meant ‘squandered’ – as much as one third of the cost of France’s colonial war. Yet even that money was insufficient to save the republic from losing their colony.
After fourteen years of doling out cash and advising on strategy to haughty French commanders being handed their derriere on a plate by the Vietnamese peasantry, MAAG Vietnam was disbanded. In 1964 it integrated into the much larger United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV). MACV had much more cash than MAAG but came to the same conclusion. Conflict at long distances fought with proxies and much less supportive populations is very tough and rarely successful. As much as half a million American troops inside the country over a thirty year period from 1945-1975 could not alter this reality.
Perhaps it would all have been avoided if the Americans and the French had learned from the Chinese. As far back as 100 BCE the Middle Kingdom had ploughed resources into colonising Vietnam. The Chinese targeted the north of Vietnam – around the red river delta – as the Americans targeted the south around the Mekong delta. But like the Americans and the French, the Chinese were repulsed in less than dignified circumstances.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1952: 'The Crown has become the mysterious link, may I say the magic link, which unites our loosely bound but strongly interwoven Commonwealth of Nations, states and races.'
Queen Elizabeth II, 1997: 'In 1953, the year of my Coronation, the Commonwealth meeting was attended by eight Prime Ministers of member countries. Winston Churchill was in the Chair and Pandit Nehru and Robert Menzies were among the founding fathers who attended. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth has grown, with Fiji's return bringing our numbers to 54. It is one of the largest and most respected organisations of peoples in the world.'
BRITAIN, EUROPE. On this day a twenty-five year old woman was crowned monarch of a small European island that influenced much of the world - Britain. The ascendant imperial power of the nineteenth century was at a turning point. Many British royalists saw an urgent need for the royals to adapt to the post-war and post-imperial world.
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II occurred roughly at the mid-point of the twentieth century. Half a century of wars and fading colonisation symbolically ended with the transfer of power from King George VI. Ahead for the new and young monarch lay less confrontation and imperialism and more decolonisation and Cold War. Over 7,000 attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. But for every person present several thousand watched on television. All told tens of millions listened to commentary from Richard Dimbleby and many carried copies from Time Magazine in 1952, when the young Queen was Time's Person of the Year (sixteen years after Mrs Wallas Simson achieved the same award in 1936). A young Prince Charles and monarch-in-waiting, then aged four, added to the show.
In the change of circumstances Queen Elizabeth succeeded, above all, in identifying a way to handle new countries or old countries in new circumstances. Foremost among the old countries in new circumstances was Britain. Once ascendant over a quarter of the world’s people, at least theoretically, British imperial footprint had famously existed in every time zone. Queen Elizabeth found a way to reign almost invisibly while the world rejected imperialism. While the winds of change swirled around the exhausted British Empire a light regal touch injected into post-imperial rule. The Queen showed one way for old powers to accommodate former colonies adamant on joining the community of nations as equals.
Events after the Great War had clearly alarmed European royalists. Then, several European monarchs had disappeared with little fanfare. Germany and Italy in particular decisively and quickly removed their hereditary monarchs. Russia went one step further and shot their entire ruling family. By all accounts this butchery stunned the British royals. Not only was their bloodline connected to Tsar Nicholas and the Romanov dynasty there had even been talk of the Russian royal family enjoying exile in Britain.
Much of what happened to European royals explains why the Anglo-Germanic royals hastily ditched their German pedigree for a more pukka English name in 1917. Saxe-Coburg Gotha was out and plain Windsor was in. But it was more than just re-branding. Later during World War Two the young Queen served not as a colonel-in-chief or some sort of honorary leader. Instead she was a second lieutenant. This was the lowest officer rank and something that would have been anathema to the status obsessed Romanovs, for example, or indeed to her predecessors in Britain. Of course it was symbolic and the chances of front-line action were negligible. Nevertheless, commoners came to accept in their Windsor family claims they could look the poor of London in the face due to shared experience.
After 1953 the monarchy developed this posture by removing yet more mystique. Gone were the days of aloof royalty on titanic thrones. Instead there was television and photographs and interviews. All aimed to closer connect rulers with ruled.
These amalgamations of accommodations worked. Britain under Queen Elizabeth tolerated monarchical presence in their media, even loved it at times, and so did the rest of the world. At the end of the twentieth century Her Majesty remained Head of State in fifteen realms across four continents: Europe, the Americas, Australasia and Oceania. Nobody ever achieved such a geographically spread monarchical role. A Commonwealth centred on Britain stayed glued not by force but by shared values. Only three countries were suspended: Fiji, Pakistan and Nigeria. South Africa withdrew during the storm over apartheid and rejoined in 1994.
US Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1950: 'I have here in my hand a list of 205 – a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. There the bright young men who were born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been the worst.'
Tydings Committee report on McCarthy, 1950: 'The spectacle is one we would expect in a totalitarian nation where the rights of the individual are crushed beneath the juggernaut of statism and oppression; it has no place in America where government exists to serve our people, not destroy them.'
USA, THE AMERICAS. Oscar Wilde famously considered patriotism the refuge of the wicked. During the twentieth century many countries on both the right and left of the poltical spectrum did their best to prove him right. Patriotism in various forms and often wicked defined the wars of the 1910s and the 1940s. As one scandalous example showing that you loved your country had distinctly unlovable consequences some entrance gates in some concentration camps displayed signs saying ‘For Love of Country’.
Liberal and individual-rights-obsessed America was not immune to this shame. The entire politico-religious spectrum was targeted with accuations of non-patriotism. Some Americans hoped they might escape because they were the natural home of liberalism and democracy. This, went the thinking, should have ensured that patriotism never became as evil as it was in Japan or China in Asia or Germany or Italy in Europe. Alas these hopes proved futile.
The bitterest and most embarrassing shame for over-patriotic America was what became known as McCarthyism. Named for a fanatical American senator from Wisconsin these aimed to root out Communists from important positions in American public life. First was the State Department, the American equivalent of a foreign office. As they dealt with a lot of foreigners supposedly there was some logic to this. But McCarthy did not stop there. Next came the US Army. As they dealt a lot with killing foreigners perhaps there was some logic there too.
But then the whole project took leave of its senses. Anybody became targets if there was even the whiff of a chance of a ghost of some tangential connection with Communism or Communists. Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general were targeted. Blackball lists prevented innocent people from working. So successful were these lists that several committed suicide.
Even General Eisenhower was smeared, even though you might think he had earned his credentials in saving America from Nazism and then combating Communism in Korea. It was these accusations were the beginning of the end. When the man seen by many Americans as the leader of the country’s forces through its turbulent war years they knew things had gone more than a little loopy. Senator Joseph McCarthy was on the way out.
Before McCarthy finally exited stage right he came to symbolize an important turning point for America. True, the country went through shades of opinion on the exercise. Fear of Communism was widespread. So some started sympathetically. But in the end the sight of prominent Army personnel asking the senator if he had no sense of decency removed doubts that things had gone too far. The US Senate censured him for ‘conduct unbecoming’ and voted 67-22.
While many of the accusations were bizarre some were not. Indeed when the Soviet Union collapsed three decades later and secret files were released it turned out a good number of McCarthy’s targets were paid by Moscow in some form. Certainly, they had been red under the bed. He died of cirrhosis of the liver within three years.
Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh: 'You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.'
US President Dwight Eisenhower: 'You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.'
VIETNAM, ASIA. Dien Bien Phu was the last French fortress in IndoChina. Its fall on May 8, 1954, a distant and anonymous battlefield 300 km from the traditional French power base in northern Indo-China, and the same distance again from the population centres in southern Laos, led to the division of Vietnam. The French argument for a Gallic impression on Indochina had finally ran out of steam. The split defined south-east Asia for over two decades.
A Viet Minh victory, the American President Eisenhower warned, would mean all of southeast Asia would fall to Communism. The succession of regimes leaving the western sphere of influence would be like dominoes. But the French thought it all made military sense and would make political sense too. The Viet minh would be defeated militarily because to defeat the French they needed to concentrate their forces. Superior French technology would decimate them. From that victory French rule would be once again ascendant over the country.
For a while it looked like it might work. The French General Navarre thought the fight with the Viet Minh was going well. a determined chap who made a habit of falling out with subordinates. Was occupied in gradually greater consequences from the autumn of 1953. The culmination of the siege lasted for close to two months. But in the end the French surrendered.
At the ensuing Geneva negotiations. Van Tien Dung led the delegation on behalf of Ho Chi Minh. They demanded a truce line on the 14th parallel. The French wanted the 18th and they settled on the 17th parallel. Vietnam was now divided.
Arguably the French shot themselves in the foot by confusing, or perhaps not confusing according to some commentators, the desired annihilation of the Viet Minh and the protection of Laos from the Viet Minh. Doing both was ambition in the extreme. The unclear strategy lay in the choice of Dien Bien Phu itself. Although it was relatively extensive at the beginning – at the beginning of the siege the base was 16km x 8km – it soon shrank. The size itself imposed large requirements of men that stretched French forces thin. Additionally, which was to prove of great significance in time, the land was surrounded by high ground. And this high ground was not under French control but that of their enemies. To top the mistake over choice of terrain was the choice of season. The rainy season was arriving as the siege came to its culmination.
When disputes within the French high command started to make the newspapers enemies like General Giap knew there were inconsistencies to exploit. Generals Navarre and Cogny in particular disagreed and had always privately resented each other. But differences went much lower in the chain of command. The Foreign Legion and Franco-Vietnamese battalions often came off worse in the jostling for position, whereas the French Army did better. The battle lasted fifty-five days.
British Prime Minister Clement Atlee, 1946: 'Our oil interests in the Middle East were indeed important, but our ability to defend them could only be impaired if we insisted on remaining in Egypt against the will of the Egyptian people and so worsened our relations with the remainder of the Arab world.
Egyptian President Nasser, 1956: 'The annual income of the Suez Canal is $100 million. Why not take it ourselves? In the name of the nation, the President of the Republic resolves that the World Maritime Company of the Suez Canal will be nationalized. At this very moment some of your Egyptian brethren are taking over the Canal Company.'
EGYPT, MIDDLE EAST. The Suez calamity seen through Arab eyes was anything but a calamity. It was much more like a colossal victory. British and French troops, between them symbolizing the kernel of European imperial power over Africa and Asia, were neatly humbled in a highly visible showcase of impotence. In addition the most valuable country in the Arab world gained control of its own assets.
Probably in the history of the twentieth century Suez will share with Pearl Harbour in the 1940s the gold medal place for an event that blended a clear military win with a clearer political defeat. In the 1940s the Japanese pulled of the double whammy with their surprise attack against the Americans at Pearl Harbour. That proved a tactical win for a few months. Strategically it was stupid. Likewise Suez was a decisive military win for British and French paratroopers but within months proved a strategic backward step for London and Paris.
Doubtless the unhelpful attitude of Canada and Australia set the scene. Many in London wondered openly just what value the Commonwealth would deliver if not acquiescent dominions? Anyway the British had already diminished their footprint around the canal zone. When Nasser overthrew King Farouk in 1952 the British may have been instinctively alarmed, and told Ottawa and Canberra as much, but they overcame their attachment to withdrawal from the area. By 1956 almost all the substantial British garrison, it numbered over 80,000 at one time, had trickled out from Egypt.
Egypt may have been nominally independent since the 1920s but Britain’s Prime Minister Eden was adamant on the Anglo-French Suez Canal company retaining control. Eden looked more and more like Churchill’s hand-picked successor when he ensured Nasser’s need for US$400 million to build the Aswan Dam and modernize Egypt was greeted with a combination of amusement and disbelief. When Russian arms started to arrive, cannily supplied by Kruschev who had an eye for fomenting trouble, Eden resorted to some rather sad black propaganda about Nasser and the Egyptian cause. When Nasser first met Britain’s Anthony Eden in early 1955 there was an instant dislike. An Asiatic Mussolini, he thought. Privately he clarified matters: ‘What’s all this poppycock you’ve sent me? I want him destroyed, can’t you understand? I want him removed. And I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt.’
Nasser saw his moment. To order the seizure of the canal he used a code word during a public speech. This was ‘De Lesseps’, a reference to the original French engineer behind the creation of the canal in the nineteenth century. Nasser mentioned it not once but, to be sure there was no doubt among the waiting rebels, over a dozen times. Agents seized the Suez Canal Company shortly afterwards and Nasser proclaimed the canal nationalized.
But it was the far less helpful attitude of the United States that ultimately defined this decisive turning point. Following the deployment of European troops President Eisenhower threatened to sell American reserves of sterling. He weighted the power shift away from Europe thus: ‘How could we possibly support Britain and France, if in doing so we lose the whole Arab world?’ So large were the American reserves of sterling that this would have precipitated a collapse of the British currency. When Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, added to the problems with an oil embargo against Britain and France America refused to fill the gap without a withdrawal. Nasser added to the pressure by sinking ships in the canal.
The arising withdrawal ran far deeper in European consciousness than it did American thinking. In some minds Suez scarred relations across the Atlantic for much of the remainder of the twentieth century. Outside of policing actions in Ulster and a series of painful and often pointless post-colonial fracas British forces did not engage overseas without American support until the Falklands conflict in the 1980s. France withdrew from direct NATO military command soon after and concentrated efforts into a stronger Europe. Shortly after Konrad Adenauer of Germany noted very presciently that Suez showed France must act through Europe. He said: ‘We have no time to waste: Europe will be your revenge.’ Britain might have been less pro-European but it refused to commit troops to America's support of South Vietnam in the Vietnamese Civil War during the 1960s and 1970s.
Another insight from Suez is that timing means much. If Suez had happened in the 1850s things would have unfolded differently. In the middle of the nineteenth century the British and French mindset was often fixated on keeping colonies east of Suez. The two especially emotional attachments were India for Britain and Indochina for France. It was a good thing that the attachment was emotional because the economic connection was increasingly questionable. In Britain’s case there was also the two Asian city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, both north of the equator, plus south of the equator the White Dominions in Australasia. All were reached most efficiently through the Suez Canal. But by the 1950s matters were quite different and the emotional connection with lands beyond Suez much more fragile. Britain had exited India most willingly in the 1940s, Palestine too, and France had surrendered Indochina in the 1950s. Britain just about had the will to administer their two Asian city-states, despite being chock full of an instinctive trading community, but neither delivered much return on investment. That reality had finally dawned. The White Dominions might still be wrapped up in a predominately Anglicized mindset – Australia much more than New Zealand and Canberra only ended the White Australia policy in the 1970s – but the flow of emotion was increasingly south to north. Paltry imperial advantage and enticing prospects of joining the European Community had seen to that.
Yet still France and Britain set a line in the channel. Why? The answer lay not in colonies but in commodities. One in particular: oil, which in the 1950s was central to industrialization and of eminence in the post-war world. Transporting it to London and France was considerably more expeditious through the channel. The journey around the Cape was nearly twice as long: 20,000 km versus 12,000 km.
Supreme Court of the United States, ruling on Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, 1954: 'We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.'
US President Bill Clinton, 1997: 'Forty years ago, they climbed these steps, passed through this door and moved our nation, and for that we must all thank them. Forty years later, we know that there are still more doors to be opened, doors to be opened wider, doors we have to keep from being shut again.'
USA, THE AMERICAS. September 25 1957 saw a final and often furtive end to the Little Rock school crisis. Federal authorities with some though not perhaps not utter moral zeal were finally able to over-rule Arkansan state authorities who wished to prevent black children – the Little Rock Nine – from attending public schools previously reserved for whites. With black and white education harmonising so a significant milestone in the Civil Rights movement had finally been achieved. A central disconnect within the general amensia over the Bill of Rights from the eighteenth century and the Civil War of the nineteenth century had finally resolved.
The catalyst for the Little Rock school crisis looked relatively small. Ten children – one withdrew as a result of the pressure – aimed to attend a white only school in the state capital of Arkansas. This followed a Supreme Court ruling from the early 1950s – Brown v Board of Education – that schools in America should, finally, be de-segregated by race.
The effect of Little Rock extended far and wide. State rights, for one, were implicitly diminished. Despite the federal ruling Arkansas state authorities, like others in the south, fancied that they might maintain segregation by other means. The National Guard was even called out by State Governor Faubus to make the point. That was a miscalculation. Soldiers on the school playground sparked a huge collision with President and former general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became so determined to push through desegregation that he federalized the National Guard. The unheard of step removed their authority from the Governor and placed it in Eisenhower’s hands – or more correctly in the hands of Washington DC.
In a further irony, of several in the whole incident, the nine black children were able to attend Central High School in Little Rock under escort not from Arkansas troopers but from a thousand paratroopers of the 101st Airborne. A dozen years earlier this same regiment had fought in Normandy, Bastogne and elsewhere in Germany to defeat Nazi ambitions for a different type of segregation.
Two further ironies emerged from the Little Rock incident. One concerned the state and one the country. The state motto of Arkansas is Regnas Populus – the people rule – which seems rather ironic given 15% of the state is black. In America at large, the Bill of Rights was also passed on September 25 (in 1789). This proclaimed among other things that the core rights of the constitution – all men are created equal among them – could not be taken away. This was something which clearly did happen in the case of attending school.
The ripples of September 25 1957 dominated America for years to come. Most famously the Civil Rights movement behind Martin Luther King led to the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial during 1963. Less obviously but easily as significantly, the education landscape of America was changed for ever. No longer were races separated and the country became, not before time, a better place. The Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in the late 1990s.
US Rear Admiral Rawson Bennett, Chief of Naval Operations, 1957: 'Sputnik is a hunk of iron almost anybody could launch.'
US Congress National Aeronautics and Space Act, 1958: 'The Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that adequate provision be made for aeronautical and space activities. The Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States.'
RUSSIA, EUROPE. On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite. Called Sputnik and little bigger than a basketball it emitted a distinctive ‘beep, beep, beep’ from space that could be heard on earth. Two races decisively escalated: both the 'Space Race' and the 'Arms Race'.
Called 'Iskustvennyi sputnik zemli' in Russian, or Companion Global Traveller, Sputnik quickly wedged itself within global consciousness. It was a turning point of the twentieth century. No longer were humans limited to their small part of this blue planet. Indeed, no longer was man limited to the visible solar system. The whole galaxy beckoned.
The other superpower of the time, America, looked on nervously. One leading American politician tagged Sputnik as ‘Mr. Khrushchev’s boomerang’ – a reference to the Russian leader and the widespread American aspiration that the launch would end in tears. It did not. Aside from the irony of America coveting their own boomerang another Sputnik was launched within a month. Weighing much more than the first device this included a female husky dog. Laika unluckily died from heat and panic within hours. Later Sputniks successfully returned dogs to earth with their tails still wagging.
Altogether ten Sputniks were launched. The aim was never entirely stated by opaque Russia. But conventional wisdom suggested there were two goals: (a) to help the Soviets reach the moon; (b) to understand the technology to launch ballistic missiles against distant enemies. The Soviets never achieved the first ambition but America knew it would be easier to achieve the other one.
The American reply to Sputnik was called Vanguard. It started badly. The first one exploded on the launch pad. Another incarnation veered all over the shop shortly after launch, at which point the space programme in America earned the sobriquet ‘Kaputnik’. Only in early 1958 did America reach space with Explorer I.
Within America the National Aeronautics and Space Administration also owes its birth to what happened on October 4, 1957. NASA was established, by the way, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower who as a former general shrewdly recognised the military dimensions which Sputnik and other satellites caused. Where previously bombers needed hours and sometimes a day to reach targets missiles based on what Sputnik revealed showed only minutes were needed. In 1961, President Kennedy challenged the Russians in a race to the Moon within the decade. Eight years later, in 1969, the Americas got there first.
US President John Quincy Adams, 1820: 'The annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.'
Cuban President Fidel Castro, 1960: 'North Americans don't understand that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.'
CUBA, THE AMERICAS. On January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro and a few thousand revolutionaries grabbed power in Cuba from Fulgencio Batista. Perhaps nothing unusual. It was yet another change of power by non-democratic means that had dominated the Caribbean's largest island since independence from Spain in 1898 (after which America had temporarily administered the country until 1902). The pro-American and pro-capitalist President Batista himself acquired power in the early 1950s with his own military coup.
Yet for the remaining years of the twentieth century Cuba under the pro-Communist Castro was to define much of American relations with Latin America and the Communist world.
Castro had tried to grab power in 1953 shortly after Batista acquired power. In 1956 he secretly returned to Cuba after the exile that followed that coup. After securing power there was some hope, for a while, that Mr Castro would be more democratic than the authoritarian Batista. But within weeks that hope ended. Close to 5,000 were arrested and publicly trialled in a sports ground. An American embargo followed soon afterwards that was to survive until the end of the twentieth century. Tellingly it included a general travel ban for American tourists. Within a few years Castro declared openly the Cuban commitment to Marxism-Leninism. He wrote: ‘I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.’
Thereafter the American-Cuban relations have been central. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 by the United States, the Castro-led government has had an openly antagonistic relationship with America and a simultaneous closeness with the Soviet bloc. This was true until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when military aid collapsed. At the end of the twentieth century Cuba was 11 million; compared to America it was not even 4% of the US. Afterwards the priorities of Cuba shifted from supporting foreign interventions to partnering with regional socialist figures such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia.
Castro once said in regards to the numerous attempts on his life, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."
