1. Two Nations Live on Edge
Ch. 26 Cold War Conflicts
Two Nations Live on Edge
How did the arms race between the USSR and the US develop?

2. Brinkmanship
The willingness to go to war in hopes that the opposing side will back down.
This was justification for the nuclear buildup during the Cold War.

3. The Arms Race Hydrogen bomb, “super bomb”
: estimated to be 67 times as powerful as atomic bomb (the force of 1 million tons of TNT)
November 1, 1952 the US exploded the first H-bomb.
August 1953, the USSR exploded their H-bomb.

4. "Since no limit exists to the destructiveness of this weapon, its existence and knowledge of its construction is a danger to humanity as a whole.”
- Fermi and Rabi, developers of atomic bomb

5. Nikita Khrushchev
became the new Premier of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.
Believed that communism would take over the world.
Favored a policy of peaceful coexistence

6. The Space Race
Sputnik: October 4, 1957 the world’s first artificial satellite.
Traveled around the earth at 18,000 miles per hour.
January 1958, U.S. successfully launched its first satellite.

7. First man in space
April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.
Less than a month later, Alan Shepherd became the first American man in space.

8. U-2 incident U-2 plane: could fly undetected at high altitudes.
Took detailed phots of Soviet troop movements and missile sites.
Francis Gary Powers: four hours after entering Soviet airspace, a Soviet pilot shot down his plane
he was forced to parachute into Soviet-controlled territory.
Sentenced to ten years in prison.
President Eisenhower denied, then admitted spying.
Agreed to stop U-2 flights, but did not apologize.

9. Nuclear weapons
By 1962, Russia had almost 40 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and numerous Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs).
The U.S. had approximately 170 ICBMs, in addition to hundreds of long range bombers, IRBMs and submarine based missiles. The U.S. could deliver some 3,000 nuclear bombs into Russia.
Eisenhower had made this a national priority in 1955.

10. Nuclear fallout shelters
There were no defenses to ICBMs or IRBMs.

13. 4/14/15
Which of the two superpowers do you think contributed more to Cold War tensions during the 1950s?

17. Nuclear Weapons United States Russia United Kingdom France China India
Pakistan
North Korea
Israel
Iran