Power Struggle In Vietnam's Nuclear Arms Race

Following World War 2 two world superpowers arose from the allied victory. The capitalist United States of America, and the Communist Soviet Union became engaged in a nuclear arms race. Political and military tensions increased to a point around 1947 where a cold war was evident. Both nations were in the process in stockpiling mass amounts of nuclear weapons. The lack of communication and the difference of political ideals caused a deep mistrust to form. The United States saw communism as a threat known as the “red scare” that was continuing to spread across the east. Communism and capitalism both required the demise of each other to succeed, and become dominate. Both side looked for a way to gain the upper hand over their opposition. The fact that both sides had been stockpiling nuclear weapons since the end of the 1960’s was cause for a major problem in the power struggle. Neither side saw the benefit of letting a nuke off the chain because of the idea of mutually assured destruction. Mutually assured destruction meant that lunch of a nuclear weapon would cause retaliation that would not only destroy both nations, but the world. Due to the predicament both nations faced, new ways of achieving the upper hand had to be implemented. This struggle for supremacy manifested itself in the form of the space race. This alternative power struggle was exemplified by the supporting of third world countries such as Vietnam

This became a real issue as Krushchev, the Soviet leader used the Soviet space launches as proof that communist ICBMs were powerful and effective. The ICBMs were said to be effective as a rocket powerful enough to carry a payload into orbit was powerful enough to travel a set distance within the globe. This scared Americans as the Soviets had proved that they had the capability to strike American cities from lunch points within the Soviet