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Reaction to the Soviet Satellite - A Preliminary Evaluation
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Reaction to the Soviet Satellite - A Preliminary Evaluation
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CONFIDENTIAL
start also Baldwin 10/18/20
REACTION TO THE SOVIET SATELLITE
A Preliminary Evaluation
One week after the USSR announced that it had launched an earth
satellite, a mumber of broad major effects on world public opinion
appeared clear:
1. Soviet claims of scientific and technological superiority
over the West and especially the U.S. have won greatly
widened acceptance.
2. Public opinion in friendly countries shows decided concern
over the possibility that the balance of military power has
shifted or may soon shift in favor of the USSR.
30 The general credibility of Soviet propaganda has been greatly
enhanced.
4. American prestige is viewed as having sustained a severe blow,
and the American reaction, so sharply marked by concern, dis-
comfiture and intense interest, has itself increased the dis-
quiet of friendly countries and increased the impact of the
satellite.
A few instances illustrate significantly the promptness, diversity
and scope of the impact reported. Mexican editors expressed immediately
diminished interest in USIS scientific feature articles, and frankly said
that they were looking to Soviet sources for such material. In Tehran,
officials of the Iranian Government considered the satellite such a blow
to U.S. prestige that they displayed unsasy embarrassment in discussing
it with Americans. Representatives of the Western European Union meeting
in Strasbourg severely criticized the U.S. for falling behind in the arms
race. In Japan, members of the Liberal Democratic Party agitated against
further increases in conventional military forces. In Germany the SPD
gave indications of reconsidering its policy of neutralism friendly to the
U.S.
The satellite 1s, of course, most widely and readily accepted as proof
of scientific and technical leadership by those with the least scientific
and political sophistication. The degree to which informed scientific and
political opinion believes that the USSR has surpassed the US in scientific
CONFIDENTIAL
DECLASSIFIED
Authority MR 79-194 #2
be
NLE Date 8/29/79
By
CONF
- 2 -
capability cannot yet be assessed. Sophisticated opinion is, of course,
far less likely to be impressed by the drama of the satellite or its being
a "first". It will be much slower to form its opinion of the fundamental
implications of the Soviet achievement as an index of the level of Somiet
science, and of the relative capabilities of the U.S. and the USSR.
To this group, however, even temporary Soviet possession of a clear
load in missile research and technology underlines Soviet potential capacity
to compete successfully in fields in which U.S. Leadership has been generally
taken for granted. The pattern may have changed, from one in which the USSR
was seen as seeking to catch up, to one in which the USSR and the US are
viewed as in more or loss level competition. This is clearly one of the aims
of Soviet propaganda treatment, which can be expected to make a very strong
effort to create and deopen the impression that the satellite marks a new era,
and to make its launching a sort of Great Divide.
Although the informed intelligentsia may give only limited assent to
Soviet assertions, this will not inmediately or very greatly limit Soviet
psychological gains. The technologically less advanced OD the audience
most impressed and dazzled by the Sputnik DO are the audience most vulnerable
to the attractions of the Soviet system. The crux of the long-range Soviet
propaganda effort may be its ability to win acceptance for the validity of
the Soviet system, especially among the newly independent or dependent peoples,
largely preoccupied with establishing quickly the technological level that
will assure economic viability and national progress. The satellite, presented
as the achievement and symbolic vindication of the Soviet system, helps to
lend credence to Soviet claims -- particularly if 1t is followed by comparable
achievements unmatched by the West.
This audience 18 not merely most eager to find ways for rapid techno-
logical advancement. It is also the audience - especially in its broadest
mass and most illiterate reaches - most difficult to reach with cold fact and
reasoned argument. It is in fact an audience difficult for the U.S. propagan-
dist to reach at all with the resources at his disposal. The peculiar nature
and dramatic appeal of the Sputnik, making its passes over every region of the
earth, are likely to give it greatest impact among those least able to under-
stand it. It will generate myth, legend and enduring superstition of a kind
peculiarly difficult to eradicate or modify, which the USSR can exploit to its
advantage, among backward, ignorant, and apolitical audiences particularly
difficult to reach.
Assessment of the implications of the satellite -- following closely on
the ICBM - for the balance of military power probably follows the same general
pattern. The distinction between military and scientific implications is often
not being sharply drawn and appears hardly to be drawn at all among the least
informed. The USSR is diligently seeking to create the impression that in this
CONFIDENTIAL
CONF IDENTIAL
- 3 -
field too a watershed has been reached, and that a re-evaluation of
relative military strength and positions must follow. Popular reaction
will affect willingness to support conventional armaments, and may give
support to Soviet claims that current Western positions on disarmament
are outmoded.
The Soviet Union may well believe 'that it has succesded in creating
sufficient doubts about US military superiority to give it decided advan-
tages 18 it should choose to launch psychological warfare campaigns in
either the classic "War of Nerves" or "Peace Campaign" pattern. It appears
to be readying the psychological ground for such operations. If there should
be any substantial public conclusion that the USSR is leading in military
power, the USSR would appear to speak from strength not weakness. This
psychological advantage could be exploited whether in seeking a detente or
attempting an expansionist venture.
Soviet efforts to exploit the military significance of the scientific
and technological victory it has registered are currently still largely
indirect: they could, particularly if conducted with brusqueness, bragga-
docio, and bellicosity, become psychologically counterproductive, by under-
scoring the aggressive motives and methods of the Soviet system, They would,
thus, raise in the very audiences they seek to impress doubts about the reality
of Soviet desires for "peaceful coexistence" and about the likelihood that
Soviet world dominance would further their national aspirations. It is too
soon to Judge whether Soviet awareness of this danger will impose effective
restraints on their exploitation of recent and potential future propaganda
successes.
To the extent that the Soviets are aware of the fact that maximum
effective exploitation of their gains depends upon keeping a balance between
"peacefulness" and "strength" in claiming achievements for the Soviet system,
WD may see strengthened propaganda efforts designed to dramatize the willing-
ness of the USSR to offer the peaceful fruits of these achievements to others,
to extend "scientific and technical cooperation and assistance." They are,
in fact, well launched on this competition in many areas.
To some extent, at this early stage, judgments are in suspension, parti-
cularly among the informed, and among those leaders whose attitudes are
especially important to the U.S. interest. Much of this suspension of judg-
ment stems, however, from confidence in the ability of the U.S. speedily to
recapture lost ground and to surpass the USSR. Even if this expectation were
considerably delayed in fulfilment, many of these persons would not modify
their assessments of the relative desirability of the two systems. But this
audience is not presumably a. primary target of either U.S. or Soviet propaganda.
CONFIDENTIAL
CONE
4
In judging the long-range significance of reaction, one finding of
1956 public opinion surveys in Western Europe and Japan is of particular
interest. Asked whether they expected the U.S. or the USSR to emerge the
stronger in peaceful "competitive coexistence" over the next twenty-five
years, a substantial body of opinion answered "the USSR"; the average U.S.
lead in the five chief West European countries was only eleven per cent.
A final point that deserves noting 1s the fact that the U.S. itself
set the stage for assuring the impact of the Soutnik elects first by the fanfare
of its own announcement of its satellite plans, second by creating the
impression that we considered ourselves to have an invulnerable lead in this
scientific and technological area, and third by the nature of the reaction
within the U.S. All this has served to underscore the importance, implica-
tions, and presumed validity of Soviet performance and Soviet claims. American
amxiety, recrimination, and intense emotional interest have been widely noted
abroad, and assiduously reported by Soviet media. The nature of U.S. public
reaction in the immediate future will continue to be en important factor in
coloring the responses of other people. One moral that might be drawn is that
a propagandist cannot have his crow and eat it too.
This has all helped to increase the credibility of Soviet propaganda,
although presumably no U.S. reaction, however serene and poised, could have
markedly diminished the basic gain in credibility derived from the incontest-
able fact that the Soviet system had achieved difficult and impressive scienti-
fic "first." This gain in credibility, which can be exploited by every aspect
of Soviet propaganda, may in the long run be the most durable and useful gain
accruing to the USSR from the satellite.
In sum:
1. The Soviet satellite supplies an opportunity for the USSR to claim
that it has opened & new era, marked by a spectacular overtaking of the U.S.
in a vital field where we have been accustomed to count on superiority, and
now compates with the U.S. as an equal;
2. Public opinion will, for a period that cannot now be forecast, be
narrowly assessing the relative military positions of the U.S. and the USSR;
3. The USSR, in this same period, will have a clear advantage in the
cold war, which it can exploit for either "peaceful" gestures or ventures in
increased pressures - or both simultaneously.
40 The satellite, presented as a demonstration that the Soviet system
has gained scientific and technical superiority, lends increased appeal to
that system particularly in areas that view their problems as requiring the
rapid achievement of a higher technological level;
5. General Soviet credibility has been sharply enhanced.
CONF
IRI/P:October 16, 1957