The People’s Liberation Army is not yet as formidable as the West fears

In 1957 AmericaICBMICBMICBM was gripped by fears of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. The Kremlin had stunned the world with a test flight of an intercontinental ballistic missile () and the launch of Sputnik. An American intelligence report predicted that by 1962, the Soviets could have 500 s, outstripping America’s arsenal. When word of that leaked, a political furore erupted. Eyeing the presidency from his Senate seat, John F. Kennedy demanded action to prevent a Soviet “shortcut to world domination”.It was bunkum. By his 1961 inauguration, spooks had new satellite images. The Soviets actually had about six s late that year, to America’s 60. But Kennedy stayed the course; his rhetoric and continued atomic buildup stoked tensions with the Kremlin that erupted in the Cuban missile crisis. As for the prior years, Lyndon Johnson would observe in 1967: “We were doing things we didn’t need to do. We were building things we didn’t need to build.”