Cold War And America's Outer Space Policy (1945-1969)

During the last century, one of the most important events was the first artificial satelliteorbited by the Soviet. The coming of the space age affected deeply human being's way ofproducing, way of living, and way of thinking, even the policy-making of nation states andstructure of international relationship was affected. On the other side, the special internationalsituation of last half-century, the so-called cold war, was influenced broadly by the appearingof the new field, too. The space age, combined with the cold war, ultimately changed theprocess of human development. As a space power, America's outer space policy was mostdeeply conditioned by the cold war international situation. That is, the cold war fundamentallychanged the original trace of America's (and other space powers') space policy, whereas, thespace age and the space powers' policy-making changed the cold war's depth and extent, andin some degree the essence of the cold war.This dissertation employed a great deal of rare documents declassified by Americangovernment under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), and used some second-handbooks for reference. It was the main purpose of this dissertation to trace the changing ofAmerican space policy from the Truman government to the Johnson government, to revealwhat the cold war had put on America's policy-making, and as a result of interaction, to makeknow how America's space policy changed the process of the cold war. Since outer spaceitself was playing an even more important role in nowadays world, and also since the coldwar thinking still persisted in American government's policy-making, it was very important tounderstand the course of America's outer space policy, and the essence of this policy.Furthermore, it would be helpful for China and other countries to establish their own nationalspace strategy.This dissertation borrowed several theory and concept from other related subjects, suchas, the international relationship theory, the international politics theory, and the politicalpsychology theory. Through careful researching the declassified documents, this dissertationtried to illustrate three viewpoints as follows: first, under the influence of the cold war,America's space policy became a part of cold war prestige race, military race and politicalrace from the very beginning. As a result of interact, the cold war itself changed in somedegree. Second, the premise of American space policy-making was derived from a kind ofmisperception, that is, the over-anticipation on threat and phobia memory. And this kind ofmisperception, the policy-makers inclined to over-defend the potential enemy. Third, longbefore entering the space age, the American government had decided to control the lastfrontier so as to ensure America's absolute security and greatest interest, and the high frontierstrategy was enforced during the post-cold war period.