U-2 Incident: Genesis & Fallouts
Introduction
On May 1 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, took off from Badaber Air Base(Peshawar) which had been leased to the USA by Pakistan in 1958 for its use as a listening post by the CIA.
Although the Soviet Union armed forces knew that spy planes flew from this base, they were unable to shoot any previous spy planes because of the height at which these planes flew. However, on this flight, one of its missiles exploded near the plane forcing it to lose height.
It was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while it was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. Powers parachuted safely and was captured.
Initially, the US authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA but were forced to admit the mission’s true purpose when a few days later the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2’s surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases taken during the mission.
Gary Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three years of imprisonment plus seven years of hard labour but was released two years later in February 1962 in a prisoner exchange for a Soviet intelligence officer
Background
Throughout the Cold War, both the USA and the USSR had been using various espionage strategies to assess the military capability of each other’s military capability.
Alarmed over rapid developments in military technology by his Communist rivals in the USSR, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served in office from 1953 to 1961, approved a plan to gather information about Soviet capabilities and intentions. High-altitude U-2 spy planes began making reconnaissance flights over the USSR in 1956.
The Soviets were aware of the reconnaissance flights because they could spot the spy planes on the radar. For nearly four years, however, the U.S.S.R. was powerless to stop them. Flying at an altitude of more than 13 miles above the ground, the U-2 aircraft were initially unreachable by both Soviet jets and missiles. However, by the spring of 1960, the USSR had developed a new Zenith surface-to-air missile with a longer range. On May 1, that weapon locked onto a U-2 flown by 30-year-old CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers.
Consequences
The incident had multiple repercussions
- End of Camp David Spirit
The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the American President David Eisenhower had met face-to-face at Camp David in Maryland in September 1959, and the seeming thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations had led people around the world to hope for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing Cold War. The U2 incident caused great embarrassment to the United States and shattered the amiable “Spirit of Camp David” that had prevailed for eight months
2. Collapse of 4-Nation Summit Conference
The incident occurred around two weeks before the scheduled opening of an east-west summit in Paris. The Summit was attended by Eisenhower, Khrushchev, French President Charles de Gaulle, and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. It was the first conference to be attended by both Soviet and western leaders in five years. Even though Eisenhower refused to apologize, he did admit that the flights were “suspended and would not resume”. However, prospects for constructive dialogue were dashed by the explosive controversy surrounding the U-2 flight over Soviet territory.
3. Escalation in Cold War
One inevitable result of the U-2 incident was the escalation in the Cold War. There was now an increased tension between the Soviets and the Americans in the years to come. After this debacle, the arms race accelerated and any considerations for negotiations were dashed for the immediate future. The Soviet Union started arming the Viet Cong guerillas in Vietnam, while the USA escalated its efforts to destabilise the Soviet Union and its satellite states. One of the reasons for the Cuban Missile Crisis can be attributed to this U-2 incident which shattered the trust, if ever there was any, between the two superpowers.
4. Sino-Soviet Rapprochement
In the days directly leading up to the conference, tensions increased dramatically between the United States and the Soviet Union over the U-2 incident. There had been a revitalization of anti-American sentiment within the Kremlin, with the Soviets blocking a planned trip to Washington D.C. of a Soviet air marshal. However, the biggest fallout of the U-2 incident was the beginning of the Sino-Soviet Rapprochement. Nikita Khrushchev invited Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong to Moscow where both leaders chalked out plans for combined apposition to thwart American hegemonic designs.
5. Adverse effect on Pakistan-America Relations
The U-2 incident severely compromised Pakistan’s security and dented relations with the United States. After the incident, Nikita Khrushchev threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Peshawar, thus warning Pakistan that it had become a target of Soviet nuclear forces. Pakistan felt deceived because the US had kept her in the dark about such clandestine spy operations launched from Pakistan’s territory”. Ayub Khan visited the USSR in 1965 and apologized for the incident. When Ayub Khan invited Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko to visit Pakistan, pointing out he’d never visited the country, the latter sarcastically replied “I always keep ahead of the U-2”.
6. New Tactics and Technology
The incident showed that even high-altitude aircraft were vulnerable to Soviet surface-to-air missiles. As a result, the United States began emphasizing high-speed, low-level flights for its previous high-altitude bombers and began developing the supersonic. The Corona spy satellite project was accelerated. The CIA also accelerated the development of the supersonic spy plane that first flew in 1962 and later began developing the unmanned drone
7. Global Repercussions
The incident also reverberated around the world. All the countries where the USA had established its bases started close supervision of their operations. For example in Japan, people took to the streets against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty which allowed the United States to maintain military bases on Japanese soil. The Japanese government was forced to admit that U-2 planes were also based at U.S. bases in Japan, which meant that Japan might be subject to attack should a war break out between the United States and the Soviet Union.
8. Leadership Crisis
Both, American president David Eisenhower, and Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev faced leadership crises in their respective countries. Eisenhower faced criticism in the press for not controlling his administration. Press reports were creating a belief in the public that Eisenhower had lost control, which Eisenhower would not let stand. At the same time, Khrushchev would go on to say that this incident was the beginning of his decline in power as party chairman, perhaps because he seemed unable to negotiate with the international arena and the communist hardliners at home
(From my book “International Relations: Basic Concepts & Global Issues”, available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QZSRWT1)
