Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 357and U.S. officials compared him to Arbenz in Guatemala and planned a simi-
lar fate. The CIA thus began making contacts with anti-Sukarno members of
the Indonesian military to plan an overthrow of the president, and began to
send large numbers of weapons to help the plotters in 1957-58. Civil War in
Indonesia seemed imminent, but the American-backed rebels, many of whom
were fundamentalist Muslims [an irony given the role of Islamic movements
against the U.S. in future crises], had no popular backing and the attempt to
eliminate Sukarno fizzled. Still, Eisenhower, despite his rhetorical desires for
a peaceful world, engaged in covert operations to try to overthrow neutral
governments, which to the U.S. were no different than the Communists, and
the U.S. weapons buildup continued throughout the decade. In the fall of
1957, American prestige suffered a blow when the Russians escalated the arms
race with the world’s first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile [ICBM], when they
launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit around the world, trav-
eling 18,000 miles per hour with a 4000-mile radius.
Soviet scientists had beaten the United States in this vital part of the arms
race and Americans feared that if the Soviets could launch a satellite into
FIGuRE 7-4 People view a model of Sputnik at the uSSR Exhibition in
Moscow, 1959