In a Corner piece today, Jonah Goldberg discusses the humanitarian benefits that would have accrued had we forced a regime change in Moscow in 1946. But he states one of what he considers the down sides:

While the space program would have suffered without the Space Race, it seems a sure bet that the net gain of liberated human genius would more than have compensated for that.

While I agree with his post overall, I don't agree that the "space program would have suffered." Oh, we certainly wouldn't have gotten to the moon as quickly, but as I argued at TCSDaily a week and a half ago, that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

I also think that, even absent the superpower adversary of the USSR, we still would have found surveillance and communications satellites quite useful. And of course, had we removed the Stalin regime, it's likely that we would have eventually picked up all of the German rocket team, and not just the ones that managed to escape with von Braun as the Soviets advanced. If you were a German who wanted to build rockets, given a choice between living in America, and Russia, even a free Russia, it's seems most likely that most of them would have wanted to come here.

Well, there'd be benefits even if the US were powerful enough to make a regime change in the USSR and chose not to because that would mean the US had a far larger economy. And the overall balance of power would have favored democracies more, perhaps resulting in an earlier end to the USSR and China being more democratic now.

Why is this question complicated?

Whenever and wherever possible, roll-back thug regimes and ideologies. If it isn't possible to roll them back, undercut them, snub them, shame them.

Don't be diplomatic to them. Do all possible to accelerate the collapse of such life-denying regimes.

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PS: Any of you who want to trot out "Bush regime" know into which of your orifices to stick it. The US has a constitutional republic regime. The Bush Administration is two terms in a long series.

It annoys me when the enforcement of racial and sexual quotas is called "affirmative action". I have a similar reaction to describing the military invasion of a state with whom you are not at war as "forcing regime change".

Spare me the underlying rationales, which may or may not be appropriate. I'm just saying we should call a spade a spade.

Leaving aside the cost of occupying a ruined country that stretches over twelve time zones, which makes one wonder if we could have borne the cost, the effects on our space effort would have been interesting.

I suspect that not a lot of effort would have been made in the area of rocket development, since there would be no race to build ICBMs. One might have had the sort of future suggested in Clarke's Prelude to Space that had a lot of private groups building space craft (sounds familier doesn't it?) but without the huge body of experience and data built up by the military and NASA over the decades. Clarke had us on the Moon in 1978, by the way.

It annoys me when the enforcement of racial and sexual quotas is called "affirmative action". I have a similar reaction to describing the military invasion of a state with whom you are not at war as "forcing regime change".

Fine. Invading USSR and eliminating Communism in 1945, or at least assassinating Stalin, would have been a good thing for the world.

Is this better?

It seems like Jonah said much the samething with one sentence brevity than Rand did in two paragraphs. Am I missing something? "Net gain" could certainly cover all the benefits Rand mentions. The suffered could be anything from getting to the moon later to general reduced funding due to no strategic imperative.

Is your point simply that less government involvement might have forced private involvement at an earlier state? I'm not sure I'd agree considering mankinds willingness to cling to myths that were debunked by the space program. After all, we still have people who believe the moon landings were faked. Without the fear of the Soviets, we'd have even more people willing to believe it is impossible thus money should go to universal child healthcare funding. Oh wait...

Rand,
The "cold-war" caused so much more harm to humanity than any destruction of Stalin's USSR it should be a no brainer.
MikeD

http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2007/10/what_ike_knew_1.html

The space program arose out the successor programs to the V-2 program directed by Von
Braun on our end and Korolev on theirs. Which
preceded the Cold War. The previous comments presume we would have to take over every section
of the Soviet Union. Most regions would revert to pre-existing nationalist movements, that were only suppressed by Stalin (Ukraine, Azeri, Kazakh,
Chechen, et al)

Leaving aside the cost of occupying a ruined country that stretches over twelve time zones, which makes one wonder if we could have borne the cost,

Mark, the Soviet Union was not one country that stretched across twelve time zones. It was a collection of conquered nations, most of whom never had any desire to by under Russian domination -- all occupied by a power that had a GNP less than 10% of the US GNP.

One might have had the sort of future suggested in Clarke's Prelude to Space that had a lot of private groups building space craft (sounds familier doesn't it?)

Yes, it sounds a lot like what's happening today -- outside of the Bush Vision. I'm still waiting you to explain why it's better to spend another 40 years and half a trillion dollars to prove that our socialists are better than their socialists.

By the way, Mark, Bush is now threatening to veto that $1 billion NASA budget increase you were crowing about.

Is it still unamerican not to support your program, when even Bush thinks it's too expensive?