Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Negative effects of world war 2
Truman's foreign policy
Negative effects of world war 2
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Negative effects of world war 2
With the cessation of World War II and continental Europe left in smoking shambles as it was barely two decades prior, communism seemed like an irresistible temptation to countries left ravaged by the war and forsaken by a capitalist system. Ergo, the United States, center of the capitalist west and sworn enemy of communism, devoted itself through the adaption of numerous policies to containing this perceived threat. Consequently, the policies constructed to enforce communist containment were the most significant developing factors of the United States in a postwar world with tremendous impact on both foreign and domestic fronts.
When one thinks of the latter half of the twentieth century, the immediate response is to turn to the Cold War, and when the Cold War comes to mind, a typical route is to make the connection to foreign relations. The Cold War had an unprecedented impact on the nation’s foreign policy as officials began to adapt a more definite interventionist approach in the name of containing communism. The containment frenzy began during Harry S. Truman’s presidency when General George C. Marshall summarized the lessons learned from World War II in For the Common Defense. He advised that the United States militarize itself so it wouldn’t be ill-prepared in case of World War III. Since technological innovations had collapsed what was once considered hemispheric defense of the United States, “the security of the Nation, when challenged by an armed enemy, [now] requires the services of virtually all able-bodied male citizens within the effective military age group” (qtd. in Johnson 213). A cornerstone of containment was set in the Marshall Plan which was also known as the European Recovery Program. This plan provided $13...
... middle of paper ...
...Ed. Michael P. Johnson. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 221-224. Print.
Murrin, John, et al. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Vol. 2: Since 1863. 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
Nitze, Paul. NSC-68. U.S. Objectives and Programs for National Security. Reading the American Past, Volume II: From 1865: Selected Historical Documents. Ed. Michael P. Johnson. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 217-221. Print.
Parry-Giles, Shawn J. “Militarizing America’s Propaganda.” Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History. Ed. Martin J. Medhurst, and H.W. Brands. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. 95-133. Print.
Truman, Harry S. Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey: The Truman Doctrine. AmericanPresidencyProject.com. Gerhard Peters, 2013. Web. 2 December 2013.
One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
Holton, Woody. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.
The question was whether the USA should pursue the same policy regarding communism in the Far East as in Europe, or should it concentrate on making sure that the Soviets couldn?t expand westward? Despite being a little too optimistic, MacArthur?s decisive policy addressed the global threat of communism better because it acknowledged that the U.S. shouldn?t just ignore one communist sector of the world, and because it recognized that we should eliminate an enemy that we are inevitably bound to come into conflict with.
During the Cold War, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities, the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild.
Foner, E. (2012). Give me Liberty! An American History (Seagull 3rd ed.). New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc.
Levin, M. R. (2013). The liberty amendments: restoring the American republic. New York: Threshold Editions.
During 1940-1970, the USSR and the USA were the world’s leading superpowers. After WW2, it was the US money that helped rebuild nearly all of Western Europe, putting nearly half a dozen countries into debt. They opened trade and helped Europe’s ravaged economy to get back onto its feet. They did so by creating the ‘Marshall Plan’ on June the 5th, 1947. The plans aim was to reconstruct Western Europe and at the same time to stop Communism spreading to them – the Americans were avid believers in the Domino Theory, and believed that communism would take over all of Europe if they did not intervene. They also created other policies such as the Truman doctrine on March the 12th, 1947 (which is a set of principles that state that the US as the worlds ‘leading country’ will help out other democratic governments worldwide) and NATO, 4th of April 1949.
The type of policy known as containment was the foreign policy that the United States of America used between the times of 1947 (two years after World War Two) until 1989 (he fall of the Berlin Wall). The definition of containment in this case is strategies whether it was diplomatically, militarily or economically to contain the forming and progression of communism and to give America an influential advantage abroad. The policy of containment all started out with what was known as the Yalta conference, which consisted of Franklin D Roosevelt, the president of the United States at the time, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of the United kingdom, and Joseph Stain, leader of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). It was during this conference that the three men came to an agreement that these three countries would separate the world into three different parts and have their influence on those three parts. This was known as the sphere of influence and it was divided like this; The United States would have control of influence the western hemisphere meaning all of the Americ...
Lowi, Theodore, Benjamin Ginsburg. American Government: Freedom and Power. W.W. Norton & Company, New York: 1998.
Web. 23 Dec. 2013. Murrin, John Et al. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People. Boston: Cangage Advantage, 2012.
Foner, Eric. Give me liberty!: an American history. Seagull 4th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2014.
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became the East nations, and the United States, centered on NATO formed the West nations, dividing the world in two. Belonging to neither the East nor the West, developing countries were called Third World nations and became a stand-in for wars between the East and West (Gaddis, The Strategies of Containment 70-78). The end of WWII and the beginning of the C... ... middle of paper ... ... a, from containment to rollback in Korea; welcoming European integration because it portended the creation of an economic unit that encouraged technological innovation; building a configuration of power in the international system, nurturing free markets while safeguarding American interests, a constant in Washington for more than 35 years; and, free political economy at home were just a few of the strategic methods used to change, influence, and shape American domestic policy (Leffler, The Specter of Communism,100-129).
Foner, Eric. "Chapter 9." Give Me Liberty!: An American History. Brief Third ed. Vol. One. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. N. pag. Print.
28.) Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History. 4th ed. (W.W. Norton, 2012), 920.