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cold war and its effects
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With this book, a major element of American history was analyzed. The Cold War is rampant with American foreign policy and influential in shaping the modern world. Strategies of Containment outlines American policy from the end of World War II until present day. Gaddis outlines the policies of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis has written many books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. Some of his other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, and The Cold War: A New History. Dr. Gaddis received his PhD from the University of Texas in 1968; he currently is on a leave of absence, but he is a professor at Yale . At the University, his focus is Cold War history. Gaddis is one of the few men who have actually done a complete biography of George Kennan, and Gaddis even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.
Gaddis diligently researches many of the policies of the Cold War, beginning with George Kennan and his original policy of containment. He did not believe in making everyone similar to the United States, but instead believed that diplomacy should be handled as to what were vital American interests and what situations were not vital to American security. He believed to envision what was a threat to the United States, there should be a standard as to what exactly should be considered to the interests of the United States, and anything...
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...containment. By breaking down containment in this manner, historians and researchers alike can look at containment like never before. Instead of containment all being viewed as the same, Gaddis differentiates among many of the different presidents to prove the different types of containment and how each president believed their type of containment would be successful in handling the spread of communism. By beginning with Kennan, the original believer in containment and ending with Kissinger, who used a hybrid of many of the different approaches, the reader can fully understand the progress, both positive and negative. The book is an essential read for those who want to perform research on cold war policy in the United States, as well as political decisions on many of the Presidents throughout the cold war, as the book is full of sources, both primary and secondary.
Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking the Cold War: Dividing the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Publishing.
Crockatt, Richard. The fifty years war : the United States and the Soviet Union in world politics, 1941-1991. London; New York; Routledge, 1995.
The Cold War was a period of dark and melancholic times when the entire world lived in fear that the boiling pot may spill. The protectionist measures taken by Eisenhower kept the communists in check to suspend the progression of USSR’s radical ambitions and programs. From the suspenseful delirium from the Cold War, the United States often engaged in a dangerous policy of brinksmanship through the mid-1950s. Fortunately, these actions did not lead to a global nuclear disaster as both the US and USSR fully understood what the weapons of mass destruction were capable of.
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.
Gaddis, J.L. (2005) Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The political ideologies of the USA and of the Soviet Union were of profound significance in the development of the Cold War. Problems between the two power nations arose when America refused to accept the Soviet Union in the international community. The relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union was filled with mutual distrust and hostility. Many historians believe the cold war was “inevitable” between a democratic, capitalist nation and a communist Union. Winston Churchill called the cold war “The balance of terror” (1). Cold war anxieties began to build up with America and the Soviet Union advancing in the arms race for world dominance and supremacy. America feared the spread of Communism
Discussions of the causes of the Cold War are often divisive, creating disparate ideological camps that focus the blame in different directions depending on the academic’s political disposition. One popular argument places the blame largely on the American people, whose emphasis of “strength over compromise” and their deployment of the atomic bomb in the Second World War’s Pacific theatre apparently functioned as two key catalysts to the conflict between US and Soviet powers. This revisionist approach minimizes Stalin’s forceful approach and history of violent leadership throughout World War 2, and focusing instead on President Harry Truman’s apparent insensitivity to “reasonable Soviet security anxieties” in his quest to impose “American interests on the world.” Revisionist historians depict President Truman as a “Cold War monger,” whose unjustified political use of the atomic bomb and ornery diplomatic style forced Russia into the Cold War to oppose the spread of a looming capitalist democratic monopoly. In reality, Truman’s responsibility for the Cold War and the atomic bomb drop should be minimized. Criticisms of Truman’s actions fail to consider that he entered a leadership position set on an ideological collision course, being forced to further an established plan for an atomic monopoly, and deal with a legacy of US-Russian tensions mobilized by Roosevelt prior to his death, all while being influenced by an alarmist and aggressive cabinet. Upon reviewing criticisms of Truman’s negotiations with Soviet diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov and his involvement in the atomic bomb drop, the influence of Roosevelt’s legacy and Truman’s cabinet will be discussed in order to minimize his blame for starting the Cold War.
Gaddis, John Lewis. “We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.” Taking Sides: Clashing Views On Controversial Issues in United States History. Ed. Larry Madaras and James M. SoRelle. 14th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 302-308.
In 1947 the United States called on a man named George Kennan to make an assessment of the Soviet Union to better understand the soviet threat that the US was facing. Kennan, who is known as the father of Containment, sent the US State Department an 8000 word missive in what is known today as the “Long Telegram.” In this dispatch he stated that he believed the Soviets thought themselves to be in a state of constant war with capitalism. He believed that the Soviets would use Marxists in the world of the capitalists as allies. Kennan also stated that the aggression of the Soviets would not align with the Russians and their views or with the reality of the economy, but more so following along with the ideology as the Tsars. Lastly Kennan pointed out that the government of the Soviets had a structure the prevented an accurate picture of the reality, internal as well as external. These ideologies of Kennan and the policy of Containment were the foundation of the Four Pillars of Foreign Policy.
In February 1946, George F. Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, proposed a policy of containment. Containment is the blocking of another nation’s attempts to spread its influence. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the United States used this policy against the Soviets. The United States wanted to take measures to prevent any extension of communist rule to other countries. The conflicting U.S. and Soviet aims in Eastern Europe led to the Cold War. The Berlin airlift, formation of NATO, and the Truman Doctrine all relate to this policy of containment.
The end of the Cold War was one of the most unexpected and important events in geopolitics in the 20th century. The end of the Cold War can be defined as the end of the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had existed since the end of the World War II. The conclusion of the Cold War can be attributed to Gorbachev’s series of liberalizations in the 1980s, which exposed the underlying economic problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states that had developed in the 1960s and 70s and prevented the USSR from being able to compete with the US as a superpower. Nevertheless, Reagan’s policies of a renewed offensive against communism, Gorbachev’s rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine and the many nationalities
The policy of Containment is a strategy that was recommended by Foreign affair 's expert George Kennan. The policy was adopted and executed by the US government after the WW11. In his 8000-word telegram, Kennan recommended the strategy of “containment” of Soviets Union’s exploitation of other weaker East European countries. He further analyzed that curtailing the communist ideologies of Soviet Union these countries would be the best option to preventing another world war. He advised against military confrontation but instead called for a “patient, persistent and firm" strategic efforts to contain Soviet expansionism. He cautioned President Harry Truman of the evils of Stalin’s communist ideologies; these ideas included limiting the freedom of its people. The Soviet Union wanted a world modeled on their own country’s society and values, unlike the US and western Europe countries that sought to practice capitalist ideologies and democratic governments that allowed their citizens the freedom to elect government and exercise their civil liberties. He
2Gaddis John Lewis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York, 2000, pp. 32-62, 282-315.
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War, (Oxford: OUP, 1982), 206.
There have been many attempts to explain the origins of the Cold War that developed between the capitalist West and the communist East after the Second World War. Indeed, there is great disagreement in explaining the source for the Cold War; some explanations draw on events pre-1945; some draw only on issues of ideology; others look to economics; security concerns dominate some arguments; personalities are seen as the root cause for some historians. So wide is the range of the historiography of the origins of the Cold War that is has been said "the Cold War has also spawned a war among historians, a controversy over how the Cold War got started, whether or not it was inevitable, and (above all) who bears the main responsibility for starting it" (Hammond 4). There are three main schools of thought in the historiography: the traditional view, known alternatively as the orthodox or liberal view, which finds fault lying mostly with the Russians and deems security concerns to be the root cause of the Cold War; the revisionist view, which argues that it is, in fact, the United States and the West to blame for the Cold War and not the Russians, and cites economic open-door interests for spawning the Cold War; finally, the post-revisionist view which finds fault with both sides in the conflict and points to issues raised both by the traditionalists as well as the revisionists for combining to cause the Cold War. While strong arguments are made by historians writing from the traditionalist school, as well as those writing from the revisionist school, I claim that the viewpoint of the post-revisionists is the most accurate in describing the origins of the Cold War.