Strategic management led to the successful containment of Soviet Communism during the Cold War. Cold wars do not have traditional combat but emphasize ideological conflict. The Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union began in 1945 after World War II and ended in 1989 with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. This wall dividing Germany was symbolic of the soviet domination of East Germany as well as Eastern and Central Europe. This case shows how the U.S. used the strategy of containment to win the Cold War.
Strategic management is a long-term process aimed at achieving organizational goals. Strategy is the employment of resources to gain an objective. Strategic planning and implementation goes far beyond the goals of one leader (Shafritz
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This plan extended military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece who were seeking to resist totalitarian aggression from the Soviet Union. The ultimate goal of the Truman Doctrine of 1947 was for the containment of worldwide communism (Shafritz and Borick 2011).
Kennan, a foreign service officer stationed in Moscow, believed that Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter force (156). This counter force was ultimately the containment strategy that lead to the demise of the soviet union in 1991.
Kennan thought it crucial that the U.S. rebuild Western Europe economically so that it could provide indigenous countervailing power to that of the Soviet Union. He also gave recommendations for moving beyond the military stalemate into which the Cold War had degenerated by the early 1950’s
The Marshal Plan gave massive aid to Europe and helped save them from economic disaster and lifted them from the shadow of enslavement by Russian communism. It ended postwar financial problems in Western Europe and allowed them to contain the Soviets. This plan was considered the first large scale foreign assistance program of the post World War II
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Berliners were faced with starvation. The U.S. and allies responded with a massive airlift of food, fuel, and basic supplies. The crisis never turned violent due to the development of crisis management as a key element in keeping the Cold War cold.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) tied the U.S. and Europe with a pledge that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all to protect themselves from Russia. Consequently, armed attacks on any member country would lead to action to maintain security of the North Atlantic. This was a critical element in containing the Soviet Union. Soviets sent troops into Poland, Hungary, & Czechoslovakia but never crossed into a NATO state. Containment military style worked.
After World War II the Soviet Union established a communist state, North Korea, while South Korea was noncommunist. War began in 1950 when the North invaded the South. The United States intervened to halt and contain the spread of communism in Korea.
Similar to Korea, the Vietnam War of 1956-1975 was a conflict between the noncommunist Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). The U.S. first offered financial support then later offered military support for South
Influenced by the fear of communism by American society and containment beliefs of people like George Kennan, who advocated that the US should use diplomatic, economic, and military action to contain communism, Truman established the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the US would protect democracies throughout the world, pledging the US would fight it around the world. This doctrine was an extension to both the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. In dealing with foreign policy, Truman did everything to protect nations of being consumed by communism, such as the Berlin Airlift, in which Truman decided to avoid the Soviet blockade of West Berlin and flew supplies directly over to the people in need. In Asia, Truman decided to use limited warfare, meaning the lack of atomic weapons, and was highly criticized by Douglas MacArthur, commander of the army, who he later dismissed for not following US policy.
To start off the Cold war, Russia had lost twenty-seven million soldiers in World War II. Stalin was not going to allow the Germany to attack Russia again . To make sure of this , Stalin made East Europe his buffer zone.The United states could not allow the this to contunie to happen. The first example was the Truman Doctrine, that declared the the Untited States would support “free people”. The Doctrine was followed by the Marshall Plan which gave 12 billion dollars in aid European democracies so that communist ideas would not be so attractive. These were some of the long term , patient policies the United States did to
The United States were in favor of democracy and capitalism while the Soviet Union sought for the chances of influencing communism. The Cold War did not involve the use of physical arms, but was intensely fought. Propaganda, economic aids, Arms Race, and the creation of alliances were the main methods to fight the war. The use of propaganda played a crucial role in containment by criticizing the other power and raising the morale and spirit of their nation. The economic support for nations helped them recover from the desperate situation after World War II, which prevented the nations from falling under communism.
The war was also known as the American War (in Vietnam, as opposed to the Vietnam War in America), the Vietnam Conflict, the Second Indochina War, and also the War Against the Americans to Save the Nation (The History of the Vietnam War). It started on November 1, 1955 and ended on April 30, 1975 (At a Glance June 2012). The main conflict that started the war was the aspiration of North Vietnam to unify the entire country under a single communist government that was modeled after the ones seen in the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China (Vietnam War |
After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild. The United States, led by President Truman, wanted to form democracies in Europe and create a capitalistic society to build economically strong nations that would compliment the American economy through trade. In contrast, the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, wanted to rebuild itself and spread communism through Europe and Asia. In a desperate attempt to rebuild, many countries devastated by war fell under soviet influence and resorted to communism. The Soviet Union called these nations Satellite nations and hoped that they would serve as ?buffer? nations, preventing invasion from the west .In its efforts to defend democracy, the U.S. created the policy of containment. In this new policy, the United States would try to block Soviet influence by making alliances and supporting weaker nations. Winston Churchill described this strategy as an ?iron curtain?, which became and invisible line separating the communist from the capitalist countries in Europe. To help enforce the ideas of containment, President Truman create...
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 Vietnam War was a war over communism that started in 1950, when Ho Chi Minh, the national leader of Vietnam, introduced a communist government into North Vietnam. In 1954 it was decided to split the country at the 17th parallel, and was ruled under opposing governments, Bao Dai leading the south and Ho Chi Mihn the north. North Vietnam went to war with South Vietnam with the north being supported by Russia and China, as they were also Communist countries, and the south being supported by Britain and the USA.
In conclusion, in between 1945 and 1949, the Cold War had significantly developed mainly because of the increasing hostilities between the East and West. By 1949, the arms race had begun and Stalin had created the Iron Curtain to divide Communist Eastern Europe and non-communist Western Europe. The three sectors of Germany had united and had gained a good reputation for helping the Berliners in the Berlin Blockade. The Marshall Plan lead to the forming of Cominform and this retaliation sets the pattern for the rest of the Cold War, because of the idea of ?one-upmanship?.
The conflicting U.S. and Soviet aims in Eastern Europe led to the Cold War. The Berlin airlift, the formation of NATO, and the Truman Doctrine all relate to this policy of containment. At the end of WWII, the United States, Great Britain, and France occupied the western zone of Germany while the Soviet Union occupied the east. In 1948, Britain, France, and the U.S. combined their territories to make one nation. Stalin then discovered a loophole. He closed all highway and rail routes into West Berlin.
From after World War II and up until 1991 the foreign policy of the United States was based on Cold War ideology and the policy of containment; to prevent nations from leaning towards Soviet Union-based communism, as first laid out by George Kennan and later used as one of the key principles in the Truman Doctrine (LeCain). As this essay will argue, because of this policy the United States made a commitment to fight communism everywhere in the world and got them involved in conflicts more because of self interest, self protection and determination to beat communism than the cause itself.
Generally, strategic management is a set of managerial decisions and actions that determines the long-term performance of a company, involving both internal and external environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. According to the study of strategic management, the corporation should concentrate on monitoring and appraising outside opportunities and threats based on an organization’s strengths and weaknesses (Thomas Wheelen and David Hunger, 2012).
America’s Policy of Containment was introduced by George Kennan in 1947. This policy had a few good points but many more bad points.Kennan's depiction of communism as a "malignant parasite" that had to be contained by all possible measures became the basis of the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and National Security Act in 1947. In his Inaugural Address of January 20, 1949, Truman made four points about his "program for peace and freedom": to support the UN, the European Recovery Program, the collective defence of the North Atlantic, and a “bold new program” for technical aid to poor nations. Because of his programs, "the future of mankind will be assured in a world of justice, harmony and peace." Containment was not just a policy. It was a way of life.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was made right after World War II ended. All the while many numbers of Soviet troops remained in Eastern Europe. Governments set up by these forces were pro-communist, are called the Warsaw Pact countries. Besides the USSR, these countries include Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. Western nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. The member nations agreed that an attack on any one of them would be considered an attack against all of them. NATO was another event that triggered Stalin’s power and it was seen as a defensive tactic against USSR which caused tensions to rise.
“The Vietnam war was a costly and very long conflict that eroded the communist regime of North Vietnam and its allies against the South Vietnam and its ally, us the United States of America (Unknown Source).” The Vietnam War began on the eve of 1959, causing a struggle between two of our major national forces. These two forces were attempting to unify the country the both love, Vietnam.
The Cold War is the closest the world has ever come to complete destruction. In this period of time, two world super powers were in a stalemate economically and militarily and were constantly competing to be the superior. The Cold War started as result of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had some differences on their perspectives of the world. United States being the richest country in the world promoted democracy and capitalism in the world. The newly formed Soviet Union thought that communism was a better political system because it transformed their economy and status in the world from nothing but a declining empire to a super power once again. The Cold War was a long series of events in which the communist tried to spread their ideas of government and socialist economy, known as expansionism, and the United States and some of the other Western powers such as Great Britain tried to contain it. Containment, a term introduced by George F. Kennan, was the foreign policy the United States practiced from 1946 to 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. The United States saw the Soviet Union to be a direct threat to the free world. During president Truman and Eisenhower’s administration the policy of containment evolved so drastically that American presidents would put anything on the line, including world peace.