US Ideological Warriors: A Stance Against Imperialism

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Schlesinger portrays the US as ideological warriors defending the American values of freedom and democracy. The passage portrays an America opposed to spheres of influence approach and instead favouring universalism whereby every nation shares common interests. Schlesinger highlights how the US distanced itself from the UK when Churchill went ahead with sphere of influence agreements highlighting its opposition to such measures. The article strongly contrasts to Williams, as the source rejects any imperialist role by the US. The article does not acknowledge the creation of any economic sphere of influence and states that “the US must not permit Britain and Russia to revert to these bad old ways [spheres of influence].” The source depicts the …show more content…

The source outlines the open door policy which aimed to assure the USA unrestricted economic access to as many global markets as possible. The passage contrasts strongly with Gaddis’s interpretation, as Williams claims that the issue of sustaining capitalism was primarily on the minds of US policy makers rather than the threat from the USSR which was largely exaggerated. William’s claims that policy makers were deeply concerned about the risk of a depression and America post war policy centred around keeping this risk to a minimum. To offset the risk of depression, American policy makers looked to underdeveloped foreign countries to facilitate trade between them and the USA. However, the USA also tried to apply the open door policy to eastern Europe, this economic imperialist drive for new markets broke the sphere of influence agreement and the percentages agreement ensuring a break down in post war relations which was brought about by the US. Indeed, Secretary of Commerce Wallace cautioned Truman that “[the open door policy] was increasing tensions.” Truman did not heed his warning and went ahead with trying to consolidate power in eastern orchestrating protests over the soviet sphere of influence. The passage also contrasts strongly with Gaddis as he claims that economic instruments were used to serve political and not economic ends. However, this …show more content…

He claims that the US was at fault not for being too aggressive but for not being aggressive enough. As the US did little to prevent the expansion of the USSR into eastern Europe. He attributes the primary cause of the cold war to the imperialist ambitions by Russia and claims that the US’s passive response to this action as a secondary cause. Gaddis claims “only the west could have defined the limits of Stalin’s ambition. Stalin was incapable of doing so.” Gaddis backs up this claim of passivity by citing recently opened British Foreign Office records that asserts that “The fear was not of American expansion by of American Isolationism.” The article acknowledges the existence of an American Sphere of influence however unlike the soviets he claims this came about primarily by invitation as many states welcomed American influence to offset that of the Russians. He attacks the notion that this sphere of influence came about as a tool of economic imperialism, which contrasts strongly with the passage by William A. Williams. Rather he claims after WW2 US policy makers saw the USSR as a far greater threat than the crisis of capitalism. To back this up he states “policies actually followed did less than one might think to advance it [capitalism].” On this issue of economic imperialism, he further claims that the onus of the Marshall plan, Post war credits and other economic

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