The Cold War

QUESTION 2: The Cold War is an international conflict, a global fight between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in Europe in the wake of World War II but quickly expanded into Asia and the Third World. These international events, however, undoubtedly influenced domestic American politics between 1945 and 1965. How did the international Cold War shape, influence, or change domestic American politics in the first twenty years of the conflict?

II. BACKGOUND

Odd Arne Westad, Director of the Cold War Studies Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains how the Cold War “shaped the world we live in today — its politics, economics, and military affairs“ (Westad, The Global Cold War, 1). Furthermore, Westad continues, “ the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created foundations” for most of the historic conflicts we see today. The Cold War, asserts Westad, centers on how the Third World policies of the two twentieth-century superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — escalates to antipathy and conflict that in the end helped oust one world power while challenging the other. This supplies a universal understanding on the Cold War (Westad, The Global Cold War, 1).

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union opposed each other over the expansion of their power. 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...

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...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).

The American political economy of freedom seemingly was at risk. Thus, the Truman administration switched to an “adversarial relationship”. However, the foreign policy challenge, as Dean Acheson stresses, “was to foster an environment in which our national life and individual freedom can survive and prosper (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 63).