The Pros And Cons Of American Foreign Policy

American foreign policy determines how America interacts with other nations. Some positives of American foreign policy are that it has helped fuel economic growth around the world and has resulted in the trade of many customs and traditions between the U.S. and other nations. Some negatives of American foreign policy are that it could lead to discrimination against a certain country if the U.S. doesn’t trade as much with them. Also, alliances could form which causes more money to be spent protecting both nations.

Early American foreign policy consisted of the Monroe Doctrine, the Good Neighbor Policy, and the Open Door Policy. On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe wrote a policy regarding Europe called the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe

Doctrine consisted of three main parts - influence of Europe on America, colonization, and intervention (Monroe Doctrine). The doctrine was designed to to signify a stop between the New World, America, and the autocratic realm of Europe (Monroe Doctrine). It stopped the intervention of Europe in affairs in the newly independent American states (Monroe Doctrine). The Good Neighbor Policy was a foreign policy that was directed towards Latin America (Good Neighbor Policy). The policy repudiated the intervention of Latin America by the United States. It was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. The Open Door Policy was another American foreign policy which was initiated by the United States in 1899 for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity (Open Door Policy). The policy kept all countries equal in trading and keeping any one power from from gaining total control on the country and spreading their ideas and morals to the entire world (Open Door Policy).
World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (World War I).

There were two sides called the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were on the Central Powers (World War I). They fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States (World War I). World War I had very intense fighting which included trench warfare where soldiers dug trenches miles and miles long and had to stay down in them for very long periods of time. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers were victorious, over 16 million soldiers and civilians were killed (World War I). The United States tried to stay neutral in the early stages of the War, however, it became more difficult when Germany started sinking U.S. ships which included passenger boats. In 1915, Germany declared the water surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone (World War I). At a conference in 1919 called the Paris Peace Conference, leaders from the Allied Powers and leaders from the Central Powers met and signed the Treaty of Versailles on June 28 which ended World War I. World War I had a major effect on the world. Germany and France sent more than 80% of the male population between the ages of 15 to 49 into war (World War I). A total of 9 million soldiers were killed and more than 21 million more were wounded (World War I). World War I also allowed women to enter into the workforce to cover the jobs of

their husbands as the men went into war.
World War II is by far the deadliest war in history which involved more than 30 countries and took the lives of more than 50 million people (World War II). The war lasted about 6 years, 1939 - 1945, and was started by the rise of Adolf HItler over Germany and the invasion of Poland and was ended when the Allied Powers finally defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945 (World War II). The United States was also hoping to stay out of this war similar to World War I, until December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked a naval base in Hawaii. Japanese planes killed 2,400 people and destroyed nearly 20 American war ships and 300 American airplanes (World War II). The war resulted in the expansion of the Soviet Union’s power to the nations of Europe and China (World War II). Towards the end of the war, August 6, 1945, the United States dropped 2 atomic bombs on 2 cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs caused great destruction and killed about 90% of each towns population and caused Japan to surrender which started the end of World War II.
After World War II, there was a very large threat of nuclear warfare. The United States and Soviet Union started to cooperate together in an alliance which would strengthen the security of each other and would almost serve as a truce between the two. This means that if one of these countries were to step out and attack, then the other countries would punish the aggressive country. However, once the threat grew larger, America and Soviet Union started stockpiling nuclear weapons just so they could be prepared incase something were to happen (Deterrence). The Truman Doctrine was signed on March 12, 1947. It stated the the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations that were under the threat of other countries influences (Truman Doctrine). The Berlin Blockade prevented the United States, Great Britain, and France from traveling to Berlin and also split Berlin into 2 sectors. Eventually, the Western Powers formed an airlift system that lasted almost a year and delivered very much needed supplies to West Berlin (Berlin Blockade). The Cuban Missile Crisis was a time period where The United States and The Soviet Union were both terrified of each other and that either one of them could shoot a nuclear missile at the other nation. It lasted about 13 days and started on October 22, 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis). President Kennedy gave a speech that day in which he stated that there was the presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba controlled by the Soviet Union and the United States was prepared to use the military if it was necessary to control the situation and protect the citizens of the nation (Cuban Missile Crisis).
The Cold War is called the Cold War because there was never any actual confrontation or fighting between the United States and the Soviet Union.

However, there were some very close calls regarding nuclear weapons and the spreading of communism. The Cold War lasted from about 1947 until 1991 and during that time there were two additional wars fought; the Korean War and Vietnam War. The Korean started on June 25, 1950 when 75,000 North Korean soldiers crossed the 38th parallel which separated North and South Korea (Korean War). By July, American troops joined the war and the main purpose for this was to stop the spread of communism. The Korean War finally came to an end in 1953 and about 5 million troops and civilians lost their lives (Korean War). Overall, the war didn’t achieve much besides that communism did not spread to South Korea and to this day, North Korea and South Korea are still divided. The Vietnam War was another war that was fought in the time period during the Cold War. This war started on November 1, 1955 and lasted until April 30, 1975 with a total of 5 million casualties including American troops, Vietnamese soldiers, and Vietnamese citizens. In 1973, President Nixon ordered for the removal of all troops in Vietnam but many people did not agree with this back in America (Vietnam War). The war finally came to an end in 1975 when communist country North Vietnam seized control of South Vietnam and the country became unified as the socialist Republic of Vietnam

(Vietnam War). The term, containment policy, refers to a time period during the Cold War when the United States was trying to isolate itself from the Soviet Union and try to stop the spread of communism. After the Cold War, one December 25, the Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned from office and on December 31, the Soviet Union finally collapsed.
The First Gulf War started on August 2, 1990 and lasted until February 28, 1990. The first confrontation was when Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in August of 1990. Clearly surprised, other Arab powers including Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States to help. By January 1991, the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-backed air offensive attack known as Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War). After 42 days of brutal attacks by the allies in both the air and on the ground, U.S. President George Bush declared a ceasefire on February 28 (Gulf War). However, by that time, most Iraqi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or ran. After the war, Saddam Hussein remained in power and Kuwait and Iraq suffered major damage to their nations. Also, many uprisings began in Iraq but America failed to provide enough aid. The second Gulf started in 2003 and lasted all the way until 2011. The war consisted of two main phases; conflict and uprisings. The first phase lasted only about a year where America and Great Britain invaded Iraq and repeatedly defeated the Iraq military (Gulf War). The second phase was much longer and lasted until about 2007. There were many uprisings and revolts by the civilians in Iraq and sometimes could turn extremely violent. After the violence started to decline, the United States started slowly removing troops and formally withdrew from the war in 2011 (Gulf War). The Afghanistan war started in about 2004 and lasted until 2014. The United Nations move follows a time period of terror and power for al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, who has lead the terrorist group from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late 1980s, to Sudan in 1991, and back to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s (Afghan War). The Taliban, which rose from the ashes of Afghanistan's post-Soviet civil war, provides al-Qaeda sanctuary for operations (Afghan War).