Containment As U.S. Policy During Cold War Era Essay

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.

of the US in the early years of the Cold war. The policy was to defeat

The U.S. Cold War began shortly after WW II. The two world superpowers, the Soviet Union and the U.S., wanted to spread their own form of government. The Soviet Union wanted to spread communism to the “satellite nations” under its control, while the U.S. wanted to spread democracy to the newly created zones in Europe. NATO was created by North American countries to deter the Soviet Union from attempting to invade Western Europe. In retaliation to the creation of NATO, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact with its Eastern satellite nations. Both alliances were created to deter the other from trying to influence nations under their spheres of influences, and during the Cuban Missile

On April 14 1950 NSC-68 a 58 page top secret policy paper was presented to President Harry S Truman by the United States National Security Council. It was a very important statements of American policy in the Cold War. NSC-68 provide the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War. It called for an expansion of the military power and defense budget of the united states development of a hydrogen bomb,and increased military aid to be allies.The US could not expect other countries to stop communism and the United States must estimates itself in a non communist

After the end of World War II communism became wide-ranging. In hope of making new allies, the Soviet Union wanted to spread communism all across Europe. After the fall of Germany in 1945, moods changed when the United States started getting suspicious of the action led by the Soviet Union. This was thought of as a power move by the Soviet Union to have world domination. The United States formed a new policy calling it Containment in return.

George Kennan's containment plan is a radical shift in the U.S foreign policy when the Policy of the United States towards the Soviet Union prior, and during the World War II is considered. The containment policy marks the shift of American foreign policy towards the Soviets from alliance to deterrence. Kennan's states in the Long Telegram, "USSR still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence." (Citation needed) only two years after the end of World War II, a war both the U.S and the Soviet Union fought side by side for a common ambition. If the aspect of radical shift in the U.S foreign policy is seen from a post-Cold War perspective, another radical change can

The Cold War holds a special place in the study of international relations and its paradigms and perspectives. In this part of the course, three readings work together to provide a basis of arguments and positions on the origins of the Cold War as they relate to international relations. As George Kennan describes in the article written under the pseudonym ‘Mr. X’ in the early years of the Cold War, the Soviets were widely recognized in the western world as being fundamentally expansionist by nature, and this fundamental attribute would lead to the ultimate quest to spread communist ideology across the globe, eventually leading right up to the United States’ doorstep. Similarly, Douglas J. MacDonald lays out the viewpoints held by policymakers

During the Cold War, America's basic policy was that of "containment" of the Soviet Union. The policy of containment was based upon several principles. First, the Soviet Union wanted to spread socialism to all areas of the world. However, it was felt that the leadership of the Soviet Union felt no particular rush to accomplish their goal. "The Kremlin is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry. Like the Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of a long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. (Hook and Spanier, 42)." In other words, the Soviet leadership believed that, since their ideas were the correct ones, they would eventually prevail, and thus, no direct confrontation would be

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

The question of, “Was America’s actions during the Cold War containment or hegemony?” cannot be easily answered with a single source or perspective. While some attempt to justify the United States’ actions during the Cold War as necessary to preserving freedom and the American way of life through the containment of the Soviet threat, there are just as many critics on the other side of the debate that have argued that, America used the Cold War as a veil under which it expanded it’s influence and power throughout the world. My intent is to show how some believe that America’s Cold War policies were completely justified and how others see America’s actions as nothing more than American imperialism.

1. Truman’s Policy of Containment was that the U.S. would work to stop the spread of communism by providing political, economic, and military assistance to all democratic nations under the threat of communism or any external authoritarian forces. The political aspect of this policy was the alliances made during the Cold War. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was a defensive alliance among the U.S. and other European countries against the Soviet Union. This alliance still exists today. The Warsaw Pact was a defensive alliance that included the Soviet Union and its satellite governments in Eastern Europe. These alliances assured that if one country was attacked, then the others must react by coming to the defense.

It was in a speech made by the 33rd President of the United States of America, Harry Truman in which he announced a policy that would undoubtedly shape the way his nation would be looked at for much of the century (or at least the half of it that remained). It was in this speech that he announced his very own Doctrine, intended to "to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”, to save the “free peoples” of Eastern Europe from the monster known as Communism, a political ideology born out of the Russian Revolution of 1917, that had spread somewhat like a plague, throughout the lands in the East, which Stalin and

During the Cold War from 1946 to 1990 the United States had formed a policy called the containment policy which was adopted by President Harry Truman. The containment policy was a doctrine uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to turn back communism and to insure that America would hold the leading role in world affairs.

In The Sources of Soviet Conduct, George F. Kennan explained “Containment was the central post-war concept of the United States and its allies in dealing with the Soviet Union”. To contain communism, the United Stated strategy was to have a strong

The historian’s belonging to this school see the Truman doctrine from 1947 as the point when the Cold War started. They put the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansionist policy. According to them, this is the reason, why Soviets broke promises from the negotiations during the World War II, especially the Yalta agreement. On the other hand, the U.S. politicians wanted to continue the cooperation between the Allies even after the defeat of the Axis. They put a lot of hope to the newly created organization – United Nations – and the principle of collective security. However, the U.S. needed to react to the Soviet aggression in Europe. They adopted the policy of containment. The orthodox scholars view this policy as necessity because without it “the Soviet Union would have become the master of all Europe, instead of only the eastern Europe” .