Containment Early Cold war Essay

Truman believed that if Russia got Greece and Turkey it would then get Italy and France and the “iron curtain” would extend to western Ireland and to the United States. Arnold posits that Truman’s views were excessive. Stalin never challenged the Truman Doctrine or western dominance in Turkey, which was under U.S. military guidance, and Greece. Arnold states, “ [Stalin] provided almost no aid to the Greek rebels and told Yugoslavia’s leaders in early 1948 to halt their aid because the United States would never allow the Greek Communist to win and break Anglo-American control in the Mediterranean” (221). Arnold believed that President Truman more often than not narrowed rather than broadened his options. Truman’s insecurity also reinforced his liking to view conflict in black-and-white terms, to categorize all nations as either free or totalitarian, to demonize his opponents, and to ignore the complexities of historic national conflicts. In sum, despite Truman’s claim to have “knocked the socks off the communists,” he left the White House with his presidency in tatters, military spending at a record high, McCarthyism rampant, and the United States on Cold War footing at home and abroad.

Notably the most prominent US effort to build a Congressional consensus was the United States assumption of Britain’s former role as policeman of the world. Henceforth, when President Truman appealed to Congress he called “…for an activist American foreign policy - a policy that would be at once anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.” To counter communist expansion, the United States would have to implement a policy supporting the “…free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside efforts” (McMahon 29). That is to say that the United States would now assume a role in which it would suppress any communistic expansionist effort forced upon any democratic nation, made on behalf of the growing communist expansionist efforts. As a result, the United States would now compete against the Soviet Union as it tried to bring third world countries under its own sphere of influence by persuading some countries to ally with the US in exchange for a greater access to the American market.

Kennan, author of the Long Telegram, published an influential article under the pseudonym “Mr. X” in the journal Foreign Affairs in which he outlined a policy of containment against the Soviet Union. The strategy was designed to put enough pressure on the Soviet Union to produce a change in both its internal structure and its international conduct. The application of counter-forces at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points were designed to break-up or gradually mellow Soviet power. Thereafter, the United States embarked on a global strategy to confront the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding changes in tactics, containment remained the basis for U.S. policy for four decades.

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.

George Kennan’s containment, regarded as the Cold War’s “Universal Doctrine,” evolved and adapted to each administration’s unique foreign policy orientations from Truman to Reagan. Circumstantial political and economic conditions dictated the evolution, but Cold War strategists preserved aspects of containment’s identity—notably persistent counterforce against the Soviet Union to restore a balance of power. Though containment guided Cold War foreign policy and contributed to U.S. victory, one should not regard its means or ends as consistent; each president administration revalued containment’s instruments (political, economic, psychological, military) by flip-flopping from asymmetrical to symmetrical orientations. I do not condemn each administration’s

The United States foreign policy during the Cold War was specifically to prevent Communistic influence from the Soviet Union to the rest of the world. With areas like, China, Africa, Korea, Vietnam, and Eastern Europe already in the communistic view, “containment” policies were put in place. Containment was first heard of in the early 1940’s by a U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan. He proposed a strategy to stop communistic views. The first action of containment was with Harry S. Truman and his effort for aid in Greece and Turkey, addressed at a joint session of Congress. Truman showed how both Greece and Turkey needed assistance from the United States, and with this assistance, can help contain communism away from Greece, therefore having a better position on Turkey. The next act of containment was shortly after the Truman Doctrine, and it was with George C. Marshall’s speech in front of Harvard Grad Students. He proposed the Marshall Plan, a post-war European program to help aid countries that were destroyed during WWII. This was one of the strategies used during this time. Once Dwight

The Cold War and the reality of nuclear weapons shaped the U.S. foreign policy from the end of the Second World War up to, and including, the War in Vietnam. However, the reality of nuclear weapons did not help America to have an effective foreign policy. After the end of World War II, the President of the United States of America, Harry S. Truman, embraced a policy of communist containment (Heineman 72). This policy sought to limit the expansion of the Soviet Union. As such, the foreign policy of the U.S. fought communism. In doing so, America help those countries in Europe which are torn by war to return to prosperity. Despite U.S. Cold War foreign policy around the 1940s, Democratic liberals were uncomfortable with the idea that the U.S.

When most people think of war they think of blood, violence, and death, however the Cold War was a different kind of war. The textbook describes the Cold War as a high tense military, political, and economic struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union going on from 1949 to 1991. (Ayers, et al 822). The presidents used containment to help fight against the spread of communism. Containment is a United States policy made in the late 1940’s to stop the spread of communism by providing economic and military aid (Ayers, et al R94). Harry S. Truman, the first of three presidents that were involved in the Cold War, favored economic aid. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a past military general, thought military use was the answer to solving the world

What was the policy of “Containment” in the Cold War? How was it used and

Albeit both Truman and Stalin expanded pressures in Europe and East Asia in the years quickly taking after World War II, the Icy War itself was likely inescapable. The partnership that had shaped between the United States and the USSR amid World War II was not sufficiently solid to defeat the previous many years of suspicion and unease between the two countries. In addition, as both pioneers tried to accomplish their after war security goals, which were frequently fundamentally unrelated, nor was willing to bargain.

At the end of World War II, American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy that they called “containment”. The Soviet Troops “had occupied parts of northern Iran, hoping to pressure that country to grant it access to its rich oil fields” (p. 714). In the famous Long Telegram, the diplomat George Kennan, advises the Truman administration that the Soviets could not be dealt with as a “normal government”. He also explained that “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree] as a result, America’s only choice was the ‘long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies’” (History). Kennan’s telegram laid the foundation that became known as “the policy of containment” and

Stalin’s regime was only further exploited as problematic and oppressive by the manner in which he reacted to the U.S foreign policy change during the late 1940’s. In a sense it revealed the first cracks in the foundation to which was to become an ever collapsing communism. Truman was worried about Stalin’s expansionist tendencies and reacted to this by releasing the Truman Doctrine in 1947- in this he planned to change the US foreign policy from that of isolationism to containing the development of communism or “containment” the doctrine stated that “it must be the policy of the west to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities” However, the first example of this containment was not by force but rather by economic aid with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in June 1947. This committed the United States to

Annotation: This influential essay, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” was originally published by an author using the pseudonym “X” although the author was a U.S. State Department official George F. Kennan. His article discusses U.S. anti-communism, the origins of Truman’s Doctrine containment policy and the deferment of the Soviet Union.

The military spent about 8 trillion dollars on the Cold War and to contain communism. This price is very low compared to the 100,000 American soldiers who paid the ultimate price and lost their lives. (Boundless) The Cold War was a period of tension between the United States of America and the Soviet Union during the years of 1947 through 1991 regarding communism. Three of the presidents during the Cold War campaigned against communism using containment. Containment is the practice of preventing something harmful, such as communism, from spreading to other places. (Ayers et al. ***) George F. Kennan was a big advocate for containment and his writings inspired the three presidents’ foreign policies. (Ayers

From 80 million deaths to zero. How can there be a war without blood, yet it lasted 46 years. The Cold War starts right after the second World War. A war of ideas and politics. A war battling over capitalism to communism, democracy to dictatorship, and freedom to limited freedom. George Kennan was a US foreign service agent who suggested containment. "United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient, but vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies," said George Kennan. What is containment? How does it work? What does it look like? Containment is the action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. These are the three major events that explicitly state the US foreign policy of containment they include: the Berlin Airlift, Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.