The Pentagon Papers : Setting A Precedent

The key areas of interest that United States controlled since after Second world War and cold war are including but not limited to the establishment of military bases around the world, economic control, political influent in the international system, promotion of democracy as the system of governance by force in some countries, advancing of sophisticated technology and waging wars on some nations that cause political turmoil internally or externally. “The means of strategy involved a whole panoply of political military instruments ranging from limited warfare to diplomacy in the name of protecting civil society from incursions from without” (Klein, 1988).Embarking on

The American “way of war” can be seen politically through the evolution of military policy as political perspectives changed. Post-World War II reveals primary and consistent policies that lead American military policymakers to avoid major international conflict. Coined the Cold War, Americans began waging war

The United States developed into a world super power following World War II. Many of the Allies were deeply affected by the war financially and were struggling, thus leaving a vacuum that needed to be filled. The United States was thrust into the position of “policing” and assisting nations around the world. The Cold War was in many ways a psychological illusion however there were many factors that led to this illusion which were well founded. The Cold War stemmed from a multitude of factors, the difficult war against Nazi’s and Japan, Stalin behaviors were not trustworthy, Berlin blockade, Poland puppet government, the fall of China, the build up of arms and the birth nuclear weapons all fed fear-based anti-communist policies. In

The United States from the Cold War and into the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) continues to face challenges in translating military might into political desires due to its obsession with raising an army, electing politicians and assembling a diplomatic corp that continue to gravitate towards State-to-State engagements that if not rectified could lead to substantial delays in fighting terrorism and non-terrorist adversaries or worse total failure of the United States Military’s ability to properly carry out it’s politicians objectives due to being blindsided.

In “Questing for Monsters to Destroy,” John Mueller, an American political scientist, says American policymakers put “a truly massive emphasis on exquisite theorizing and on defense expenditures,” because these policymakers, “became mesmerized by perceived threats that scarcely warranted the preoccupation and effort,” of actual military action (p 117). He argues that American decision makers constantly saw Russia’s actions as bigger threats than they really were and acted accordingly, which resulted in the U.S. spending money and troops to fight wars they should have never been involved in.

In the past, there has always been conflict between the free press and the government. This conflict was very evident in the Pentagon Papers case, also known as New York Times Co. v. United States. Historically, the Supreme Court has disagreed on the limitations that can be placed on the First Amendment. The Supreme Court faced these issues in the case of The New York Times. The newspaper obtained a copy of a Defense Department report that explained government deception in the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers emerged when the American people disagreed on the United States involvement in the war. Under the First Amendment, The New York Times argued

Winston Churchill indignantly bolstered the American public with a phrase that would be remembered for many years to come: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” This line was what Americans labeled as the start of containment, the start of a new era, especially that of the war on communism later entitled the “Cold War.” However, it was not just this flimsy line that buttressed the supporters of democracy; the true motivator of containment was rather the “Long Telegram,” an eight-thousand-word telegram sent by American ambassador to the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan, to the White House. Albeit inspirational, the “Iron Curtain” speech failed miserably to do the one thing that the “Long Telegram” did: set the policy of containment in place with a purely American ideology. With this telegram, the United States started its trek dedicated to remaining the second world power of the time by reducing the Soviet Union’s power as to not constitute a constant communist threat, changing the rules of international conduct so the Soviet Union would not dominate the globe, and eventually fostering a world environment in which an American system could survive and flourish.

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

Conflict of political ideologies is something that was present since the dawn of American history. The American revolt against the arrogant, totalitarian regime set a precedent for the future events in which the nation came together to oppose anything that went against the concept of democracy, and capitalism. Communism, or Marxism posed as a huge threat to the free mined Western societies, thus resulting in world wars that left perilous aftermaths, and bred an ongoing conflict between the two global political establishments. The Cold War, which is most commonly known by the conflicts between the liberal United States, and the totalitarian USSR, affected multiple aspects of social norms, as it became a life style choice. The book The Cold War; A New History, by John Lewis Gaddis provides a detailed and constructive analysis on the causes and effects of conflicts and events that took place within the recent global history. Gaddis is a professor at the Yale University, and is a historian who contains a vast knowledge and expertise on the topics of Cold War and war strategy. Gaddis, in his book lays out the events that have occurred prior to and during the Cold War. What Gaddis was trying to achieve in his writing is to solidify the existing belief that Communism as a political opponent of the modernized Western society has brought nothing well but war and conflict. Gaddis illustrates the dictatorial regime that implanted itself in the eastern hemisphere, and has attempted to

Between the cessation of the Second World War and the onset of the 21st Century, the United States of America and the Soviet Union were embroiled in a geopolitical standoff known as the Cold War. In this international “game” of strategic maneuvers and incidents, both nations attempted to assert their influence over other states in what was essentially an ideological clash between democracy/capitalism and communism/socialism. Although the Cold War did not involve a full-scale, direct military confrontation between both powers, this notion manifested itself in the form of proxy wars and sub-conflicts. The United States and the Soviet Union backed countries that aligned with their respective interests, and through financial, political, and

President Richard Nixon once famously remarked, “The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.” If there is only one statement that captures the raw tension and scale of the Cold War, it is this. In fact, the real heat of the Cold War was often felt in Asia, rather than Europe or America itself. Real conflict broke out in Asia during this tense period of American history, such as in the correlated but separate spheres of Korea and Vietnam, but there was also diplomacy that took place, such as in China.

In this article the United States and Soviet Union were the main antagonists in the war, and the soviet used covert operations to attack the U.S. using propaganda. These attacks were what made up the Cold War, which was a war involving words, not weapons. People debated whether it was a fight between ideas and foreign power, versus armed forces and military strength. This communist war affected not only the U.S. and Soviet Union but China as well; outbreak happened in 1949, immediately following was a civil war in Korea, which was accompanied by the civil wars in Afghanistan. Throughout the events of the Cold War we see a turn in power struggles, where both parties are, “becoming less concerned with hard power and more concerned with ideology

2. Baker, Andrew. Constructing a post-war order: the rise of US hegemony and the origins of the Cold War." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries Feb. 2012: 1129. Academic

Under the ruins of the World War II (WWII), a new world order was beginning to appear. The old and weak European powers, were devastated from the war, and could no longer hold the world on its shoulders. Subsequently, new superpowers had to take over the control; they were the USSR and the USA. Soon after the end of WWII, new international tensions became apparent after the break of the Grand Alliance (Taylor, 1993, p. 49). The disagreements between the new superpowers grew to a point where the Cold War became a fact. That new world order split the world ideologically into two camps; the anti-imperialist(USA) and the anti-capitalist(USSR)(Ibid, p.51).The ideological war was underlined by a geopolitical transition, subsequently creating

As Carl von Clausewitz famously stated, “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means.” He could not have been more accurate in the case of the Cold War, which came more than a century after his death. The Cold War, being a war of competing ideologies as well as competing nations and militaries, was focused more on political conflicts than military ones, thus giving it the moniker of being a “cold” war. Yet while the United States of America, the leader of the liberal democratic side, did realize the importance of politics in the war, it was not so adept in understanding the political climate of the areas in which the Cold War was hottest. It is undoubtedly true that the American policymakers of the war understood its battles better than the ordinary Korean or Vietnamese when it came to facts and figures; at the same time, when it came to understanding the emotions the battles brought to its various participants, the policymakers were often seemingly clueless. The United States, all throughout the Cold War, showed an inability to understand the emotional climate of its chosen battlegrounds and the emotional impact its choices had on them, and constantly offered rational solutions to issues with emotional roots. This mistake impacted the American involvement in the Cold War, and should serve as a lesson from which the US evaluates its current actions. After all, as the leader of the free world, the United States still