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The United Nations

Decent Essays

The United Nations was founded upon the basic principles philosophy of collective security—the concept that any attack against any other country is equivalent to an attack on all other countries, whose task is to defend that country. Prior to the years following World War II, Korea and Vietnam were controlled by foreign powers, Japan in Korea and France in Vietnam; and once these major powers withdrew both Korea and Vietnam faced the involvement of an impending and neighboring Soviet Union. These two major international conflicts during the twentieth century can be compared and contrasted on four points: the background of the wars, the situation of United States in each war, and the situation during and results each war. Though separated by a decade and located in different areas, the Korean and Vietnam Wars were similar in that they were both embodiments of the crisis in which Free World nations acted on their beliefs of collective security against the Communist nations. (Source 1) After World War II President Harry Truman pledged in his Truman Doctrine, “To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion.” In this doctrine he proposed aid for the Greek government, on the grounds that the Communist rebels would take over and thus spread the Communist trait of instability to the nearby nations of France and Italy. Truman believed totalitarian governments posed a threat to free peoples around the world and to international peace—and in turn the people of

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