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The War Soviet Expansion Of The United States

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Introduction In 1976, with the election of Georgia governor and Washington outsider Jimmy Carter to the Presidency, the American people could expect that a change was going to come—and they were right. After years of military action attempting to stop Cold War Soviet expansion, first in Vietnam under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, followed by the quick and possibly unnecessary bombing of Cambodia by President Ford in response to seizure of the U.S. freighter Mayaguez (History.com, 2016), Americans were war-weary. Thus they welcomed the affable Southern peanut farmer who promised a foreign policy based on high moral principles and regard for human rights. Indeed, Carter set the tone with the following statement, during the first year of his (only) term: For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs. We’ve fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is sometimes best quenched with water. This approach failed, with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty. But through failure we have now found our way back to our own principles and values, and we have regained our lost confidence. (Department of State, 2016). Thus Carter took office believing he had a mandate to conduct foreign policy according to doctrines of supporting moral values and human rights in our relations with other countries, turning to the military only as a

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