Cold War Foreign Policy
"Their [Russia's and America's] starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe," Alexis de Torqueville, late 19th century. De Torqueville's prophecy came true by the 1940s when the two super powers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, had come head to head, swaying the "destinies of half the globe" and more. (de Torqueville, chapter 18) The United States had recently participated in the second World War resulting in an Allied and American victory. Europe, however, was devastated, economically, politically, and socially. "The United States [stood] at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It [was] a solemn moment for American democracy," former Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated in a speech delivered at Westminster College in 1946. (Churchill, page 1) At that time, American and Russian tensions had evolved into a full-throttle push into the Cold War. The Cold War refers to the tensions that arose between Russia and America that became a strategic and political struggle that developed after World War II. It lasted for 35 years and it was the battle that determined the fate of democracy and
NSC 68. In April of 1950, a top secret document was given to Truman by the National Security Council (NSC). It was declassified in 1975. The document was called NSC 68 written under direction of National Security Advisor Paul Nitze and it had was a amalgamation of all three proposals and both competing ideologies. Thinkquest team, Cold War: The Cause [document on-line]; available from http://library.thinkquest.org; Internet; accessed 10 February 2001 MES.net, "Containment Through Economics" [document on-line]; available from http://www.mes.net; Internet; accessed 05 February 2001 The Cold War significantly changed the way foreign policy is administered today. The United States was forced to make strategic plans to help other countries regain economic stability, contain communism, and not end up in a ruinous global nuclear war. The war was what pushed America from the Monroe Doctrine's limited jurisdiction to Truman's National Security Council's reponse to the endangering communsim and warfare with NSC 68, Containment's and the Marshall Plan's economic intervention in volatile nations, and Dulles' "brinkmanship." Three policies and two ideologies formed the backbone to what became the outline for foreign policy in America through the Cold War era and eventually setting a exemplar reflected in present politics. Today, many of the policies shaped in the wake of the Cold War are applicable to America's attitude toward and intervention in other nations. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1954), leader of State Department's Foreign Services George Kennan! Kennan's proposals and Dulles' proposals were directly in opposition to each other. The document was in response of two international events: China recently became communist and Russia exploded an atomic bomb, a technology the United States did not expect from the Soviet Union at the present. (NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, page 1)
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2111
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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