United States Foreign Policy From 1945 -

United States Foreign Policy From 1945 – 1990 Essay, Research Paper

To see the world divided into communist and anti-communist nations is both a sobering picture, and one that will stay in the mind of many of the generation that saw the events that lead to the end of the threat of communism. The doctrines of each of the first few presidents of this time period are focused on the containment, impairment, or destruction of communism, and all of the decisions in each of the smallest events are pivotal based on the domino effect that could swing in any direction at any time. This was the rule of the day.

The primary concern of the first of Harry S.Truman’s terms was the closure of the hostilities of World War II. He partook in the Potsdam negotiations, making his feeling for Stalin well known while settling terretorial lines in Europe as well as renewing the Yalta agreement with the Soviet Union. This would side The Soviet Union with the U.S. in the war against Japan. This particular conflict was ended thoroughly and abruptly by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After this horrific display of power, Japan surrendered, and Truman was able to focus on his second and equally important goal of containing the spread of communism, a goal which was called the Truman Doctrine.

Truman.s second term was riddled by the contageous threat of communism and the need for restored trade in an economically sound Europe. The second of these goals was accomplished to a degree through the Marshall Plan which channeled $12 billion towards the reconstruction of their crippled economy. The first of these goals would plague many presidents after Truman, though many important steps were taken in this early stage. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for example, was begun in 1949 as a result of a Soviet blockade of western sectors of Berlin (McCoy 145). This, in turn, sparked the Warsaw Pact which consolidated the communist nations into one power generally controlled by the Soviet Union. Another anti-communist act on the part of the U.S. was the National Security Council Report (NSC-68) in 1950 which establishe the U.S. as the frontrunner of the anti-communist campaign, stating that the U.S. would not rely on other nations to take the lead in resisting communism. It also strengthened the U.S..s military power by increasing the defense budget to accommodate the expansion. All of these developments allowed America to focus more on the unstable East Asian affairs (Dallek 147).

Specifically, America focused on the Korean conflict in 1950 between the communist North Korea, and the resisting South Korea. The support of the U.S. quickly swung to the side of South Korean because Truman saw it not only as a small scale fight for a type of government, but also an important peice for the communist or anti-communist regimes. Unfortunately, support at home was not what Truman hoped it would be and he was soon faced with a dilapidated campaign which Dweight D. Eisenhower would rebuild by addressing the situation in Korea swiftly and effectively.

The Eisenhower Administration began by vowing to resolve the crisis in Korea which it did on July 27, 1953 in Panmunjom. The treaty created a 2.5 mile buffer zone across Korea which ended up giving South Korea almost 1,500 more square miles of territory. Also in eastern Asia, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was established to protect Indochina from the communist forces around it. In addition, at this time there was a situation that became known as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In this silent conflict was a hazardous arms race which would grip both nations. economies for the years to come. In southeast Asia, France was having trouble with the communist and nationalist Ho Chi Minh who was trying to take over Vietnam as an independent communist nation. The Eisenhower Doctrine, which was simply a continuation of the Truman Doctrine, supported the French in their suppression of the insurgent forces (Burk 133).

Eisenhower.s problems also extended into Africa where General Gabal Abdel Nasser had seized control of the Suez canal from the British to help fund the building of the Aswan Dam from which America had withdrawn its support. The U.S. pressured French and British troops to withdraw from an invasion to keep the Arab forces, who controlled rich oil reserves, from swinging their support to the Soviet Union. Nasser agreed to a treaty with Israel who had shown the first signs of agression towards the takeover of the canal, and thus a major crisis which could have caused a nuclear holocaust was avoided (Burk 133). Finally, towards the end of his administration, Eisenhower was scheduled to negotiate the controversy over East and West Berlin with Krushchev in Paris, when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia. This gave Krushchev reason enough not to attend the negotiations, and caused Eisenhower great embarrassment (Burk 139). Eisenhower left office having made many significant contributions to the foreign policy of that time.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy followed Eisenhower in the presidency, but did not follow in his footsteps in terms of foreign policy. Kennedy believed that, contrary to the Truman and Eisenhower Doctrines, the U.S. should not intervene on the part of insurgents just because they were anti-communist. According to Kennedy, the U.S. shou