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
Laissez-faire politics in foreign affairs had ended. Containment was a policy which was under the influence of realism, an ideology that Kennan was quick to adopt in his dealings with the Soviet Union. It also promoted democracy for ideology. Conclusion The Cold War refers to the political and strategic struggle that came to be after World War II between the United States and Western European Allies. Marshall delivered a speech at Harvard University in 1947 that laid the foundations for what was to become the Marshall Plan. *National Security Council, NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs of National Security [document on-line]; available from http://www. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1954), leader of State Department's Foreign Services George Kennan!, and other political figures had created a precedent in American history. "Brinkmanship" was one of the most famous of the proposals. John Foster Dulles responded to the threat of nuclear attacks during the Cold War with a collaboration of proposals known as "massive retaliation. If you try to run away from it, if you get scared to go to the brink, you are lost. Before Truman's presidency, Eisenhower had adopted the idea of a rollback to deal with communism. George Kennan was a large proponent of the Marshall Plan.
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Acceptance Essays
