ar 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!
             , and other political figures had created a precedent in American history.
             In the proceedings and height of the Cold War, the American approach to the Soviet Union was an unsteady one. Realism and moralism took center stage in the debates of policy and are present in today's policies.
             Realists envisioned the United States to be motivated by consistent and well-defined national interests, whereas moralists wanted the nation's values to reside in democracy, human rights, tolerance, and so forth. (Spanier, page 293)
             Realists had the upper hand in controlling the United States' foreign policy in the Cold War era. However it was the fusion of the two ideas that truly formed the blue print for that troubled era and for today.
             The Marshall Plan. Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a speech at Harvard University in 1947 that laid the foundations for what was to become the Marshall Plan.
             The Marshall Plan was the respo...