Term Paper on "Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy"

Term Paper 4 pages (1130 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Cold War was the state of affairs between 1946 to 1991 of quiescent political conflict between the former USSR and satellite nations and USA and its allies. This was represented by political tension, military conflict, hostility of nations to one another, and economic competition. The conflict existed on covert rather than overt grounds with it expressed through espionage, proxy wars, military race arms and building of nuclear arsenal, as well as other competition such as race to the moon, wooing vulnerable states to their aid, appeals to neutral nations, via propaganda, and so forth.

Occurring after a short-lived friendship seen during pact against Nazi Germany, the U.S.S.R. And America spent the next decades bitterly warring against each other and each deeply suspicious of and hostile to the other. Whilst America ridiculed and intensely opposed the philosophy of communism and closely related socialism, the U.S.S.R. derided American capitalism and, what it termed as greed, selfishness, materialism and shallow values. Both publicized the other country as failing and destructive to global welfare.

Following World War II, the Soviet Union created the Eastern bloc annexing eastern European countries that it occupied, and consolidating others under the Warsaw Pact (1995-1991). The U.S., meanwhile, formed NATO, a conglomeration of military alliances, dedicated to constraining communism and expansion of USSR as one of its founding objectives. Counties selected to join either with NATO or with the Western Pact, or they established the Non-Aligned Movement.

Reminiscent of game theory with each superpower moving their parallel chess pieces on the board in effort to combat the other, America moved to finance Western European recovery with its Marshall Plan, whilst USSR prohibited its members from associating. Meanwhile, the U.S.S.R. helped foster communist revolutions in Latin America and Southeast Asia, whilst Western countries stepped in to prevent these. The Russian supported Fidel Castro and Cuba in their pro-communist revolution, with Russia going so far as to send in nuclear missiles in 1962. America retaliated with the Cuban Missile crisis.

The Cold War featured periods of calm mediated by periods of tension. The periods of tension included the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, most famously, the Vietnam War.

Periods of diplomacy and economic pressure occurred under the Reagan administration in the 1980s when Russia was more open to receiving it due to their economic difficulties. Gorbachev in the late 1980s led to fragmentation f the Cold War with his pioneering reforms of perestroika (i.e. "reorganization") and glasnost ("Openness') and the Cold war finally melted in 1991 with collapse of the Soviet Union.

Describe the U.S. Diplomacy that Truman followed

The Truman Doctrine was announced in March 1947 containing the following announcement:

We shall not realize our [foreign policy] objectives unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States (Shmoop.com)

Although it was articulated in response to the current crises of Greece and Turkey, it was in effect targeted to containing Communism anywhere in the world and to pledging American resources to that purpose.

Truman's statement led to Secretary of State George C. Marshall introducing and… READ MORE

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