Throughout the history of the United States, war riddles its short existence. The United States had nineteen eventful years of foreign policy after World War II ended in 1945. It was a time of economic growth and prosperity for the US but involved conflict with the countries from World War II, the Cold War, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. This period had an active foreign policy designed to rescue Europe and Asia from the devastation of World War II and to prevent the expansion of Communism taking place in the Soviet Union and China. Much of the United States’ efforts focused on containment for these nineteen years, which ultimately ended in failure. Another issue that changed foreign policy in the United States was the powerful nuclear weapons …show more content…
One of these pieces of legislation was the Truman Doctrine. It was created to aid countries in Europe, such as Turkey and Greece, in order to halt further communist ideals from expanding. In his speech, Truman says that the Soviets rely “upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio comma fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.” This was directed toward the Warsaw Pact formed by the Soviet Union made to oppose the American-led NATO alliance. In June of 1950, President Truman sent US troops to Korea without first speaking to Congress in order to fight the spread of communism the Soviet Union was attempting. From Korea, the Vietnam war emerged and became an unwinnable black mark for the United …show more content…
The Soviets decided to build the wall which became a symbol of communism in Berlin, stopping the flow of East Germans to the West. This constant feud with the Soviet Union led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets promised to support Castro because they were unhappy with the Bay of Pigs invasion. A spy plane took a photo of where Soviets were building missiles in Cuba giving President Kennedy a tough decision involving the country only 90 miles from US shores. He ordered a “quarantine” of Cuba, being careful to avoid saying blockade because that would be considered an act of war. Kennedy's foreign policy did not live up to his inaugural address, but in fact was marred by a string of failures. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all had different approaches and successes in relation to their foreign policy strategies. Truman was very focused on containment concerning the Soviet Union during his presidency. Eisenhower had a brinkmanship and massive retaliation strategy while Kennedy drifted away from that. All three did use the idea of containment during their presidency because communism was the most feared thing at the time. While there were many failures with our foreign policy in these two decades, we can see that the successes outweighed them because of where the United States is