Because of this believe the United States had to deal with soviets firmly and resist their attempts to spread communist influence globally. He introduce the term “containment” (Foreign affairs Kennan wrote) The long telegram and foreign affairs article essentially produced the cold war paradigm that guide U.S soviet relations until 1991 and the collapse of the soviet union not surprisingly the loss of the mainland China to communism in 1949 and the Korean war the followed
This was also the motivation behind Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill’s cooperation during the Yalta conference of February 1945, as the war against Germany, although in its final stages, was still raging. This changed at the Potsdam conference of July, by which time Germany had already surrendered; the common enemy was no longer a binding force, the old allies were left to fall apart. This disintegration continued from 1945 until its climax at the Berlin Blockade of 1948. The orthodox reason for the change from allies to enemies, incessantly campaigned in IGCSE textbooks, is that, as the Wehrmacht retreated between the Yalta conference in February and the Potsdam conference in July 1945, the Red Army remained mobilised. Stalin, apparently defying decisions made at Yalta, did not liberate the countries in Eastern Europe, but instead occupied them with his troops, much to the vexation of the Western allies.
While Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all had the same same Cold War intention of ending communism, their ways of achieving their goal were different.The Cold War was an angry dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union about whether we should spread or contain communism (Ayres 817). According to Edward Ayres in American Anthem: Reconstruction to the Present all three Presidents used some form of Economic Aid, how we help other countries financially; Military Aid, how we help other countries’ militaries; and finally, Military Use, how we utilise our military (Ayres 817). Their end goal was to completely contain, or confine communism(Truman).
This tactic mirrored a dangerous balance of power. Churchill called it the “Balance of Terror” because it was an equilibrium based on disastrous weapons. Another policy was collective security. No major wars occurred because everyone had either sided with America, the Soviet Union, or stayed neutral. By the 1950s, most states had affiliated in some way with one of the two
Marshall was the wartime chief of staff, and then in 1947 he became secretary of state. George Kennan, who was Marshall’s Head of his newly created Policy Planning Staff, was a career Foreign Service officer and a Soviet Union expert. In a crucial telegram, he proposed that containment become the basic strategy of the U.S throughout the Cold War. Containment was a patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. This policy would not lead to an instant victory but would smooth things out in the long run.
Yalta was the first event in the time period, and was where ‘the big thee’, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met and discussed the reorganization of Germany and Eastern Europe after WWII. Divisions over Europe became apparent as there were disputes over the Polish border, and Germany was to be divided into four zones. This ended reasonably, though shortly after, Roosevelt died and Truman acceded to the presidency. This came as a shock to the system and was where relations began to deteriorate. The allies met at Potsdam in July 1945, where the German division was agreed, though there were still disagreements over Poland.
For many in western Europe and Japan, the united States looked like the ‘good’ power in the Cold War compared to the evil of Soviet Communism. The Untied States was never a police state although it did support police states elsewhere in the world so long as those police states were opposed to Communism. The National Security Act of 1947 established the basic national security organizations of the United States–the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Air Force, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense the institutions that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War. President Truman had to struggle between paying the bills of the military to fight the Cold War but not to overburden the economy through excessive government expenditure. The Americans found the right balance
By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. This component of the Cold War’s beginning was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. In 1946, the diplomat George Kennan proclaimed that the Soviet Union was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent agreement between parties that disagree”; as a result, America’s only choice was to take aim against the Soviet Union in what would be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. President Harry Truman decreed, “It must be the policy of the United States, to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by outside pressures.” This way of thinking would begin the first portions of labor that would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades. With the implementation of the containment strategy this provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States to protect against any and all threats of another foreign attack.
Because of the disagreement with the foundation of a countries’ structure, the USA and the USSR were strange bedfellows during the Second World War. Their alliance was purely strategic. The underlying differences between the supreme capitalist nation (the USA) and the original communist state (the USSR) were bound to re-emerge once Germany and Japan had been defeated. Both of the Superpowers saw each other as a threat to its continued survival and adopted strategies to preserve their positions, which brought a high level of tension after World War 2. At the final stage of World War Two, it was quite clear that the Allies would get the final victory, so in February 1945, Stalin (USSR), Churchill (UK) and Roosevelt (USA) met at Yalta to discuss
The Yalta conference at the time that it was held was viewed as probably a big success and a turning point in World War II. President Roosevelt said in his report to congress “The three most powerful nations have agreed that the political and economic problems of any are liberated from Nazi conquest, or any former Axis satellites, are a joint responsibility of all three governments.” The three major nations; United States of America, Great Britain and Soviet Union; had come to 3 major agreements at the Yalta Conference. They had all agreed upon not stopping the war until Germany unconditionally surrendered, they would not attack Japan until they had finished in Europe and concept of the second front. This was considered to be great progress towards ending the war. All of these things contributed to why the Yalta Conference was a success.