The Japanese military success with the bombing of Pearl Harbor was obviously of great importance to the United States but helping our allies defeat Hitler took precedence after Winston Churchill asked the president Franklin D. Roosevelt for support in defeating Hitler. With so much division in the world at the time the U.S wanted to make sure ally relationships didn't crumble. With the instability in
The major Great Society programs focused on the war on poverty, education, Medicare and Medicaid, the environment, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities, Head Start, and the Job Corps. The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps program was established to provide valuable vocational training (U.S. history.org,
The years following The Great Depression were at first wrought with global conflict. With three physical wars and the threat of a possible fourth, this was a time of change and uncertainty amongst Americans. Overlapping the last few years of the Great Depression the world went to war for a second time. At first America had decided to remain out of the conflict in Europe, with much of our focus being on rebuilding and restoring our own country, and also finding it hard to justify risking the lives of Americans for a war that, quite frankly, was none of our business. This of course changed when the Japanese decided to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor.
It can be argued that America has become a 50:50 nation split right down the middle due to due to the separation of citizens to a particular party, white working class and southerners have been defecting to the republican party in growing numbers since the ‘white backlash’ in the 70s. Democrats have
One, if not the most prominent way that the nuclear arms race stabilised the cold war was the threat of one being launched, both the USA and the USSR were both already threatened by the ideological capabilities of each other, which is why they feared the nuclear arms race would extend to not just trying to achieve the upper hand over their opponent. The fact that both sides were developing their nuclear weaponry and rapidly gaining a vast amount of nuclear bombs meant that it acted as a defence strategy in warning the up and coming countries who thought they would have an opportunity in joining the world superpowers, such as China. The damage that the weapons could cause were enough to not just warn each superpower of the sheer control that the other had but it warned the world too. An example of how the
The focus after the Korean war was the nuclear arms race and to stop the spread of communism mainly. But they also wanted to avoid a nuclear war. The US and NATO forces were placed in countries near Eastern Europe to protect the spread of communism. Each power wanted more nuclear bombs than the other but as long as they were equal no nuclear war would break out. This was the balance of terror.
The goal was to contain countries with a communist government, and prevent the spread of communism to other countries. In light of the Cold War, the American foreign policy had included the Truman doctrine. With fear of the spread of communism, the Truman doctrine stated that the U.S. would help and support countries threatened by communism by political, military, and economic assistance. President Truman stated that the United States must support the “free peoples”, if not the United States “may endanger the peace of the world.. and surely endanger the welfare of our own.” (Document One) The establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known as NATO, also came way as a creation of a network of political and military alliances. Lastly the Marshall Plan, the United States had given billions of dollars to help aid and reconstruct Western Europe after World War II and repel communism.
It has been argued even further to say it was time well worth spending in Iraq and Vietnam. When analyzing these points one must understand that at that point in time America was deathly scared of communism and instilled an idea in their heads that if not for entering the war at that moment, then communism would make its way around to other countries and finally reach America. However, our government made the fatal mistake of failing to look in the long run and see that America was already a strong nation and by entering a war that would not certainly end communism the government weakened every aspect of the economy. In accordance, Iraq was completely uninvolved in the terrorist attack on 9/11, the accusation of concealing “weapons of mass destruction” was completely false, and having now realized that the only weapons they did have were from a purchase from the United States to them several years
This too was against the advice of knowledgeable people such as Stimson. Decisions such as this one created a greater distance between the United States and Russia; giving Russia substantial reason to enter a war against the US. Truman continued in a downward spiral, setting himself and the United States up for a war with each action he took. The Truman Doctrine served as Truman’s declaration for war, after Stalin and Churchill already issued theirs. Aside from the general aspects of the doctrine, Truman used it as a platform to validate a large economic aid program.
The biggest was containment against communism which was largely media based and intended to get the world’s support for the war. The United States enforced a strict anticommunist policy across the globe and expected everyone to do the same or face the consequences. (i.e. Korea and Vietnam) Although America did not necessarily win most of the wars fought during the Cold War period, they did accomplish their main goals which were to increase military and defense spending, create economic monopolies, and to greatly increase the number of military bases around the world. The United States could not safely increase their military and defense spending without the nation’s public getting upset.