This was called the domino theory. As a result of the policy of containment, in 1950 Truman needed a crisis to sell the NSC 68 program which said the US needed to increase its conventional armed forces significantly to put them in par with those of the SU. In addition one of the assumptions in the USA of the early Cold War was that the SU controlled all communist movements and parties throughout the world and that any manifestation of communist aggression must have been inspired and assisted by Moscow. So strong was the American belief in the existence of a monolithic communist block, that the NKs were assumed to have been acting on orders from Stalin. In consequence, the USA intervened in the Korean war, not only to defend the independence of SK but also to deny the SU a victory in the Cold War.
Korean War After World War II, the United States reached an agreement with the Soviet Union to have a divided Korea, with the United States also agreeing to stay south of the 38th Parallel. In June of 1950, North Korea breached the 38th Parallel, prompting the United States to retaliate with support of South Korea, using sea and air units to help defend the country against the communistic government of North Korea. Communism was feared by both the South Koreans and the United States as it looked to oppress the freedoms of its peoples ("Cold War", 2011). Due to the rising fear of communism, President Truman enacted the Truman Doctrine. This eventually led to the Containment Policies via the newly established North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
1949 was probably the worst year. After the Soviet atomic test in August 1949 and Mao Zedong’s victory in China, communism became an even greater threat. The Truman administration orchestrated NSC 68′s famous call to arms. To move the public to spend more on the Cold War strategy, NSC 68 portrayed the Soviet challenge as a contest pitting good against evil. American strategy remained torn between simply containing Communism or rolling it back by actively supporting the Soviet Union’s opponents.
As if this weren’t enough, to make matters worse the civil rights movement intensified the standing of this time period. Interestingly, for the first few years of the early Cold War (between 1945 and 1948), the conflict was more political than military. Both sides disarranged with each other at the UN, sought closer relations with nations that were not committed to either side, and articulated their differing visions of a postwar world. By 1950, however, certain factors had made the Cold War an increasingly militarized struggle. The communist takeover in China, the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine, the advent of a Soviet nuclear weapon, tensions over occupied Germany, the outbreak of the Korean War, and the formulation of the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as rival alliances had all enhanced the Cold War's military dimension.
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.
We occupied Japan until 1952, but maintained a presence even after we left. Japan was a success. In 1950, however, communist North Korea invaded South Korea, causing the Korean War to begin and US troops to be sent in through the UN. 55,000 United States troops were killed, and that most definitely is a failure on the part of containment. In China, the United States spent very large amounts of money supporting the nationals against communist leader Mao Zedong, an effort that failed.
There were many different wars throughout the history and the United States has been involved in many different wars with different objectives and results. During the second half of the twentieth century, when Vietnam War happened, U.S. was involved in effort to stop communism from spreading as it did when Korean War started. The United States was part of the United Nations, and when North Koreans attacked the South Koreans threatening to take over south so they can be under the same law of communism, the United Nation as a whole decided to send military aid to South Korea, and of which the United States supplied a large portion. The South Korea was able to win against the North Korea with the help from the United States and United Nations.
At this time Kim Il Sung's made a national address in which he stated "The war which we are forced to wage is a just war for the unification and independence of the motherland and for freedom and democracy." The Americans took this act as a sign that Kim II Sung was utilising a communist take-over, thus in October of the same year America, with UN sanction, invaded North Korea. The Korean War became the first American war ever waged solely as an ideological war. "For the first time in the nations history Americans were asked to fight and die to contain an idea". The Korean War was extremely popular domestically because it was part of the Cold War.
‘’Truman was to blame for the outbreak of the cold war. How far do you agree with this statement?’’ The Cold War was a period of great tension between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, which were the two ‘superpowers’ that resulted from World War II. Although many believe that the ‘ideology clash’ between these two countries was the cause of the outbreak of the Cold War, many factors were involved. It would be impossible to summarize all of them in a text, since there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of small factors and events that affected the relations between these two countries, so this essay will concentrate on some of the ‘main’ causes of the cold war, at least according to historical resources. Defining the start date of the cold is a difficult thing to do: Some say it started even before World War II, after the Munich Agreement
On 25th June 1950, ninety thousand North Korean soldiers invaded South Koreas border defences, The Korean war had begun. This small scale civil war would escalate into an international conflict. Historically, Korea had once been a united country, under Japanese rule for between 1905 and 1945 however, the Japanese were unruly and did not treat the Koreans well. At the end of the Second World War it was decided that the country would be divided along the 38th parallel and occupied by soviet troops in the North and American troops in the South. Syngman Rhee, who had spent some years exiled in America, became the president of South Korea in 1948, while Kim Il Sung, having fought for the Russian red army during the war became leader of the People’s Democratic Republic (Communist) in North Korea.