Cold War Policies: Major Foreign Issues - Essay Example

Major foreign policy issues of the 1950s were Cold War policies.

The Truman Doctrine was created by President Truman in 1947. Although this policy was created before the 1950s, the substance of the Truman Doctrine helped create the Containment Policy. The Truman Doctrine basically “provided an ideological shield to permit U.S. aid to pro-capitalist, and presumably anti-communist, nations ”(Bacevich, 2007: 8). This allowed for the U.S. to become partially involved in Vietnam in 1950, and then escalate to outright war.

The Marshall Plan was created in 1947. This policy was created before the 1950s but helped post-WWII countries rebuild their economies in an effort to stop communism from spreading farther into Western Europe. Billions of American dollars were spent on economic support to help countries return to their economy before the war. It also served to unify the Western European countries and the United States as allies. The Americans offered money from the Marshall Plan (knowing the Soviets would not accept), but as expected the Soviets refused. This refusal created the division in Western and Eastern Europe (Hook and Spanier, 2006: 59). The Iron Curtain fell in Europe, but Western Europe was economically stable through the Marshall Plan.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan had the common goal of stopping communism. These measures were the foundation for the Containment Policy. The Containment Policy was a policy of stopping communism at all costs. If this meant setting up a puppet government under U.S. influence, so be it. The main goal was to fight communism, not consider what was best for the local population. The U.S. could not imagine a world of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets. Communism was a threat to the foundation of democracy according to the U.S. government.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan had stopped the flow of communism, but when China fell to communism a new arena opened for warfare (Hook and Spanier, 2006: 73). The Containment Policy was based on the fear that a domino effect would occur in Asia once China became communist. The Containment Policy was used in Korea and Vietnam. The Containment Policy gave greater power for the U.S. President to support a struggling country. Guns, supplies, and troops could be liberally deployed in the name of ‘containment’.

The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Containment Policy were all Cold War tactics used against the Soviet Union. The U.S. worked openly or covertly to end communism during the Cold War (Bacevich, 2007: 355). The U.S. and the Soviet Union started spying, counterspy, and indirect warfare. The goal of these two superpowers was simple. The U.S. wanted to convert as many countries as possible to democracy, while the Soviet Union wanted to convert as many countries as possible to communism.
The U.S. foreign policy was dictated by the Cold War in the 1950s. Any tactic to promote democracy and hurt communism was what the U.S. promoted. This Cold War foreign policy shadowed the U.S.’s foreign policy with every country they dealt with during this period. The fight against communism dictated policy.