Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy

Cold War

Truman 1945-1953 and expansion of communism

As the 21 century approaches, there was every indication on the firmness of Present Harry S. Truman's reputation on the subject of his stewardship of foreign policy even though, as luck would have it, he took over Oval Office in the year 1945 inexperienced in affairs of the world. As he was approaching the end of his reign in the White House, there were accusations from the Republicans that his administration had surrendered about fifteen nations as well as subjecting five hundred million persons to communism and further sent close to twenty thousand Americans to the so call their "burial ground" in Korea. This deepened Truman's public favorable rating leaving it at 23%.

President Harry Truman adopted an international relations policy that he did set in his speech in March 1947. The speech stated that the United States would assist Turkey as well as Greece in terms of military and economic issues for them not to be in a position to fall into the Soviet sphere. According to Fraser J. Harbutt, (2002), historians over and over again consider it as the beginning of the Cold War as well as the commencement of the containment policy purposely to put an end to the spreading of Soviet. President Harry Truman then went ahead and explained to the Congress the purpose of the Doctrine, which he said, was purely to assist free persons who are opposing efforts by armed minorities towards subjugation not forgetting pressure from outside (Michael Beschloss, 2006). Truman acted in this manner for the reason that these dictatorial regimes pressurized free persons and this imposes threat to international peace as well as international safety of the U.S.A. This plea came up in the course of the Greek Civil war crisis that occurred around 1946 -- 1949. The president was to the opinion that unless Greece and Turkey get the support that the urgently needed then they were bound to inexorably is victims of communism which without doubt would impose serious consequences throughout the region. Even though Greece threats were more immediate, it was proper to support the two nations equally because of their historic rivalry.

For a good period of time Britain has been supporting Greece, but due to their financial instability they were forced to drastically lessen their support. This made the British to formally seek United States hand in supporting Greece (Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, 2002). As George McGhee, (1990) puts it, the policy did enjoy the support of Republicans who then were controlling Congress and this yielded an aid of about $400 million but they did not involve their military forces to the region. All these efforts were meant to crack a whip on Communist threats and this bore fruits when both Greece and Turkey joined NATO which was a military alliance purposely to guarantee their security. According to Dennis Merrill, (2006), The Doctrine in a relaxed way proceeded to turn into the foundation of American Cold War policy all over Europe and globally. This turned American foreign policy in the direction of the Soviet Union from a relaxation of tension to a policy of suppression of Soviet growth as supported by diplomat George Kennan.

American Cold War policy Europe as well as globally was underpinned by the Truman Doctrine. The endurance of Truman doctrine came about for the reason that it did tackle a wider cultural insecurity on the subject of present life in a globalized world. It properly tackled Washington's apprehension over communism's domino consequence, it also facilitated a media-sensitive presentation of the doctrine that scoped bipartisan support, and it gather together American economic influence to bring up-to-date and make stabile regions that were considered unstable minus express military involvement. It did elevate nation building activities as well as transformation programs to the foremost position of foreign policy.

The Truman Doctrine turned out to be figure of speech for crisis support to safeguard a country from communist manipulates. Truman made use of disease metaphors to bring to light the logic of the approaching disaster in the increase of communism above this; he also used it to make up a "rhetorical vision" of controlling communism by making bigger a defensive guard around non-communist nations all through the globe. It also supported the "quarantine the aggressor" policy Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to inflict to hold German and Japanese growth in 1937. This policy (quarantine) recommended the responsibility of public health officials managing a communicable disease. The medical figure of speech widened further than the instantaneous purposes of the Truman Doctrine in the sense that the metaphors put together with fire as well as flood descriptions evocative of disaster presented the United States with an unproblematic changeover to express military confrontation in coming years with communist forces in Korea and Vietnam. By availing ideological disparities in life or death conditions, Truman was in a position to drum up support for this communism controlling policy (Denise M. Bostdorff, 2008)

Among the downfalls of Truman lies the economical struggle that was experienced by a number of European nations which in a way could have exposed them to communists' threats. This paved way for the anticipated Marshall plan which was meant to rescue the nations from these tough economical times by so offering aid to all nations. Marshall Plan easily elevated United States to a proper internationalist nation just in months. (George McGhee, 1990)

For the first time money could be felt in other nations with the main purpose of assisting United States achieve its objective. United States undertook unconstitutional mandate for the purpose of stopping communism to an end and with this United States enemies increased. For instance the period when North Koreans made attempts to capture South Korea and United States intervened by so sending troops over to South Korea purposely to stop communism. These placed the United States in a very tricky position, bringing them up against much more they could take care of. A good number of their troops were swept and the authority was blinded with their objective. Finally, they succeeded in gaining control but at the expense of their own 60,000 men.

A further key downfall of the Truman Doctrine came by as the result of the participation United States had in the Vietnam War. By the time United States was coming to terms with the fact that they were achieving nothing due to relentlessness of North Vietnamese, they had lost a big number of troops amounting to 65,000 and were still not in a position to contain communists The most horrible piece was that the United States society's interest in the war diminished for the reasons that the war was far away