U.S. global ‘containment’ policies since World War II

Running Head : U .S . global `containment ' policies since World War II

U .S . global `containment ' policies since World War II

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The first attempts to rebuild the pre- World War II world during 1945 and 1947 failed . The Americans and the Europeans found themselves in bitter deviations with the Soviet Union on many fronts . In 1947 encouraged by threatened European economic fail and a new evaluation of Stalin 's aims , the United States reversed a century and a half of foreign policy to presume a series of new

promises abroad economic political , and military -- under the general policy of "containment These commitments integrated a military guarantee to the security of Western Europe that is still in force almost fifty years later , and consequently a similar guarantee to Japan . A sequence of events brought a new consideration of the structure of world power : consolidation of Soviet control over Eastern Europe , the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia , the blockade of Berlin , the triumph of Mao Zedong in China , Communist Party assertiveness all through the world , and Soviet explosion of its own atom bomb in late 1949 . In Europe , by 1950 reconstruction with large-scale American aid had finally begun to bear fruit and European leaders had taken the first tentative steps toward unity . A more or less stable world , divided into two great blocs emerged to have developed

The realist approach crystallized in effect to earlier American trends to exaggerate the role of law and morality in the associations among sovereign states . Carr , Morgenthau , Niebuhr , Walter Lippmann , Kennan and Acheson headed the use of realist thought and influence in the early postwar period . Much of their disparagement of idealist tendencies focused on the reckless diplomatic hopes of Woodrow Wilson after 1918 that international relations could go above the messy domain of power politics and alliances . In the end , then , the realists persisted that America 's approach to relations with the outside world should take account of power dynamics if it was to accomplish something in the future . The European democracies recognized that their attempts at accession as an alternative to military resolve proceeding to World War II had made matters far worse . In retrospect , it became observable that the belligerence of Hitler 's Germany , Mussolini 's Italy , and imperial Japan could simply have been met by superior military force or not at all . The lessons of Munich and Pearl Harbor were interpreted to mean that national interests could simply be defended by military strength stable vigilance , and commitments to keep victims of aggression in distant places . There was also admiration that meeting aggression at an early stage achieved an economy of means as measured both by costs of warfare as well as human casualties . Standing up to Hitler in the Rhineland and elsewhere in the thirties would have been far more "economical " than the ordeal of World War II . The normal thinking was to secure peace requisite the country to be prepared for war in a way that would confront...