Mccarthyism And The Red Scare Essay

Introduction:
During the First World War Americans began to develop a fear communist subversion within American society, this fear became known as the Red Scare. This fear of communism was compounded during the Cold War because of the paranoid beliefs of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who developed a set of anit-communism ethos known as McCarthyism. The purpose of McCarthyism was to minimize the communist threat to America by accusing and detaining suspected communists by claiming that they were a national security threat or disloyal to the United States. McCarthyism stirred a communist witch-hunt in American that no one was safe from, Senator McCarthy accused everyone from congressmen and State Department officials to regular Americans. McCarthy instilled a fear into the American people that had them looking at their neighbors and friends and thinking they could be communists. His threats and accusations of communist subversion influenced the way policy makers made decisions, changed U.S. foreign policy, and even got the United States involved in unnecessary regional conflicts. This case study will discuss how McCarthyism compounded the fear of communist subversion to the point where it influenced the decision making process of policy makers and changed U.S. foreign policy. How did McCarthyism and the Red Scare influence the decisions …show more content…
The Truman Doctrine created the basis for protecting American from communist subversion tactics by claiming “the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian [communists] forces” (The Truman Library). Prior to the Truman Doctrine the stance of U.S. foreign policy was somewhat isolationist by not involving itself in regional conflict that did not directly affect the United States (Kennan