Essay On Cold War Foreign Policy

Foreign policy was influenced by the Cold War when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate in 1946. A premise that created the turning point in history was when Stalin declared communism would ultimately triumph over capitalism. The need to stop the spread of communism became the fundamental foreign policy priority of the United States, as well as other members of the United Nations. In order to accomplish this America adopted a foreign policy of containment by responding to any Soviet aggression with equal resistance on every issue short of using nuclear weapons. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO and NSC-68 were all deliberate steps in America’s containment foreign policy. Using fear that communism was spreading like a virus around the globe, Truman declared the United States a global policeman supporting and coming to the aid of any free nation actively resisting suppression by armed oppressors. After WWII, most of Western Europe was vulnerable …show more content…
To fight the war of communism at home, programs like the Congressional Loyalty Program and the Civil Service Commission on Loyalty Review Board. Increasingly these programs began to ignore the rights of individuals, required members of Communist organizations to register with the attorney general and many were unfairly convicted as spies. Hollywood was also a target of the many investigations launched to root out communist sympathizers. In a downward spiral of paranoia, Congress also declared homosexuals were a security threat and dismissed many federal employees who were determined to be immoral. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a predominate figure in the fight to rid the United States of the threat of Communism and went on a crusade convicting communist spies like the