Truman Doctrine

As World War II comes to an end, so did one of the alliances held during it between the world’s new super powers, The United States and the Soviet Union. This marks the renewal of the great Red Scare as well as the start of the fight against the spread of communism, and at this time the United States was led by President Harry S. Truman. He would adopt his policy of Containment against the Soviet Union to try and just contain the communist threat to the USSR instead of making a war trying to just outright eliminate it. This policy came about in Truman’s most famous speeches in the “Truman Doctrine” where Truman would introduce his policy on the USSR. Immediately following President Truman was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who had brought his own ideas to the table regarding the Cold War and Russia, this was known as Brinkmanship. These two men and ideas did differ quite a bit, having their own …show more content…
Eisenhower. Old “Ike” had come out tough against the Communist Soviet Union and didn’t think that containment would do that job anymore, he thought that it needed to be eliminated, so he took on a policy known as Brinkmanship. Brinkmanship is defined as allowing tensions rise to the highest and then use the “brink” of war against the other country, most namely the USSR as a way to calm things down (LeFerber, 2005). ” Watry’s analysis is based on risktaking, or brinkmanship, a genre he subdivides into nuclear, covert, diplomatic, and economic brinkmanship” (Deighton, 2015). Eisenhower also was okay with the idea that the United States could use their atomic weapons on strategic positions that were scouted out before hand as a way to hurt the enemy. At the same time he knew the ramifications of using atomic weapons and the effect they could have, so he would rather try other things