How the climate of the Cold War contributed to the development of containment policies? Containment: The act of keeping a government, regime or ideology from spreading and within certain limits. The containment policy was made by the united states and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. It is a military strategy to stop the expansion of communism after a series of moves by the Soviet Union. In 1939 the soviet union worked on enlarge communist effect in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa and Vietnam (wikipedia.com). This policy represent each extreme side of detente - the easing of hostile relations between countries-(wikipedia.com) and rollback - forcing change in major policies of a state- (wikipedia.com). The United States President Harry Truman cautioned all capitalist countries about the harms of communism because it threatened democratic freedoms. The Soviet Union fired back saying that communism provides the whole population of Russia with equal economic and social rights. Despite that, the US saw communism as transforming the whole country to slaves making everyone give up their private life and thoughts. So that the US’s plan for containment to work, they aimed on stopping what they called “the domino effect”. In 1954 the U.S president Dwight D. Eisenhower described it saying: “Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” They wanted to act on it by providing military support, economic and technical assistance to non-communist countries. Thus, block the spread of communism. This idea was originally conceived by a US diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, also known as “the father of containment”. His concepts stimulated Truman to make the US foreign policy of containment during his rule (tellmewhyfacts.com).
Where the nation is on the map and why this location was strategic for both the U.S & U.S.S.R? The policy of containment was split into two political regions, a capitalist Western Europe and a Communist Eastern Europe. The “iron curtain” was a phrase used to divide Europe. The containment policy was basically just two sides advertising their ideologies through propaganda videos. The US would release propaganda videos to propagate anti-communist, and the same for the U.S.S.R releasing propaganda videos to advertise anti-capitalism. One would show how capitalism is better than communism, and one would show the lies that capitalism falsely advertised. The US were very strategic by putting Europe on the front lines, because they were geographically closer to Russia. And because the US minimised its involvement in the second word war and then joined in the end, they ultimately became stronger than the rest of the world. So they more or less used their advancement in economic, military and political power to manipulate other countries into doing what the US, a capitalist country wants.
What political, economic and militaristic special interest served the U.S. and U.S.S.R.? Economic: So the US can ensure Western Europe follows their democratic capitalist views they created The Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was created during the repercussions of the second world war. The United States used Europe's ruined crop fields and destroyed infrastructure for their advantage and aided Western Europe by giving them $17 billion. With this aid, Western European industries were producing twice as much as they had been a year before the war broke out. The aid also contained contracts with American factories which boosted an economic boom in the United States. In return, Western Europe will aid the US in containing the spread of communism (ushistory.org). Military: The target of the Containment policies was to prevent the spread of communism to new countries but not preventing countries that were already under the communist rule. In 1949 the soviet union attempted to take over southern Korea and turn in it into a communist party. The US agreed that they are obliged to repel using military aggression, and their excuse was saying that it paralleled what Adolf Hitler did in 1930. The Korean war was the first militarised instance of containment, as the US and South Korea fought against communist North Korea (boundless.com). Furthermore, under Eisenhower’s rule in 1954 the government used subversion, sponsored revolutions and small armed military interventions to overthrow suspected communist governments (encyclopedia.com). Political: The political part of this policy was what side a country was on. To make this clear to the world The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an intergovernmental military alliance, was signed in 1949. To counterweight NATO, the Warsaw Pact was signed as a counter defense treaty among Eastern Europe. These two ‘sides’ are similar to what happened in the second world war, where we had the Axis powers against the Allies. These alliances split Europe into two political divisions, which provided a sort of structure for the conflict throughout the cold war (history.com).
A historical event that happened, and why it was important the overall development of the Cold War? A historical event that happened because of the containment policy was The Vietnam War. The war began in 1954, after Ho Chi Minh rose to power with his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam. And because the US solidified its position against the Soviet Union and its allies, president Eisenhower announced his support to South Vietnam in 1955. South Vietnam and the US attacked and arrested more than 100,000 people, who were later tortured and executed. By 1959 both sides were attacking government officials and other important targets using fire power. The US would not stop its attack working under the ‘domino theory’ mentioned above. Meanwhile, North Vietnam continued fighting with strengthened defenses because of aid from China and the Soviet Union. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were eventually signed to restore peace and end US involvement. However, the fighting did not stop from the behalf of South and North Vietnam, even though the US could not intervene anymore. A lot of indifferences happened between South Vietnam and the US because of contracts the US wanted to break, and this meant that North Vietnam took full advantage of this indifference which made the whole country fall into chaos. The north vietnamese forces then entered south Vietnam and President Duong Van Minh surrendered and South Vietnam fell (history.com).
Any long-term impacts this event had on the lives of the people in the nations involved (not the U.S. or U.S.S.R)? By the end of the Vietnam war more than 3 million people were killed. This included 58,220 US military casualties (archives.gov), and more than half (of the 3 million) were vietnamese civilians, and the rest were military casualties from both the north and south of Vietnam. People all around the world argued that the civilians, not combatants, were the primary victims. This is evidently proved in the statistics mentioned above. This long conflict affected and the majority of the population. As mentioned above, more than 1.5 million vietnamese died and three million people were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Furthermore, the country’s infrastructure and economy was totally destroyed, and the reconstruction proceeded slowly and inefficiently. The Vietnam war also affected the US immensely. The government spent more than $120 billion on the conflict, this caused a widespread inflation. Moreover, the psychological effects that the war had on the veterans because they didn’t view their fighting as ‘heroic’, however they viewed at as they killed innocent civilians. Along with the physical damage because of chemical herbicide, millions of gallons of this substance was dumped on US planes in the forests of Vietnam (history.com).