Cold War

The end of World War II only began the Cold War. The Soviet Union was possibly the largest ally against Germany and the end of the war finally put the communist nation on the world stage. This led to fear from the Western powers as the Soviet Union began to impose their own form of communist rule against the Eastern European nations in spite of the Atlantic Charter which stipulated that the liberated nations of Europe had the right to self-determination.

In response to this, and the fear of communists gaining popularity from the economic turmoil in post-war Europe, the Truman’s Doctrine of containment in conjunction with the Marshal Plan which gave massive economic aid to West Europe was instigated to avoid possible communist regimes arising, especially in the case of Greece and Turkey. This effort to rejuvenate the economic stability and thus political freedom helped bring a halt to the spread of communism in Europe.

The Soviet Union’s Eastern bloc denied similar economic aid offered by the Marshall plan which also led to an economic policy to self-blockade from the West which eventually led to an internal combustion of the Soviet Union and thus ended the Cold War. Unfortunately, the fear of communism also led the US to also expunge any idea that communists operate domestically. Because the USSR did have spies in the US that allowed the communist to create their own nuclear bomb, action was taken, whether they were constitutional or not.

Such as executing the Rosenberg scientists without evidence of treason, though their guilt was later confirmed. Joseph McCarthy spearheaded a witch-hunt against supposed communists along with the House of Un-American Activities Committee. The hearings led to the wrongful accusations of many people, most notably in Hollywood. McCarthy’s career eventually faded away as did the investigations of HUAAC. 2. The emerging Civil Rights movement led to the enforcement of racial equality, demanded by the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

The major problem was that the Jim Crow Laws allowed for too much abuse of the idea of equal segregation. Eventually segregation in public school was deemed unconstitutional in Brown V. Board of Education. Boycotts in against segregated buses were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Another court case deemed that segregation in the buses were unconstitutional in Boynton V. Virginia. This was later tested and publicized by “freedom riders” of African-Americans that traveled to the South on former segregated buses, in many cases at risk of injury and persecution.

All these acts, these relatively peaceful demonstrations that exposed the violence behind segregation, led to greater equality that had been promised since the end of the Civil War. 3. American involvement in Vietnam stems from the exodus of French imperialism. At the end of the Geneva Accords, the 17th parallel was established and Washington DC had been funding the emerging government in South Vietnam ever since, no matter how authoritarian the Catholic regime may have been in its efforts to avoid a communist take-over and thus religious persecution.

What resulted was an unpopular despot, Ngo Dinh Diem, being the only alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s regime. More US military personnel were sent to South Vietnam during the Kennedy administration and President Lyndon Johnson waged an all out war. US bombing campaigns were waged over North Vietnam and eventually over Cambodia in an attempt to cut off the NVA’s supply lines. Massive US troop escalations were deployed in a widely unknown region of the world for an unpopular government.

Men drafted into the Army were typically lower class and such conscriptions were seen as racially biased in the height of the civil rights movement. During the Nixon administration, a process of Vietnamization began in which the US military began to train South Vietnamese soldiers to defend themselves so that US soldiers could return home. This process was later escalated by the Paris Peace Accords, which ended the conflict on writing, though not in reality. By 1975, all US personnel were evacuated from Vietnam after a final North Vietnamese offensive against Saigon. 4.

The first Bush administration initiated the Gulf War in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, an oil rich nation that supplies the West with oil. This invasion was feared to be first in a general invasion against the oil-rich nations such as Saudi Arabia. This had potential to cripple the West’s economy from drastic changes in oil supply. Thus the Gulf War was initiated and won swiftly. Iraq surrendered to a peace treated that barred Iraq from research and development of nuclear weapons. Of course, Saddam’s regime did attempt more research, prompting President Clinton’s bombing campaign, Desert Fox.

By the second Bush administration and the post 9/11 era, Iraq was still ruled by Saddam’s regime and it was believed that any discontenting regimes against the United States would naturally ally themselves with Al Queda, especially regimes in the Arab world. In conjunction with the shady behavior of the Saddam regime throughout the 1990s and the ever-bearing thought that the first Bush administration did not complete the job, Bush instigated a doctrine of preemptive strikes against the Saddam regime.

It was a doctrine that maintained that all regimes unkind to US foreign interest must be eliminated permanently so that future attacks will not backlash against the US. Similar to McCarthyism, the US also adopted a list of several unconstitutional laws drafted in the Patriot Act and in the Military Commission Act. What resulted were a series of reckless acts such as water boarding and torture, all of which put the US in an unkind view for many Americans and the world. 5.

Globalization in the United States has been emerging since World War I. The difference between that time which includes the world wars and the Cold War is that foreign policy is going to rely less and less on targeting a foreign enemy as it is focusing on economic stability. The supposed war on terror may be seen as a focus of US globalization, however this is a war that only strives to defeat descendent groups that exist on hatred only, whether it is instigated by Israeli aggression or US infringement.

The point remains that there is no central ideological difference with the US versus a specific nation. In essence, US globalization will be based more so on how to keep these terrorist syndicates from emerging by maintaining economically healthy and politically stable governments around the globe. Such as reinforcing the Pakistani effort against the Taliban and keeping Iraq free from a power-void that may invite Iranian intervention. Essentially it will be a strive against anarchy.

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