Medical_Transcriptionist

Cold War Ideology and Policies HIS/135 The ruins and remains left along the Western Hemisphere following World War II in the mid 1940s-1950s gave rise to an undeclared war which greatly impacted American lives. This war was known as “The Cold War.” The Americans and the Soviet Union evolved into the two most powerful cultures following the devastation of World War II, which left these two nations in a mortal battle. The Cold War ideology that crystallized after World War II was comprised of several different new ideas for bringing down communists and forming a unity for Americans to avoid another war and promote rebuilding. Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic, fourth edition states that “by 1949 the United States and Canada had joined with Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a mutual defense pact.” The individual and extensive needs these countries had to rebuild changed the wartime alliances that had existed during the World War II. American Cold War policies and practices greatly influenced international relations from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. One document that had a major impact on these relations was the “Truman Doctrine”. In 1947, Great Britain announced that it could no longer support the governments of Greece and Turkey. When Truman heard of this, he got approval to provide $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey which marked a new level of American commitment to the Cold War. The Marshall Plan was another influential policy put in place to rebuild Western Europe. In 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall invited all European nations to request assistance to rebuild their economies. He presumed that as Europe recovered, so would its interest in buying American goods, thus promoting America economically and maintaining economic power to remain stronger than the Soviet Union. Soviet communists were a long-time fear for Americans and a large factor that kept the Cold War viable among the nations. As America used its strong economic power to rebuild countries, new alliances were formed, and Americans were able to have more of an impact in their anti-communist attempts. From the Cold War the thriving postwar society learned it was safe practice to trust America’s government and found prosperity as they shifted from war to peace. Reference list Nation of Nations a Concise Narrative of the American Republic, fourth edition (the McGraw-Hill Companies, 2005)