Cold War Rhetoric and American Involvement

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how assumptions made about the Cold War by U.S. policy makers in the 1940s and 1950s affected U.S. relations with Latin American countries. The paper then proceeds to evaluate the validity of those Cold War assumptions.

From the Paper:

"During the 1940s and the 1950s, U.S. foreign policy makers were faced with an unprecedented and unexpected threat from the Soviet Union. Because of this threat, this period of U.S. History became known as "The Cold War." "For a time early in 1945, it seemed possible that a lasting friendship might develop between the United States and the Soviet Union based on their wartime cooperation." The Soviet ally whom the United States had relied upon during World War II had metamorphosed into a danger to U.S. international security, rather than a friend. The USSR's influence, by the end of the 1940s, had spread across Eastern Europe and threatened Western Europe. The United States began to see communism itself as an infection, spawned by Stalin, rather than as a complex ideology. U.S. policy makers feared that communism, which they equated with Soviet foreign influence, could spread anywhere around the globe where revolution might be fermenting."

More papers on Cold War Rhetoric and American Involvement:

• Analytical Essay # 132197 : "Cold War Rhetoric"
• Essay # 3920 : "The Cold War: Origin and Function"
• Research Paper # 62139 : "The Cold War"

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