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In Europe, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin airlift helped countries that were trying to prevent communism and helped prevent the Soviet Union from taking over these countries. However, this policy failed with incidents like the Invasion Of Czechoslovakia and the U-2 incident. In Asia the policy succeeded by preventing communist North Korea from spreading into South Korea in the Korean War. However, a failure of the United States was the Vietnam War and not being able to push back North Vietnam.
Even though the United States was more successful in helping Europe in preventing the spread of communism than in Asia, the foreign policy of the United States made a significant impact on the world by preventing the spread of communism into non-communist countries. For preventing and containing communism in Europe, the United States proved to be very successful. Immediately following WI, President Truman realized that wherever the Soviet Union went, communism spread. He created the Truman Doctrine to provide military aid and support for countries that are resisting communism.
This was successful because wherever the Soviet Union tried to invade; the United States would step in and prevent that from happening. This proved to be successful in entries like Greece and Turkey when dictators tried to take over these countries. These countries became democracies and allies of the US. And are today still included in NATO. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was created as an alliance between the United States and the democracies of West Europe. This alliance was extremely successful because all the countries stood together and fought communism.
The Berlin Airlift is another example of a successful attempt to stop communism. When the Soviet Union tried to cut off West Berlin from supplies, essentially trying to starve them out, The United States, Britain, and France carried out the Berlin Airlift. Every three minutes a plane would land with enough supplies to keep the city functioning. Without this, West Berlin would have not survived and eventually caved to the Soviet Union, spreading communism. However, the United States didn’t perfectly prevent the spread of communism in Europe.
In 1 948 a Communist Coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia threatened their country. But instead Of taking action according to the Truman Doctrine, the U. S. Congress just approved the Marshall Plan and started NATO. The Soviet Union only understands action, to just talking about doing action. If the United States acted according to the doctrine then communism might not have spread into Czechoslovakia. In the asses the United States and the Soviet Join started to build their nuclear weapons, threatening to nuke each other if either one made a single move against each other.
The United States stated a policy known as massive retaliation. This meant that any aggression against our allies or us would result with a massive strike on the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was convinced that they could fight a nuclear war and win. Eventually, the Soviet Union and the United States both had nuclear weapons, creating major tension between the two countries, threatening all countries in Europe. Things got really out of hand with the U-2 incident. A I-J-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, making the Soviet Union and especially Khrushchev very angry that the U.
S. Was spying on them when really they were most likely doing the same thing. This showed how the Cold War was getting out of hand and the talk of nuclear war might become a possibility. The United States was for the most part successful in containing communism in Europe. Besides the countries that the Soviet Union already occupied before the war, no other country fell to communism, thanks to combined efforts of the United States and other allies in Europe. The United States didn’t prove to be so successful in their attempts to contain communism in East and South East Asia.
One successful attempt though was the Korean War. The Korean War started when communist North Korea invaded democratic South Korea. The United States and the united Nations intervened eventually pushing back the North Koreans (supported by the Soviet Union) to where they started and the border became the 38th parallel. However, the Vietnam War was a failure at trying to contain communism. The U. S. Got involved in the war when North communist Vietnam was trying to invade South Vietnam.
This represented the Domino Theory that if South Vietnam fell to communism, all other Asian countries would follow. North and South Vietnam had been spilt previously at the Geneva Accords. Originally the French were involved before us, but after the Gulf of Tontine incident the government passed the Gulf of Tontine Resolution allowing for more military intervention by LB] without officially declaring war. Eventually the war came a test of the ability of Americans to allow communist aggression in Vietnam.
For several years the United States fought in Vietnam but they could not win the war. With little support at home and many deaths, it became clear the United States wouldn’t win. President Nixon even tried everything, including “Optimization” which meant teaching the South Vietnamese how to fight on their own and gradually reducing the number of U. S. Troops. Another unsuccessful part of containing communism was preventing the Communist Revolution in China. Instead of stopping it, the U. S. Supported sensationalist of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China.