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In the years following the end of the Cold War, many historians and social scientists have written accounts of what were some of the causes and effects of this period when the threat of war was almost always present. One such person was Melvyn Leffler and his work, The Specter of Communism, which described the origins and conflicts of the Cold War. Out of these accounts several interesting questions come to light about the true nature of the Cold War. One such question that has surfaced recently is that of number 2 on the handout.
The main emphasis of the question or statement is that the Cold War never really took place, and what did occur was nothing but a complete waste of money and time. I will have to disagree with the statement that it was a waste of time and money for several reasons. First of all, throughout the entire Cold War, Americas core interests were constantly a threat from the expansion of the Soviet Union and communism. These ranged from the spread of communism through Europe, into the Far East and even into our own backyard of Latin America and the Caribbean. All of these places represented vital interests for the survival of the United States and the American way of life. When World War Two ended, the American public felt that they had finally achieved a peace that could last forever with the United States as the worlds foremost power economically, politically, and militarily.
The remainder of the century was to be Americas Century, a time when the world would follow the United States into prosperity, both politically and economically. The end of the war left the United States in a position to dictate to the world the type of peace that would now encompass the globe. Following the principles of the Atlantic Charter, the United States could help bring political and economic relief to the world through its systems of capitalism and democracy. Such ideas could be brought to countries of the world over time with first the introduction of a free-market economic system, and then with gradual political reforms and a greater advancement of civil liberties. The spread of these ideas would lead to greater prosperity for the United States and the world as a whole. There was only one thing in the world that could stop the spread of American ideas: communism.
The word specter according to Websters College Dictionary means; some object or source of terror or dread. With the new Soviet threat and its recent aggression into Eastern Europe, the American government and the American public had a real reason to fear the spread of communism from the Soviet Union. If the Soviet progression across the continent was to continue, the United States would lose all of its post war economic gains in the war torn countries of Western Europe. The loss of this vast and growing marketplace for American exports would have thrown the American economy in a downward spiral for decades. As the title of Lefflers book mentions, the United States had a real reason to fear that American core interests and security were at threat from the spread of communism. If the Red Tide did flow through Western Europe, the loss of the market for American goods would cause the economy of the United States to fall to something worse than depression levels.
In turn, the government of the United States would have to impose manufacturing restrictions on the production of certain goods. The international market would no longer be able to absorb the surplus American goods due to the Soviet control of our greatest trading block. This new economic system would, after a certain period of time, cause the American economy to become a command economy where the government would be involved in every faucet of production. This in turn would cause the United States to shift dramatically to the left or right just to sustain our nation.
We would have a closed society, loss of civil liberties, and Big Brother involved in our everyday life. In a strange bit of irony, we would become what we despised the most, a communist or fascist society with no individual liberties. After all of this, we would turn into a society that we fought the second world war to prevent. The fear of becoming a closed society from increasing German economic strength and the loss of free trade was a fundamental reason that Roosevelt fought so hard for the allies while we were still technically out of the war.
It would be ironic that the Soviet Union would be able to bring down the greatest nation in the world without even firing one shot or stepping one foot on American soil. The prospect of Soviet control over Europe, Latin America and the booming economy of Southeast Asia caused the American government to take steps that it had never taken before. At the end of the first World War, the United States recalled all its troops back home and basically left European security up to the Europeans. After the second war, President Truman saw that the security of Europe would be threatened for years.
As a response, American troops were permanently stationed throughout Europe to hold back the Soviets and the Red Army. Containment of the Soviets to their sphere also led to the creation of NATO in 1949. The NATO alliance was the first permanent peace time alliance that was created for collective defense between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic, and later in the Mediterranean. The United States also left troops in Japan to thwart the spread of communism into the vulnerable Japanese economy that was trying to recover from years of military buildup.
Japan, like Korea and the rest of Southeast Asia were also becoming a large market for American exports that had to be protected from communist expansion. When the government of Kim Il Sung brought his troops across the 38 Parallel into South Korea, he was not counting on American intervention to put down his dream of reunifying Korea under a communist dictatorship. President Truman was faced with the prospect of fighting another world war, the second in during his administration, when news reached him that the North Koreans had invaded the South. He faced a tough choice, should he risk an all out war against the Soviets and the Chinese for the defense of the small state of Korea, or should he leave the Koreans to their own defense.
Truman decided that the risk was too great to have communists in control over all of Korea. This would just incite revolts in other countries, especially in Japan and Indochina. The American troops fought for three hard years in the bitter cold mountains just to keep the Chinese and Koreans at a stand still. The real threat existed that the Soviet Union would escalate the conflict into Europe while the United States was fighting a protracted war against North Korea and China. The Soviet Air Force had already engaged American warplanes over Korea, who knew how far they would go to spread their ways.
American military advisors also told...
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