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A State of Clear and Present Danger: A History of American Foreign Policy during the Cold War

by Tom Wheat

   

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Conclusion

Of Further Interest

Middle East
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Cold War International History Project 

 

 

 

 

A State of Clear and Present Danger:

A History of American Foreign Policy during the Cold War

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." -Eisenhower- 

The Shape of American Foreign Policy during the Cold War developed in response to the disruption of the balance of power in Europe, and Soviet expansionism. This Cold War marked the creation of a bipolar world and the creation of two camps, Communism and Capitalism, each locked in an ideological struggle, in which America saw itself as the progenitor of what was right. In this struggle American Foreign policy developed "Four Pillars" or basic policy tenets in engaging the Soviets. These policy tenets were, deterrence, containment through alliance, commitment to intervention, and establishment of the Bretton Woods liberal economic order.

These basic tenets arose out of the break up of the WWII Alliance and Stalin closing the Soviet Union to the capitalist world system as well as both core hegemons creating satellite states that effected for a time the geopolitical and geoeconomic concerns among American policymakers and the arising consensual relationship with American business. Thus, these doctrines and polices in the beginning of the Cold War reflected this relationship and would continue to guide American foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

Furthermore, in the West the need was assumed that the US must assume the mantle of leadership in deposing the archaic colonial balance of power system that was chiefly the source of European power had caused to World Wars and then had begun to create nationalism in the Third World. This last phenomenon became much of a headache for American policymakers while seeking to appease the Business establishment, who were engaged in a surplus economy with the need for market access, to dispose of the them they often ran counter to their core values. The political and economic realities of our system of political and economic alliances where often constrained due to the majority of the time being spent dealing with corrupt and inept elites who stood in contradiction to our core values, democracy and freedom, and among others the relative ability to contain the Soviet threat of expansion. This contradiction of security aims increased nationalist revolt in third world countries. However, that political instability in third world client states was viewed as a potential vacuum waiting to be filled by the soviets. Thus American foreign policy was influenced by Geopolitical concerns and by the Business communities desire for raw markets.

Finally the Cold War created the National Security State, and strengthened the office of the President, giving him war powers in some instances over Congress, in terms of limited police actions and military engagements. Overall this era as Gorbachev would later define it lacked glasnost or openness and often policy was formulated on either a gluttony of information or on the other disinformation made available to unqualified personnel on both sides and policies directed from there portrayed an era of mutual mistrust.

My Thesis is that business domestic interests including civilian defense contractors having been mobilized during WWII were in part responsible for Cold War escalations in general, the apparatus of the military industrial complex fully geared towards one inevitable end, expansion of the post WWII war machine. Arguably the American side of the Cold War could be seen as first a history of state directed military mobilization and economic production, and then gradual privatization of that military industrial complex and exportation of manufacturing by newly emerging American Transnational Corporations. The Cold War created an economic system that was dependant upon vast military spending with the Europeans at first bound to support the American Dollar and Third World Countries living and dying by it. In the end the demands of the European creditors become too much and Nixon allows the Dollar to depart from fixed exchange rates. With this marking the end of the Bretton Woods system and the precursor phase of globalization the Cold War gradually begins a process of de-escalation and normalization of relations with East and West.

The Hawks and Doves as Krushchev and Eisenhower both agreed often escalated conflict in part because the ideology of both bureaucracies favored escalation because that meant both hands of the East West war machine established during WWII could sustain itself and expand influence. The Four Pillars of American foreign policy supported this relationship as well, and both sides looked for mutual antagonisms as a means of support for their military mobilization and production systems. For America this bred ideologies, real or imagined as to how these four policy tenets were to maintain the balance of power in the world and overall the process represented the gradual evolution from independent state actors to a gradual evolution of the internationalization of the political and economic systems of the globe. The military industrial system bred an ideology that was mutually reinforcing in that policy demands depended on the stability of the international system.

 

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