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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