Containment: Vietnam War and Communism

Defying All Odds of Communism After the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II it was apparent that the victors would come out as the new world powers. With the United States and the Soviet Union being the strongest nations of the victorious Allies they were the two countries who emerged as the new world powers but their views varied drastically. The Democratic United States and the Communist Soviets butted heads about each others views and the U.S. wanted to halt the spread of communism so it couldn’t get to the rest of the world. The U.S. adopted a policy of containment to keep communism in the USSR and the other places it had spread. The U.S.’s main goal was to prevent the spread of communism and they did everything diplomatically, militarily, and economically in their power to do so. During the 1940s and 1950s, the policy of containment was a sensible approach to the potential threat that the Soviet Union inflicted upon the United States. Although there were some mistakes in the domestic and foreign policy to the policy of containment, the U.S. did what they thought was needed to protect the nation. One of the actions the United States took to limit the spread of communism was limiting freedom of speech. Congress has no right “abridging freedom of speech” (First Amendment). Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one’s opinions and ideas, to express any beliefs without consequence. The main purpose of limiting freedom of speech was to ease the fear of communism. Instead, limiting freedom of speech enacted more fear upon Americans because they worried that they could be accused of being a part of the communist party. Although their intentions were meant for the good of the United States, Congress did more harm than good. Another domestic policy that went too far was the Smith Act. The Justice Department used this to jail Communist Party leaders. The Smith Act limited the free assembly of groups for whomever “encourage[d] the