During this time politically where the world was at a scare with the growing communist of surrounding countries change was exactly what we needed. Cuba was knocking on our back door and Russia in line to follow. This was a weary time for many Americans “Though World War II had come to an end with the defeat of Germany in 1945, the threat of a Cold War was already pressing upon the nation”. (S Curwick), 2002. The Cold War was something that Americans had fear of and wanted to stop it before it had ever started, 63% of Americans wanted to engage fighting against communists. Another threat during the cold war era was the ever so quickly approaching Vietnam War. It wasn’t very long after the beginning of the decade they started drafting service men and women to fight for our country. It was a scary thing for a lot of people just kids barely out of high school taken to fight, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Over 50,000 people enlisted for the war and over 11,000 killed in action were under the age 22 years old.…
On 1945, when the war on chaos finally went to an end, everything seemed to be going optimistic, however, without notice, the United States landed into another battlefield, the Cold War, which developed a rivalry and a sense of thread between two of the world powers. For the above reason, on January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy delivered in his inaugural address a sense of self-independence, security, and patriotism using rhetorical devices and rhetorical appeals to eradicate the results and effects of the Cold War.…
John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s significance was that he won presidency after narrowly beating Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. The debates between Nixon and Kennedy were the first to be televised and many tilted toward Kennedy because he looked younger and healthier than Nixon did, which introduced the idea that public image was highly influential in the way Americans voted. Among John F. Kennedy 's most notable and long-standing accomplishments was the establishment of the Peace Corps, an organization that is now responsible for sending thousands of American volunteers around the world to help the needy. JFK’s cautious and sensible approach to the standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis diverted a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Kennedy promised freedom to the world but was very cautious when it came to ensuring equal rights in the United States. Kennedy’s leadership in the civil rights area was hesitant at best, but he laid out the floor plans…
During the cold war from 1945 to 1960, America’s role in the world and identity changed as the United States grew into a world power and became increasingly involved in foreign affairs in order to contain the spread of communism. Spending on the military and defense also increased as America began sending aid to non-communist countries which had a large impact on the US economy. The US was fearful of a communist conspiracy like that of the first red scare after world war one and as the arms race intensified because of soviet developments such as the atomic bomb and Sputnik, more funding went towards developing superior weapons and technology including NASA and the hydrogen bomb. The United States was leaving the old policy of isolationism behind…
The United States was not in a very good position in the nineteen fifty’s. There was one sole thing consuming our nation, Communism. Communism has been and still has a huge threat to the United States and was a part of everything we did. We had the space race with getting satellites in space. The Russians were sending fear down the spines of the United States with its fast spreading communism that ignited our involvement in the Vietnam War which would play a role in the Kennedy presidency. When Cuba adopted the theory of communism with accepting Dictator Fidel Castro as their leader the United States knew they were in trouble knowing that they weren’t in good terms with Russia and to have the ability to have communism and communist weapons so close to the US boarder it was almost when we got into the Cuban missile crisis that Kennedy…
John Kennedy believed that it was possible for the United States to simultaneously take offensive in the Cold War, accelerate the arms race, eliminate poverty and racism at home, lower taxes, all without unbalancing the budget and starting inflation. His goals in short, were as boundless as his pledge to “pay any price”.…
The president soon learned that the leaders of the Soviet Union had different plans regarding the United States and the spread of the communist influence. During these years, the Soviet Union sought to extend their ideas to neighboring countries such as Cuba and other close by European countries in order to eventually make communism a worldwide idea practiced by all prominent nations. This presentation of the Soviet Union's determination portrays a possible reason as to why Kennedy may have felt obliged to engage militarily with the potential communist nation (Cuba) in order to resolve these conflicts of disagreement and reluctance to communism itself. As tensions worsened, military confrontation in Cuba approached. The relationship between Cuba (Fidel Castro) and the Soviet Union (Nikita Khrushchev) is an important one to mention. The connection between these two nations resulted directly with Kennedy's apprehension to the idea of communism gradually spreading to neighboring countries. The relation between Castro and Khrushchev developed during Eisenhower's presidency (1960 to be exact), when Khrushchev gave aid to Cuba. As Eisenhower learned about this growing relationship between the two, he immediately broke diplomatic relations with Cuba (1961 - one of the final acts of his during his…
Many Americans believed that Truman's foreign policy did not work. China had fallen to communist, and the American troops had been sent across the pacific to fight in the Korean War. During the cold war, it shaped the way Eisenhower's thinking from the moment he started office. He was convinced that the key to victory in the cold war was a strong economy, not just the army. Then, The Korean War had convinced Eisenhower that the US cold not contain communism by fighting a series of small wars. The best way to do prevent unpopular and expensive wars, was to threaten to use nuclear weapons if a communist state tried to seize territory by force. Which was known as Massive retaliation. He began to develop of intercontiental ballistic massiles that…
The United States came to be involved in the Cold War because even before World War II ended, there were signs of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once the fighting was over, those tensions grew to create what became known as the Cold War. The Cold War was a long and dangerous rivalry between the two former allies that would cast its shadow over international affairs and American domestic life for more than four decades. The United States came to be involved in the Cold War because the United states and the Soviet Union had quite different visions of what the postwar world should look like, the impact it had on life during the 1950s and 60s was that it grew fear of internal communist subversion and the struggle between democracy and communism still exists today.…
Did you know the Cold War was called the Cold War because of the “icy” relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union. Each president had to deal with the Cold War, but Truman and Eisenhower wanted Communism to be contained while Kennedy wanted flexible response. It all started out with Karl Marx. He created the idea of Communism, which is the theory of everything being publicly owned and workers get paid based off their abilities(Ayers 756). This led to the presidents having to use ideas like containment and flexible response. Containment is stopping the spread of a certain idea created by George F. Kennan(Ayers 819). Flexible response is defending without using nuclear missiles(Ayers 886). Kennedy…
The Cold War marked a period in history when the United States and the Soviet Union experienced tension. This tension was highlighted by various events that took place in different areas of the world. The Cold War was given that name because of the relationship that developed mainly between the United States and the Soviet Union, this all started in late 1945. During this time major crises occurred, two of those being the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin Airlift. The Cuban Missile crisis was a thirteen-day confrontation between the United States and Cuba with the Soviet Union on their side. The Berlin Airlift was when Russia started to isolate the territories of Germany under their rule.…
The Cold War had numerous affects on the United States foreign and domestic policy and way of life. Within the Cold War, individual events altered the United States for the better and worse. One result of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and communism becoming more prominent in Cuba was that Fidel Castro decided to militarily ally with the Soviets. This caused the spread of fear for enemies penetrating the government in the United States and people were attacked because they were accused of being communist. In the Arms Race, the development of nuclear weapons boosted the economy in the United States and the Soviet Union.…
President Dwight Eisenhower’s reputation, despite being one of the most famous generals in WWII, went dramatically downhill during his office as public viewed him often wander off to fishing and golf trips, leaving most of the official business to his White House assistants (Pach Jr. 2017). Thusly, America was in need of a new proactive, younger president. John F. Kennedy was the perfect candidate; young, charismatic and good eloquence. As the new hope of the American people, JFK already made a strong speech at his inauguration. It proved that capitalism versus communism remains to be the key political institution in America, with US and USSR government being the main and true organisations behind the continuing Cold War.…
The mentality of the Cold War greatly affected the decisions made by the Presidents that held the office from 1950 to 1974. The main thought that prevailed from the beginning of the Cold War was containment. It was the main goal of the United States to contain the spread of Communism whenever possible. “Brinkmanship” was the first major policy that was employed by the United States in the effort to stop the spread of Communism throughout the world. President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles coined the term “Brinkmanship”, which simply stated means using the military to push things to the brink of war without actually going to war. This was often used to intimidate the Soviet Union into backing down during the early part of the Cold War era. President Kennedy would take a slightly more flexible stance in terms of retaliation should an attack occur. However, it wouldn’t be until President Nixon took office that the metaphorical waters between the US and the Soviet Union would begin to calm.…
They continuously antagonized each other via military coalitions, espionage, propaganda, arms buildups, economic aid, and proxy wars between other nations. President John F Kennedy played a vital role in the cold war era. In his words, he said the American people would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of…