Us Involvement In The Cold War

After WWII the US and the Soviet Union quickly turned from allies to enemies. When the war ended the Soviet Union was the greatest communist power and the US was the greatest capitalist power. During this time anti-communism greatly increased in the US, which was shown through events such as the rise of McCarthyism and trials such as the Rosenbergs. Each of these two powers wanted to expand their power by getting other countries to develop their system of government and economy; that led to the Cold War. Due to the large number of colonies in Asia that were becoming free after WWII they were a large part of the Cold War. Both the US and the Soviet Union fought fiercely to get those new countries to adopt capitalism and communism respectively. Two of the most important colonies in the conflict were Korea and Vietnam. Both of these countries ended up being in wars with the US where the US supported a capitalist south against a communist north. Each of these wars started off with support from the public, which had a desire to prevent the spread of communism, but, as time went on, support for each of these wars dwindled. The public switched from having the opinion that these wars were necessary to the opinion that they were not helping the US and they were
At the beginning of the US involvement Truman even told the public that the US was not going to war. When asked by a journalist if the conflict was a “police action under the UN,” Truman replied that the US involvement was just that. Truman and his administration continued that policy for the duration of the war. Truman’s wariness of public opinion was due to the fact that he worried that if the public believed the US involvement was a full scale war. While this policy later backfired and increased opposition to the war, initially it reduced the US opposition to the