Fourth Quarter: Decades of Turbulence~
From World War To Modern Time
FINAL EXAM: Wednesday, June
"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker,
Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a
date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of
Japan.
The United States was at peace
with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation
with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in
the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese
air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and
his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a
recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to
continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint
of war or of armed attack [...]
~President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 8, 1941
World War 2 is historically recognized as beginning on September 1,1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland, although Japan had been at war with China since 1937. The launch of Europe into war, however, ultimately brought the world’s greatest powers into conflict, resulting in a World War. Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party, was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Prior to the military invasion that instigated World War 2, Hitler had slowly been rebuilding Germany’s army and infrastructure, which was devastated after
World War I. He also began taking away the rights of Jews in Germany and
devising his plan to take over Europe and exterminate the Jewish people
entirely.
After Hitler invaded Poland, France and England declared war and condemned the actions of Germany, but did not offer sufficient support to thwart Hitler’s Nazis. In May
of 1940, Germany invaded many more European countries, including France and
Holland, and many of them fell to Nazi forces within weeks. By the end of
September in 1940, the major power players of World War 2 had divided
into two groups: the Allies, including England, France, Poland, and the U.S.,
and the Axis powers, comprised of Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the
attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers in 1941, the Americans were
drawn into the conflict against both in the Pacific and in Europe.
It is estimated that between 50 and 70 million people died during World
War 2. When Allied troops finally advanced into German territory, they
discovered what Hitler had termed his “final solution” for the Jews:
concentration camps in which millions of Jews had been systematically
murdered. Hitler had engaged in a Holocaust or mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews and others whom her deemed "offensive". World War 2 in The tide of war turned in favor of the Allies on June 6, 1944 as troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Operation Overlord, as it was called was very risky and resulted in the death of over 2,000 allied soldiers in just the first wave of the attack alone. The Allies were successful in pushing the Germand back and liberating France from Nasi control. Theis waws the beginning of the end for the Axis powers in Europe. World War 2 in Europe ended in May of 1945, considered to be V-E Day (Vicotry in Europe). However, the United States’ war with Japan did not end until August of that year when the United States dropped
2 atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 & August 9, 1945. World War 2 was the first and only time nuclear weaponry had been used in warfare. It instantly changed the entire nature of warfare and of human history. While World War 2 holds the unenviable distinction of resulting in more deaths than any other human conflict in history, it also allowed the United States to emerge victorious as the world's greatest superpower.
But with great power comes great responsibility. World War 2 had set the stage for 2 other very long and dangerous conflicts in the post war world. One would be fought on the domestic front, the fight for Civil Rights in the United States. The other on an international front, the Cold War (introduction of the new nuclear age) between the Soviet Union and the United States. In many ways, the Cold War began even before the guns fell silent in Germany and in the Pacific in 1945. Suspicion and mistrust had defined U.S.-Soviet
relations for decades and resurfaced as soon as the alliance against Adolf
Hitler was no longer necessary. Competing ideologies and visions of the postwar
world prevented U.S. president Harry S Truman and Soviet premier
Joseph Stalin from working together.
Stalin intended to destroy Germany’s industrial capabilities in order to
prevent the country from remilitarizing and wanted Germany to pay outrageous
sums in war reparations. Moreover, he wanted to erect pro-Soviet governments
throughout Eastern Europe to protect the USSR from any future invasions. Truman,
however, wanted exactly the opposite. He believed that only industrialization
and democracy in Germany and throughout the continent would ensure postwar
stability. Unable to compromise or find common ground, the world’s two remaining
superpowers inevitably clashed.Truman worked tirelessly to clean up the postwar mess and establish a new international order. He helped create the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and funded the rebuilding of
Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. After prosecuting Nazi war
criminals at the Nuremberg trials, Truman in 1947 also outlined the
Marshall Plan, which set aside more than $10 billion for the rebuilding
and reindustrialization of Germany. The Marshall Plan was so successful that
factories in Western Europe were exceeding their prewar production levels within
just a few years.
Although Stalin joined with the United States in founding the United
Nations, he fought Truman on nearly every other issue. He protested the
Marshall Plan as well as the formation of the World Bank and IMF. In defiance,
he followed through on his plan to create a buffer between the Soviet Union and
Germany by setting up pro-Communist governments in Poland and other Eastern
European countries. As a result, the so-called iron curtain soon divided
East from West in Europe. Stalin also tried unsuccessfully to drive French,
British, and American occupation forces from the German city of Berlin by
blocking highway and railway access. Determined not to let the city fall, Truman
ordered the Berlin airlift to drop food and medical supplies for starving
Berliners.
Containment
The Berlin crisis, as well as the formation of the Eastern bloc of
Soviet-dominated countries in Eastern Europe, caused foreign policy officials in
Washington to believe that the United States needed to check Soviet influence
abroad in order to prevent the further spread of Communism. In 1947,
Truman incorporated this desire for containment into his Truman
Doctrine, which vowed to support free nations fighting Communism. He and
Congress then pledged $400 million to fighting
Communist revolutionaries in Greece and Turkey. In 1949, Truman also convinced the Western European powers to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so
that they might mutually defend themselves against the danger of Soviet
invasion. Threatened, the USSR sponsored a similar treaty of its own in Eastern
Europe, called the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.
Truman at Home
In the domestic policy arena, Truman signed the National Security Act
in 1947 to restructure America’s defenses
for the new Communist threat. The act reorganized the military under the new
office of the secretary of defense and the new Joint Chiefs of
Staff. It also created the National Security Council to advise the
president on global affairs and the Central Intelligence Agency to
conduct espionage. Truman’s leadership in confronting the Soviet Union and
rebuilding Europe convinced Democrats to nominate him again for the 1948
election. His Fair Deal domestic policies and support for civil rights,
however, divided the Republican Party and nearly cost Truman the election.
Red Hunts ("Communists Living Among Us"~ McCarthyism)
Developments in Eastern Europe, the fall of China to Communist
revolutionaries in 1949, and the Soviet Union’s development of nuclear weapons terrified Americans, who feared that Communists would try to infiltrate or attack the United States from within. Congressman Richarm M. Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee led the earliest Red hunts for Communists in the government, which culminated with the prosecution of federal employee Alger Hiss and the
executions of suspected spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Truman
initially supported these inquiries and even established a Loyalty Review
Board to assist in the search. He eventually began to express concern,
however, that the Red hunts were quickly devolving into witch hunts.
The Korean War
Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR eventually exploded
in Korea when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. Determined not to let Communism spread in East
Asia, Truman quadrupled military spending and ordered General MacArthur to
retake the southern half of the peninsula. MacArthur succeeded and then pushed
the North Koreans almost up to the Chinese border. Threatened, over a million
soldiers from Communist China poured into Korea, forcing MacArthur to retreat
back to the 38th parallel, which had originally divided North Korea from South Korea.
When MacArthur began to criticize Truman publicly for his unwillingness to
use nuclear weapons in Korea, Truman was forced to fire his top general for
insubordination. United States forces remained entrenched at the 38th
parallel for two more years, at the cost of more than 50,000 American lives.
Both sides declared a cease-fire only after the new U.S. president, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, threatened to use nuclear weapons in 1953.
Postwar Prosperity
Eisenhower’s election in 1952 ushered in an
unprecedented era of economic growth and prosperity in the United States. The
average national income doubled during the 1950s
and then doubled again the following decade, primarily due to continued defense
spending and to the 1944 Montgomery G.I.
Bill, which helped returning veterans buy homes and go back to school. The
postwar “baby boom” contributed to population growth, while the Great
Migration of African-Americans to northern cities, “white flight”
from the cities to the suburbs, and the rush to the Sun Belt altered
population demographics. By 1960, most American
families had a car, a television, and a refrigerator and owned their own home.
Popular television sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie
and Harriet glamorized suburbia and consumerism.
Creeping Socialism
“Ike” Eisenhower had entered the White House determined to block the creation
of new social welfare programs, which he called “creeping
socialism.” He did not, however, cut federal funding from existing
New Deal programs. In fact, he expanded Social Security and the
Federal Housing Administration and even set aside tens of millions of
dollars for the creation of the first interstates under the Federal
Highway Act. Still a conservative, though, Eisenhower refused to endorse the
blossoming civil rights movement and signed the Landrum-Griffin
Act, also known as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, in the
wake of numerous AFL-CIO labor union scandals in the mid-1950s.
McCarthyism
First-term Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, meanwhile,
exploded onto the national political scene in 1950, when he accused more than 200
federal employees of being Communists. Even though McCarthy had no proof to
support these claims, Americans supported his endeavors to find more “Soviet
agents” hiding in Washington. Thousands of former New Dealers and Red-hunt
critics from all walks of life were wrongfully persecuted. McCarthy’s influence
eventually waned after he humiliated himself during the nationally televised
Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.
Ike’s New Look
In addition to halting “creeping socialism” at home, Eisenhower also wanted
to “roll back” Communist advances abroad. Along with Vice President
Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles,
Eisenhower devised a New Look at foreign policy that emphasized the use
of nuclear weapons, rather than conventional weapons and troops, to contain
Communism. Eisenhower threatened the USSR with “massive
retaliation,” or nuclear war, against Soviet aggression or the spread
of Communism.
Eisenhower also made full use of the newly created CIA to help
overthrow unfriendly governments in developing countries. He resolved the
Suez crisis peacefully before it led to war and committed American funds
to fighting Ho Chi Minh’s pro-Communist forces in Vietnam after
the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The
Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellites in 1957
started the space race, prompting Eisenhower to create the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and sign the National
Defense Education Act. In his farewell address in 1961, he warned Americans of the growing
military-industrial complex that threatened to restrict civil liberties
and dominate American foreign policy making.
Kennedy and the New Frontier
Facing term limits, Eisenhower endorsed Vice President Richard Nixon
for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960. Democrats countered with World War II hero and
Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. After a close race, Kennedy
defeated Nixon, thanks in large part to the African-American vote and Kennedy’s
polished performance in the first-ever televised presidential
debates.
As president, Kennedy pushed for a package of new social welfare spending
programs that he called the New Frontier. Hoping to inspire a new
generation of young Americans, he told them to “ask not what your country can do
for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Republicans and conservative
southern Democrats, however, blocked most New Frontier legislation in
Congress.
Flexible Response
Because Eisenhower’s threat of “massive retaliation” had proved too stringent
and binding, Kennedy and his foreign policy team devised a new doctrine of
“flexible response” designed to give the president more options to fight
Communism.
In addition, Kennedy committed thousands of American troops to South Vietnam
to support Ngo Dinh Diem’s corrupt regime but claimed the troops were
merely “military advisors.” In Latin America, Kennedy took a different approach,
funneling millions of dollars into the Alliance for Progress to thwart
Communists by ending poverty. Despite the new doctrine, Kennedy was unable to
prevent Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev from constructing the Berlin
Wall in 1961.
The Cuban Crises
Kennedy’s greatest Cold War challenge came in Cuba. Hoping to topple
Cuba’s new pro-Communist revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, Kennedy
authorized the CIA to train and arm a force of more than 1,000 Cuban exiles and sent them to invade Cuba in the
spring of 1961. When this Bay of Pigs
invasion failed embarrassingly, Kennedy authorized several unsuccessful
assassination attempts against Castro. Outraged, Castro turned to the USSR for
economic aid and protection.
Khrushchev capitalized on the opportunity and placed several nuclear missiles
in Cuba. Kennedy consequently blockaded the island nation, pushing the United
States and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev ended the terrifying
Cuban missile crisis when he agreed to remove the missiles in exchange
for an end to the blockade. Kennedy also removed American missiles from Turkey
and agreed to work on reducing Cold War tensions. Tragically, Kennedy was
assassinated in late 1963, just as tensions were
rising in Vietnam—which would prove to be the next, and most costly, theater of
the Cold War.
Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a
date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of
Japan.
The United States was at peace
with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation
with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in
the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese
air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and
his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a
recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to
continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint
of war or of armed attack [...]
~President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 8, 1941
World War 2 is historically recognized as beginning on September 1,1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland, although Japan had been at war with China since 1937. The launch of Europe into war, however, ultimately brought the world’s greatest powers into conflict, resulting in a World War. Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party, was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Prior to the military invasion that instigated World War 2, Hitler had slowly been rebuilding Germany’s army and infrastructure, which was devastated after
World War I. He also began taking away the rights of Jews in Germany and
devising his plan to take over Europe and exterminate the Jewish people
entirely.
After Hitler invaded Poland, France and England declared war and condemned the actions of Germany, but did not offer sufficient support to thwart Hitler’s Nazis. In May
of 1940, Germany invaded many more European countries, including France and
Holland, and many of them fell to Nazi forces within weeks. By the end of
September in 1940, the major power players of World War 2 had divided
into two groups: the Allies, including England, France, Poland, and the U.S.,
and the Axis powers, comprised of Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the
attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers in 1941, the Americans were
drawn into the conflict against both in the Pacific and in Europe.
It is estimated that between 50 and 70 million people died during World
War 2. When Allied troops finally advanced into German territory, they
discovered what Hitler had termed his “final solution” for the Jews:
concentration camps in which millions of Jews had been systematically
murdered. Hitler had engaged in a Holocaust or mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews and others whom her deemed "offensive". World War 2 in The tide of war turned in favor of the Allies on June 6, 1944 as troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Operation Overlord, as it was called was very risky and resulted in the death of over 2,000 allied soldiers in just the first wave of the attack alone. The Allies were successful in pushing the Germand back and liberating France from Nasi control. Theis waws the beginning of the end for the Axis powers in Europe. World War 2 in Europe ended in May of 1945, considered to be V-E Day (Vicotry in Europe). However, the United States’ war with Japan did not end until August of that year when the United States dropped
2 atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 & August 9, 1945. World War 2 was the first and only time nuclear weaponry had been used in warfare. It instantly changed the entire nature of warfare and of human history. While World War 2 holds the unenviable distinction of resulting in more deaths than any other human conflict in history, it also allowed the United States to emerge victorious as the world's greatest superpower.
But with great power comes great responsibility. World War 2 had set the stage for 2 other very long and dangerous conflicts in the post war world. One would be fought on the domestic front, the fight for Civil Rights in the United States. The other on an international front, the Cold War (introduction of the new nuclear age) between the Soviet Union and the United States. In many ways, the Cold War began even before the guns fell silent in Germany and in the Pacific in 1945. Suspicion and mistrust had defined U.S.-Soviet
relations for decades and resurfaced as soon as the alliance against Adolf
Hitler was no longer necessary. Competing ideologies and visions of the postwar
world prevented U.S. president Harry S Truman and Soviet premier
Joseph Stalin from working together.
Stalin intended to destroy Germany’s industrial capabilities in order to
prevent the country from remilitarizing and wanted Germany to pay outrageous
sums in war reparations. Moreover, he wanted to erect pro-Soviet governments
throughout Eastern Europe to protect the USSR from any future invasions. Truman,
however, wanted exactly the opposite. He believed that only industrialization
and democracy in Germany and throughout the continent would ensure postwar
stability. Unable to compromise or find common ground, the world’s two remaining
superpowers inevitably clashed.Truman worked tirelessly to clean up the postwar mess and establish a new international order. He helped create the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and funded the rebuilding of
Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. After prosecuting Nazi war
criminals at the Nuremberg trials, Truman in 1947 also outlined the
Marshall Plan, which set aside more than $10 billion for the rebuilding
and reindustrialization of Germany. The Marshall Plan was so successful that
factories in Western Europe were exceeding their prewar production levels within
just a few years.
Although Stalin joined with the United States in founding the United
Nations, he fought Truman on nearly every other issue. He protested the
Marshall Plan as well as the formation of the World Bank and IMF. In defiance,
he followed through on his plan to create a buffer between the Soviet Union and
Germany by setting up pro-Communist governments in Poland and other Eastern
European countries. As a result, the so-called iron curtain soon divided
East from West in Europe. Stalin also tried unsuccessfully to drive French,
British, and American occupation forces from the German city of Berlin by
blocking highway and railway access. Determined not to let the city fall, Truman
ordered the Berlin airlift to drop food and medical supplies for starving
Berliners.
Containment
The Berlin crisis, as well as the formation of the Eastern bloc of
Soviet-dominated countries in Eastern Europe, caused foreign policy officials in
Washington to believe that the United States needed to check Soviet influence
abroad in order to prevent the further spread of Communism. In 1947,
Truman incorporated this desire for containment into his Truman
Doctrine, which vowed to support free nations fighting Communism. He and
Congress then pledged $400 million to fighting
Communist revolutionaries in Greece and Turkey. In 1949, Truman also convinced the Western European powers to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so
that they might mutually defend themselves against the danger of Soviet
invasion. Threatened, the USSR sponsored a similar treaty of its own in Eastern
Europe, called the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.
Truman at Home
In the domestic policy arena, Truman signed the National Security Act
in 1947 to restructure America’s defenses
for the new Communist threat. The act reorganized the military under the new
office of the secretary of defense and the new Joint Chiefs of
Staff. It also created the National Security Council to advise the
president on global affairs and the Central Intelligence Agency to
conduct espionage. Truman’s leadership in confronting the Soviet Union and
rebuilding Europe convinced Democrats to nominate him again for the 1948
election. His Fair Deal domestic policies and support for civil rights,
however, divided the Republican Party and nearly cost Truman the election.
Red Hunts ("Communists Living Among Us"~ McCarthyism)
Developments in Eastern Europe, the fall of China to Communist
revolutionaries in 1949, and the Soviet Union’s development of nuclear weapons terrified Americans, who feared that Communists would try to infiltrate or attack the United States from within. Congressman Richarm M. Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee led the earliest Red hunts for Communists in the government, which culminated with the prosecution of federal employee Alger Hiss and the
executions of suspected spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Truman
initially supported these inquiries and even established a Loyalty Review
Board to assist in the search. He eventually began to express concern,
however, that the Red hunts were quickly devolving into witch hunts.
The Korean War
Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR eventually exploded
in Korea when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. Determined not to let Communism spread in East
Asia, Truman quadrupled military spending and ordered General MacArthur to
retake the southern half of the peninsula. MacArthur succeeded and then pushed
the North Koreans almost up to the Chinese border. Threatened, over a million
soldiers from Communist China poured into Korea, forcing MacArthur to retreat
back to the 38th parallel, which had originally divided North Korea from South Korea.
When MacArthur began to criticize Truman publicly for his unwillingness to
use nuclear weapons in Korea, Truman was forced to fire his top general for
insubordination. United States forces remained entrenched at the 38th
parallel for two more years, at the cost of more than 50,000 American lives.
Both sides declared a cease-fire only after the new U.S. president, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, threatened to use nuclear weapons in 1953.
Postwar Prosperity
Eisenhower’s election in 1952 ushered in an
unprecedented era of economic growth and prosperity in the United States. The
average national income doubled during the 1950s
and then doubled again the following decade, primarily due to continued defense
spending and to the 1944 Montgomery G.I.
Bill, which helped returning veterans buy homes and go back to school. The
postwar “baby boom” contributed to population growth, while the Great
Migration of African-Americans to northern cities, “white flight”
from the cities to the suburbs, and the rush to the Sun Belt altered
population demographics. By 1960, most American
families had a car, a television, and a refrigerator and owned their own home.
Popular television sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie
and Harriet glamorized suburbia and consumerism.
Creeping Socialism
“Ike” Eisenhower had entered the White House determined to block the creation
of new social welfare programs, which he called “creeping
socialism.” He did not, however, cut federal funding from existing
New Deal programs. In fact, he expanded Social Security and the
Federal Housing Administration and even set aside tens of millions of
dollars for the creation of the first interstates under the Federal
Highway Act. Still a conservative, though, Eisenhower refused to endorse the
blossoming civil rights movement and signed the Landrum-Griffin
Act, also known as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, in the
wake of numerous AFL-CIO labor union scandals in the mid-1950s.
McCarthyism
First-term Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, meanwhile,
exploded onto the national political scene in 1950, when he accused more than 200
federal employees of being Communists. Even though McCarthy had no proof to
support these claims, Americans supported his endeavors to find more “Soviet
agents” hiding in Washington. Thousands of former New Dealers and Red-hunt
critics from all walks of life were wrongfully persecuted. McCarthy’s influence
eventually waned after he humiliated himself during the nationally televised
Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.
Ike’s New Look
In addition to halting “creeping socialism” at home, Eisenhower also wanted
to “roll back” Communist advances abroad. Along with Vice President
Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles,
Eisenhower devised a New Look at foreign policy that emphasized the use
of nuclear weapons, rather than conventional weapons and troops, to contain
Communism. Eisenhower threatened the USSR with “massive
retaliation,” or nuclear war, against Soviet aggression or the spread
of Communism.
Eisenhower also made full use of the newly created CIA to help
overthrow unfriendly governments in developing countries. He resolved the
Suez crisis peacefully before it led to war and committed American funds
to fighting Ho Chi Minh’s pro-Communist forces in Vietnam after
the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The
Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellites in 1957
started the space race, prompting Eisenhower to create the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and sign the National
Defense Education Act. In his farewell address in 1961, he warned Americans of the growing
military-industrial complex that threatened to restrict civil liberties
and dominate American foreign policy making.
Kennedy and the New Frontier
Facing term limits, Eisenhower endorsed Vice President Richard Nixon
for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960. Democrats countered with World War II hero and
Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. After a close race, Kennedy
defeated Nixon, thanks in large part to the African-American vote and Kennedy’s
polished performance in the first-ever televised presidential
debates.
As president, Kennedy pushed for a package of new social welfare spending
programs that he called the New Frontier. Hoping to inspire a new
generation of young Americans, he told them to “ask not what your country can do
for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Republicans and conservative
southern Democrats, however, blocked most New Frontier legislation in
Congress.
Flexible Response
Because Eisenhower’s threat of “massive retaliation” had proved too stringent
and binding, Kennedy and his foreign policy team devised a new doctrine of
“flexible response” designed to give the president more options to fight
Communism.
In addition, Kennedy committed thousands of American troops to South Vietnam
to support Ngo Dinh Diem’s corrupt regime but claimed the troops were
merely “military advisors.” In Latin America, Kennedy took a different approach,
funneling millions of dollars into the Alliance for Progress to thwart
Communists by ending poverty. Despite the new doctrine, Kennedy was unable to
prevent Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev from constructing the Berlin
Wall in 1961.
The Cuban Crises
Kennedy’s greatest Cold War challenge came in Cuba. Hoping to topple
Cuba’s new pro-Communist revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, Kennedy
authorized the CIA to train and arm a force of more than 1,000 Cuban exiles and sent them to invade Cuba in the
spring of 1961. When this Bay of Pigs
invasion failed embarrassingly, Kennedy authorized several unsuccessful
assassination attempts against Castro. Outraged, Castro turned to the USSR for
economic aid and protection.
Khrushchev capitalized on the opportunity and placed several nuclear missiles
in Cuba. Kennedy consequently blockaded the island nation, pushing the United
States and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev ended the terrifying
Cuban missile crisis when he agreed to remove the missiles in exchange
for an end to the blockade. Kennedy also removed American missiles from Turkey
and agreed to work on reducing Cold War tensions. Tragically, Kennedy was
assassinated in late 1963, just as tensions were
rising in Vietnam—which would prove to be the next, and most costly, theater of
the Cold War.