Title: Was the US’s containment policy effective during the Cold War? | by August Frederico | Medium
Headings: Was the US’s containment policy effective during the Cold War?
Was the US’s containment policy effective during the Cold War?
Content: This is the belief that if one nation is allowed to fall to communism, other nations in that region will continue to topple like a chain of dominos. The only viable solution to this is to prevent the fall of the first few nations in order to prevent the fall of many. This war came as a spectacular failure both at home and away, the US unable to continue public support as well as taking heavy losses from the deadly vietcong (the militarized pro-communist citizens of Vietnam) (Cunningham, 2/20/18, N/A). This conflict is one of few majorly detrimental actions to the US’s foreign policy, however, other nations in the region failed to succumb to communism, showing the US did successfully complete the overall objective of preventing the dreaded “domino effect.” Following this couplet of expensive direct military actions, a series of smaller, but no less threatening conflicts ensued, the most prominent of which was the nuclear buildup by the soviets in the nation of cuba, just an alarming 1,518 miles from US soil (Graebner, 1977, page. 127). Suddenly, US foreign policy is forced to deal with a direct threat to its nation. At this moment, total nuclear war seemed inevitable if the US was to survive against the communist forces. However, an agreement was reached to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for declared Cuban sovereignty as a nation and the removal of US nukes in Turkey (Halle, 1991, page. 93).