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: Almost identical to the Korean conflict, The Vietnam struggle began as the communist influenced North threatening to engulf the South. The US foreign policy exploded, pouring in 2.7 million soldiers over the course of the engagement (Donnelly, 1965, page. 22). The sheer number of soldiers and magnitude of the US’s reaction are due to a relatively new concept; the domino effect. 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.