Title: How Did the Cold War Affect U.S. Foreign Policy? | The Classroom
Headings: How Did the Cold War Affect U.S. Foreign Policy?
How Did the Cold War Affect U.S. Foreign Policy?
Origins of the Cold War
The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and Containment
Containment and the Flexible Response
The Evil Empire
Thawing Relations

Content: The U.S. likely never intended to use these weapons. Rather, they served as a deterrent to future military conflict between the two superpowers -- both sides possessed them but their use would mean total destruction. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations advocated a "flexible response" to containing communism, supporting a failed attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro, issuing a naval blockade with the threat of nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and deploying troops to prevent the spread of communism in South Vietnam, a decade-long struggle that caused domestic turmoil in the U.S. Containment also took place in more subtle ways. True to the adage "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," CIA covert operations assisted in the overthrow of socialist-leaning leaders in countries including Iran (1954) and Chile (1973), only to replace them with U.S.-friendly military governments. The Evil Empire
In the 1970s, President Nixon attempted detente, or easing of tensions with the Soviet Union. Nixon visited communist China and engaged in several diplomatic meetings with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in which the two leaders discussed nuclear arms reduction. By the end of the decade, tensions once again escalated as the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. When President Reagan took office he denounced the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" and dramatically increased military budgets in an attempt to "win" the Cold War. Thawing Relations
Despite Reagan's bellicose rhetoric, tensions between the two superpowers thawed in the late 1980s. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev adopted friendly relations with the west and instituted liberal domestic reforms through glasnost and perestroika.