Title: Why did the United States commit itself to containing communism between 1945 and 1960? - eNotes.com
Headings: Why did the United States commit itself to containing communism between 1945 and 1960?
The Cold War
Why did the United States commit itself to containing communism between 1945 and 1960?
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Content: However, the Soviet Union was seeking to extend the influence of communism into Western Europe, as well as into South and Central America, quite apart from its aggressive policy in Asia. This meant that containment was necessary simply to preserve the balance of power. The United States acted in alliance with Western European countries in this policy of containment, one of the first significant moves being the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Last Updated by eNotes Editorial on May 1, 2020
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Communism was the official ideology of the Soviet Union. As the USSR and the United States were locked in a bitter rivalry throughout the Cold War, it's not surprising that successive administrations tried to contain the spread of its governing ideology. Communism in both theory and practice was implacably hostile to the United States and its institutions. The USA was the world's largest economy, a capitalist economy no less, and therefore epitomized everything that Communism was fighting against. The further this ideology spread throughout the world, the more hostile the international environment would become for American strategic and economic interests. As both the United States and the Soviet Union were nuclear powers, direct confrontation was unthinkable. So successive American governments adopted the strategy of containment to deal with the Communist threat.