American History War and Peace Term Paper

As was the nature of the Cold War, the United States responded by quashing new governments that were likely to lead to communism, even where this constituted an undemocratic or even brutal instituted government (Kort 80).

Democratically elected officials from Brazil, Guyana, and Uruguay were overthrown by internal revolutionaries who were funded and trained by American forces (Parenti 44). These and other leaders and governments in Latin America were targeted by American forced as having communist leanings. Foreign policy followed, with more than two decades of the Cold War focusing not only on the major publicized events of Korea and the Soviet Union, but on many small, third world countries. These small nations were poised to become players in the larger Cold War struggle depending on where their allegiance and governments ended up after declaring their independence. With the Soviet Union attempting to exert force and pressure on the United States through the expansion of communism, the American government did everything in its power to prevent third world nations from establishing communist leadership (Kort 80).

Since the Cold War has ended, the United States' foreign policy during the period in question seems sensationalized. Yet, the threat of communism was a very real and present danger in the minds of American leadership. It is clear that Faribank's assessment of the Untied States can be substantiated by American anti-communist foreign policy; American was willing and ready to protect weak or "vulnerable" nations from the "evils" of communism. While the Korean War and other highly-publicized conflicts of the period arguably favored the American zeal, the peace that Fairbank spoke of was indeed in danger of never happening with continued efforts to weed out communism. Eisenhower even makes use of similar language to Fairbank in his 1953 Inaugural Address, saying, "We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history" (Eisenhower). With policy following the period's leadership, the period from 1945-1965 was perhaps a time of over-zealousness on the part of America's leadership. Fairbank's assessment was warranted and cautionary in a period that was unlikely to see peace with continuous American military inverventions.

Works Cited

Eisenhower, Dwight D. Inaugural Address. Washington, D.C. 20 Jan. 1953.

Geertz, Clifford. "What Was the Third World Revolution?" Dissent 52.1 (2005): 35-45.

Freidel, Frank. Roosevelt. New York: Little Brown and Company, 1990.

Kort, Michael G. The Cold War. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1994.

Parenti, Michael. "Determining Intenr: Why Do U.S. Leaders Intervene in Other Countries?" New Political Science 24.1 (2002): 39-55.

Truman, Harry S. "1947…