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Cold War Policy Essay

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“There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act” (Harry S. Truman). This quote by president Truman refers to the U.S policy of being proactive to contain communism from spreading during the cold war. Throughout the cold war, the U.S enforce their new policy of being prepared to stop the Soviets from spreading communism and instead spread the word of democracy.
To start off, The unsuccessful policy of a laissez-faire government during WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII made the U.S change to the new policy of getting involved and stopping problems immediately. Throughout 1914-1918 the U.S experienced WWI which was the world’s second most devastating war of all time and the U.S lost a good amount of soldiers. Following this was the world’s most catastrophic depression that lead the U.S citizens to unemployment and poverty. The U.S eventually get out of this because of the start of WWII. During this war our policy was to let the dictators make the first moves and then we would get involved. This policy didn’t go well and this war ended up having over 55 million casualties. Our government at the time did get us through these tough times, but we weren’t using a good policy and it ended up causing a lot of traumatic events. This then leads to the new policy of peace and prosperity that didn’t want another world war or another great depression. This policy was made so that we could learn from our past mistakes and defeat communism through being prepared and proactive, but not pre-emptive. This means …show more content…

The cold war was mainly a war of thoughts of either being democratic or communistic. We won this because of how we out spent them by spreading democratic ideals which caused them to run out of money. This then lead to the collapsing of the Soviet Union which signaled the end of the cold

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