“Democracy During Cold War”
Democracy, a voting based system, is one of the most widely recognized regime in the present day world. A democratic government protects all the citizens’ human rights, allows people to participate in politics, and has laws that everyone has to follow equally. The Cold War was an important time period to the democratization of countries around the globe and the ideas of democracy are struggling in the modern world.
The U.S. promotion of democracy helped countries all throughout Europe to keep their democratic government stabilized. Countries in Western Europe and Eastern Europe were democratized and eventually were joined together by the Western multilateral institutions. Mark Lagon, author of “Promoting Democracy,” states, “The United States encouraged European integration to stabilize the West European democracies, and NATO was a bulwark within which Italy, West Germany, Portugal, and Spain democratized,” (Lagon, 1). Lagon is saying, the
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Democracy in the U.S. was under “Red Scare”, which is the fear of communist subversion, until they took action and stopped the Red Scare. The article “Red Scare” states, “On March 21, 1947, President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) issued Executive Order 9835, also known as the Loyalty Order, which mandated that all federal employees be analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government,” (Red Scare, 1). This is basically stating the action that was took by President Harry S. Truman, which was testing to see if members in the government supported communism. President Harry S. Truman’s decision lead them to finding 12 prominent leaders who supported communism and the overthrow of the democratic government. Democracy survived through the Cold War, but is not doing so great in today’s