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Examples Of Presidential Policies During The Cold War

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Presidential Policies during the Cold War

Have you ever wondered about the Cold War or want to learn more about it? According to Ed. Ayers in his book American Anthem a time of high tension and bitter rivalry known between the U.S and Soviet Union following the end of World War II. During the crisis of the Cold War, President Truman and President Eisenhower came up with a policy called containment, while President Kennedy had followed a policy called flexible response. A lot of the Cold War could be considered brinkmanship. Brinkmanship is a strategy that involves countries almost going to war without actually going to war (Ayers R92).

The Cold War affected many presidents for an example president Truman's Presidential policy. According …show more content…

Flexible response is a response strategy to nuclear tensions that involved strengthening conventional U.S forces so the nation would have options other than nuclear weapons times of crisis. Citizens were having certain problems during this era. Some people believed that the only options is total war and others think that we should just give the other countries what they want (Kennedy). The people need to realize that you can use both and that negotiation and force are not mutually exclusive (Kennedy). The world has many problems and some how the U.S gets involved a lot of the time. But there can’t be an American solution to every world problem because our population is only 6% of the worlds population; we are not all powerful or all knowing (Kennedy). Since America can’t solve everyone's problems and not everyone can be satisfied there is a lot of frustration. Many citizens are choosing either appeasement or conflict to solve their problems (Kennedy). People need to realize that there are more choices out there for them to choose, they need to be more adaptable. The politics, economics and industry of the world stage have changed, which requires us to use new policies and ideas (Kennedy). By being adaptable Kennedy can use various combinations of appeasement, negotiation,force and threat (Kennedy). But we need to be careful on what we do and how it is done. If the only thing

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Truman agreed with this, as Eisenhower did, but they each had their own ideas. Eisenhower wanted to trap it, and figure out how to deal with it, while Truman wanted to outright destroy it. Kennedy liked the idea as well, but he favored Flexible Response. Flexible Response was the idea of not resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. Kennedy used this idea, but he realized that he might not have a choice when it came down to it, so he still used the idea of containment.

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Massive Retaliation is the threat of using nuclear weapons against the Soviets if they tried to seize a country not occupied by them and/or tried to expand there country by force. While Brinkmanship was the threat of using nuclear weapons to get an opposing country to back down/consed, Eisenhower used these effectively in the Korean war but there were saw as too dangerous. He used these to easily dispose of the Korean threat by threatening the use of nukes, and all the while, kept communism from spreading into Korea.

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Kennedy had different beliefs than Truman and Eisenhower because he dealt with other countries differently, even though they had the same goal which was to stop communism from spreading. An example of flexible response is the Cuban missile crisis (Kennedy

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Kennedy starts off by telling us how the world and freedom is in major danger, being close to a nuclear war, telling us that it has the power to end the human species (3). The next point made is that we should “... never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate” (Kennedy 15). This means that we should negotiate to make a means with that someone not because we have to negotiate to stay safe from that someone. Kennedy then says that the goal would to have the world work together to explore problems, have a common arm control and be equal in weaponry power, and work together to unlock new sciences (16-18).

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Kennedy realized how easy it was for a country to break apart in a time that they needed to come together. Being sworn into office, he could see the fear of the future in the eyes of the nation and truly wanted to reassure them that by being willing to face change as one, success was possible. Kennedy was able to assertively get his point across by emphasizing how prioritizing unification of the country is by relying on

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