Us Involvement In The Cold War

The cold war like all wars had heavy costs, costs of life, costs of freedom,and economic costs. According to Stephen I. Schwartz of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the United States of America spent a minimum of five and a half trillion dollars on nuclear weapons between nineteen forty to nineteen ninety six. This was one of the many costs of the cold war and the United States action against the threat of Communism. Both Truman and Eisenhower focused on economic and military aid to combat the threat of Communism, however Eisenhower also focused on an expansion of military forces which was continued under Kennedy with an added focus on diplomacy. In his textbook

In his address to Congress on January 5, 1957, President Eisenhower, similar to President Truman, stated his belief that the United States should contribute economically to strengthen free Middle Eastern countries. In this way he hoped, like Truman, to discourage these countries from turning to the Soviet Union and communism to solve troubles. President Eisenhower also said that the United States should provide military aid to Middle Eastern countries who seek such aid (Eisenhower). Again like Truman the reasoning for this was the hope that the aid would help these countries resist any communist force or aggression. Unlike President Truman, Eisenhower called for the United States to put armed forces in the Middle East to protect and secure the independence of Middle Eastern nations from Communist armed aggression (Eisenhower). Eisenhower believed that Russia, before and after the revolution, had an seeked the Middle East (Eisenhower). The hope would be that by putting U.S. forces in the region, the Soviets would be less likely to use force to take the region. This would become the Eisenhower Doctrine, which declared the United States the right to help any Middle Eastern nation resist communist aggression (Ayers. 853). This justified giving economic and military aid to countries in the region and deploying the military in the region. Under Eisenhower, United States foreign policy also expanded to include the idea of brinkmanship which was the diplomatic art of going very nearly to war but never actually going to war (Ayers. 850). By doing so the hope was that less aggression would happen because if there was aggression it would mean another world war. John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, favored more nuclear weapons and wanted to roll communism back (Ayers. 850). Dulles ideas took form in the policy of massive retaliation which meant the