To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in , began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. In , he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty SALT I , which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.
Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world.
This policy, particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine.
Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In , every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. The Cold War was over. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. On December 25, , the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless, government-controlled society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges—and declines.
What started in Russia, became a global revolution, taking Both socialism and communism are essentially economic philosophies advocating public rather than private ownership, especially of the means of production, distribution and exchange of goods i. Both aim to fix the problems they see as created by a Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Married in , New York City residents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were devoted communists who allegedly headed a spy ring that passed military secrets to the Soviets.
The scheme got underway sometime after , when Julius became a civilian In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation.
Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians and its supporters who saw them as having lost the war , along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange , millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U. On it were inscribed the names of 57, American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Vietnam War started in the s, according to most historians, though the conflict in Southeast Asia had its roots in the French colonial period of the s. Vietnam War protests began small among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses but gained national prominence in , after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest.
Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Of the nearly 1 million Americans who served on active duty in the U. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War era , many were or went on to become famous in diverse fields such as politics, entertainment, sports and journalism. The young Navy pilot John McCain, son of a Vietnamization was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam.
The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society. President Nixon believed his Vietnamization The United States and many other countries intervened, propping up both sides—but especially South Vietnam—with troops, weapons and From air power to infantry to chemicals, the weapons used in the Vietnam War were more devastating than those of any previous conflict. United States and South Vietnamese forces relied heavily on their superior air power, including B bombers and other aircraft that dropped Women in the Vietnam War served as soldiers, health workers, and in news-gathering capacities.
The bloody conflict had its roots in French colonial rule and an independence movement driven by communist leader Ho Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. The United States, in other words, must provide what one of the Planning Guidance's authors termed "adult supervision. Thus, for instance, Washington must protect Germany's and Japan's access to Persian Gulf oil, because if these countries were to protect their own interests in the Gulf, they would develop military forces capable of global "power projection.
Only in this context can Washington's concerns regarding current developments in East Asia be properly understood. For instance, in Alberto Coll, then a deputy assistant secretary of defense, clarified U.
The US economy needs the vast markets of the Pacific Rim, and it benefits enormously from Japanese investment capital and technology and the impetus toward greater productivity provided by Japanese competition. All these benefits would be lost, according to Coll, if the "traditional rivalries among Asian powers. TO Washington, East Asia is still composed of dominoes ready to fall. In one of Aaron Friedberg's many nightmare scenarios one can almost hear the click of the falling dominoes:.
Friedberg and other national-security analysts paint a similarly gloomy picture in Southeast Asia if, for example, Japan should undertake a military buildup in response to Korean reunification. Japan's reaction would alarm China--the emerging colossus, which U. China would speed up the development of its "power projection" forces.
Their defensive response would further alarm China. Such developments, from Washington's perspective, would have one of two results, either of which would shatter the global economy: international anarchy, or regional dominance by China or Japan, which policymakers believe would lead inevitably to a regional trading bloc.
Arguing in for the maintenance of America's leadership of its Cold War alliances, a high-ranking Pentagon official asked, "If we pull out, who knows what nervousness will result? According to this logic, it must always stay. To the United States, the best change in East Asia is no change at all, because any alteration in the status quo could start the dominoes falling. And if there is to be change, Washington--not Tokyo or Beijing--must manage it. To permit otherwise would send a dangerous signal about America's diminishing ability to regulate, calibrate, and manipulate international politics in East Asia.
Of course, Washington appreciates that change is inevitable, and its frustration comes from being unable to square the circle--to manage an increasingly unmanageable world. South Korea, for example, is reorienting its military away from an emphasis on the threat from the North and toward projecting power against a future threat from Japan by means of naval and air forces, submarines, spy planes, and satellites.
The problem is that in prudently preparing for similar eventualities the East Asian states may indeed, as Washington fears, precipitate renationalization. At a loss for what to do, U. On the assumption that democracies are inherently peaceful toward one another, one solution goes, the United States should tranquilize East Asia by democratizing it. At the same time, the second solution has it, because only American dominance can ensure stability in the region as in Europe , the United States should maintain its hegemony indefinitely.
Leaving aside the question of whether either goal can be achieved, it should be clear that proposing these solutions is as inconsistent as simultaneously asserting, as do most in the U. The hope and fear with which policymakers view economic change in East Asia illustrates the contradictory convictions that animate U. Washington both heralds the economic dynamism of the Pacific Rim, hoping it will bring democracy and peace and worldwide economic growth, and dreads the Asian miracle.
It knows that just as economic change engenders a shift in political and military power, so a particular economic order is jeopardized as the foundation upon which it rests--U. In the oxymoronic vocabulary of U. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who developed the idea of a trilateral division of responsibility among the United States, Japan, and Europe, calls for Washington to develop "a more cooperative partnership" with Tokyo even as he asserts that America must continue to control Japan militarily.
THERE is something at once poignant and obtuse in James Baker's comment that because President Clinton's foreign policy lacks consistency and firmness, "for the first time since the Second World War, Japan is not delivering an automatic vote for the US position. We have to lead. No matter who is in charge of U. Baker seems to have forgotten that America's leadership in the Gulf War was possible only because its allies agreed to pick up the tab.
Given such leadership, it is no surprise that once-subservient "partners" are increasingly going their own way. Preponderance cannot simply be asserted; it must reflect a position based on power. When that position shifts enough, preponderance--"leadership"--is lost.
Lenin argued seventy-eight years ago that international capitalism would be economically successful but, by growing in a world of competitive states, would plant the seeds of its own destruction. Ironically, the worldwide economic system that the United States has fostered has itself largely determined America's relative decline even as it has contributed to the country's economic growth.
But the real question we should be asking is: Why does this keep happening? Why do such different presidents keep doing such similar things? How can an electorate that seemed sick of war in watch passively while one war escalates in and another one gets launched in ? What is going on here? Because We Can. The most obvious reason that the United States keeps doing these things is the fact that it has a remarkably powerful military, especially when facing a minor power like Libya. President, but if you push that button, you can stop it.
It might cost a few hundred million dollars, maybe even a few billion by the time we are done, but we can always float a bit more debt. The choice is yours, Mr. It would take a very tough and resolute president — or one with a clear set of national priorities and a deep understanding of the uncertainties of warfare — to resist that siren song. But the truly exceptional thing about America today is not our values and certainly not our dazzling infrastructure, high educational standards, rising middle-class prosperity, etc.
The U. Has No Serious Enemies. A second factor that permits the United States to keep waging these optional wars is the fact that the end of the Cold War left the United States in a remarkably safe position. We do face a vexing terrorism problem, but that danger is probably exaggerated, is partly a reaction to our tendency to meddle in other countries, and is best managed in other ways.
A third enabling factor behind our addiction to adventurism is the all-volunteer force. By limiting military service only to those individuals who volunteer to do it, public opposition to wars of choice is more easily contained. I very much doubt it.
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