The Age of Containment, 1946-1954
Yalta conference– helped set the stage for the Cold War. It was the last meeting
between Stalin, Churchill and FDR about post war Europe. Stalin would get Poland for
two years and then have to hold free elections of which were never held. Germany would
be split into four occupation zones. The Soviets would control the side containing Berlin
and then Berlin would be divided into four occupation zones. The occupiers to help with
rebuilding and aid would be the U.S., Soviet Union, Great Britain and France.
The years following the Second World War found, for the first time ever, the United
States assuming a role of military and political leadership in international affairs. This
was most evident in U.S.--Soviet relations. The end of the war also brought with it the
end of the tenuous cooperative alliance between these two great nations. In 1945,
President Truman added to these deterioration of relations by suddenly suspending
financial assistance to the Soviet Union. By 1946, the chill transformed into the Cold
War. At this point, the only advantage the U.S. had over the Soviet Union was the atomic
bomb.
In 1947, George Kennan, our first expert on Communist Russia, urged the United
States to adopt a policy of containing Soviet expansionism. Under the Truman Doctrine,
financial and military aid was provided to Greece and Turkey to fight communism. From
1946-1951, the United States gave financial assistance to seventeen nations in Western
Europe under the Marshall Plan. In 1948, the CIA played an active but covert role in
fighting communism in Italy and France by preventing the Communist parties in those
countries from scoring election victories.
America’s containment policy was repeatedly tested in the late 1940s. The first major
challenge occurred in 1948, when the Soviets in East Germany blockaded all roads
leading into Berlin. The United States responded by airlifting supplies into the city for
nearly a year until Soviet leader Joseph Stalin reopened the highways. This unsuccessful
attempt to secure control of Berlin prompted the United States to help organize the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with eleven other nations in 1949. It was an
entangling alliance where nations would prevent war and contain communism. If one
were attacked, it would be treated as if all twelve were attacked.
The next great challenge to the containment policy came in China, when Communist
leader Mao Zedong successfully toppled the American-supported forces of Jiang Jieshi in
1949. Jiang’s supporters fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), and China came under
the control of Communism.
The fall of China, the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic weapon in 1949,
and the tense situation in Germany and Eastern Europe led the United States to reconsider
its Cold War foreign policy. The National Security Council issued document number 68
(NSC68), which called for a huge military buildup and the increased use of covert action,
propaganda, and economic pressure as defensive measures against communism. We
redefined the meaning of a free nation as being an anti-communist nation.
The United States took a military stand against communism during the Truman
years in Korea. North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea in 1950,
prompting the United States to send assistance to South Korea and its leader, Synghmann
Rhee, under the heading of United Nations. Within three months of their opening attack,
however, North Korean forces had taken Seoul and reached the southern tip of the
peninsula at Pusan. United Nations forces under General Douglas MacArthur countered
