Amy (Ayoung) Cho
U.S. History <B3>
Mr. Loveday
April 10, 2015
The Strategic and Effective American Containment of Communism
Capitalism is a political and economic model based on private ownership of resources, while communism has the community own resources and means of production. Shortly after World War II, these two systems rose to power, and the Soviet Union and the United States soon found themselves on a direct ideological collision course as they took different sides. The United States supported the spread of capitalism, but the Soviet Union believed that capitalism was dying and that communism would eventually dominate the world. As a result, a new kind of war, a Cold War, emerged between the two nations, with the Soviet policy being…show more content… In 1948, Stalin tried to use West Berlin—a fragile region still reeling from the destructions of World War II—and infiltrate beyond the border to establish a Communist government. For example, he blocked “any shipments (including food) coming into West Berlin” and made communism quickly surround West Berlin (Document B). Soon, “America and its allies [supported] the West Berliners by air, flying in supplies for the over two million people for nearly a year (Document B).” Indeed, America did everything within its power to protect West Berlin. The United States continued to airlift foods and sent a huge financial package in the form of cash to rebuild the economic infrastructure that had been destroyed in World War II. Therefore, the Soviet Union eventually removed the blockade, and West Berlin remained under capitalism. Without this life support provided by the Truman, it would have been a matter of days before Stalin would have lured them towards joining his communist “satellite…show more content… Once Cuba became communist under Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union secretly shipped “40,000 troops, 60 missiles and 158 nuclear warheads” to the nation and used it as a missile base (Document D). Such action was a major threat to the United States not only because the Cuban island literally hundred miles off the coast of Florida, but also because the American leaders knew that the Soviets actually have nuclear weapons. Soon, the United States’ U-2 spy planes detected the Soviet Union’s missiles in the Cuban island, took pictures of the scene, and reported the Soviet’s action to the UN Security Council emergency session. At first, the Soviets kept on denying the accusation, so the American UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson II eventually revealed the pictures to the world, thus proving the malignant intent on the part of the Soviets. As a consequence, the Soviets became pressured by other nations to remove the missiles, and “in a quiet agreement with Soviets, the United States [removed] missiles from Turkey” (Document D). Their agreement was that the United States would pull out its missiles from Turkey if the Soviets would pull out their missiles from Cuba. Therefore, a potential nuclear confrontation was avoided, and the United States was able to contain Stalin’s expansionist