The Road To Hell is Paved With Good Intentions

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Recommended: Berlin Crisis 1948-1949

With a new war on the horizon America began to disregard some of its values as well as adopt new ones. Following the end of World War II an iron curtain fell across Europe, on one side the capitalist nation of America and on the other the communist nation of Soviet Russia. As a result of the Ideological differences between these two superpowers, America embraced a new value which would drive foreign policy for decades on; containment. The value of containment which, according to George Kennan, can be described as “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of [Soviet] expansive tendencies." was first introduced to American foreign policy through the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Containment was the value which drove U.S. foreign policy post-WWII as seen by the division of Berlin, Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam.
Immediately after WWII a new war began which was guided by the policy of containment. The division of Berlin was the first display of America’s steadfast resolve not to back down and allow the Soviet Union to gain any more territory. Three years after the separation of berlin into west and east a blockade was established by the Soviet’s in an attempt to absorb the capitalist outpost into the communist territory surrounding it. America now following the policy of containment could not allow their western outpost to fall to the Soviets, so even though the east offered to supply the west with the necessities needed to survive America instead created an air bridge to keep the west under their control ignoring the human rights of the Berliners. Despite the obvious deprivation of the Berliners “Once in a while somebody would be in the right place at the right time, and an American soldier would press a piece of fruit into g...

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... Bay of Pigs invasion, and Vietnam. In the beginning this policy of containment worked with great success, but as time went on America slowly lost sight of its core values. As a result of this actions were performed which caused the deaths of countless innocent civilians, “Lieutenant Calley and a weeping rifleman named Paul D. Meadle-the same soldier who had fed candy to the children before shooting them-pushed the prisoners into the ditch...people were diving on top of each other; mothers were trying to protect their children”(Zinn 469). The United States government must not allow one value to rule over foreign policy without question. Each value instead should be given equal thought when making decisions concerning foreign policy. Over the course of the Cold War America allowed its actions abroad to be solely based off the policy of containment resulting in

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