Did the US Pursue the Right Cold War Policy?

[MrDibble]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Yes of course, it was worse than South Africa and Rhodesia too especially under the post-colonial red dictatorships.

Worse directly because of South Africa and Rhodesia, actually.

**
If we are going to deal with the USSR and the PRC** what’s so wrong with dealing with an Apathareid South Africa and Rhodesia? The PRC’s policies against Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians, and the Falun Gong aren’t really any better that than of the South Africans and Rhodesians against blacks.

I’ve bolded where you’ve gone wrong. America didn’t have to deal with anyone. And even if you deal with someone, you can do so while demanding they make changes (like post-Reagan-veto-override USA) and not selling the oppressors weapons nor sending in the CIA.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Ideally, the West would have used the Korean War to peel China away from the Soviets. But that sort of thinking ignores the power of the China Lobby, a group that did much harm to the US.

[The_Second_Stone]

@Der_Trihs

I don’t buy that for a moment. We weren’t “forced” to topple democracies, promote murder, rape and torture as methods of quelling rebellion, economically exploit much of the world, or to do most of what we did. It’s a false dilemma. And we kept it up long after Stalin was around and are still doing it. Communism was just an excuse for us indulging our own cruelty and greed, it wasn’t the reason for our behavior.

Fair enough as far as you are concerned. The US fight against communism also recruited other people and factions with other motives, such as profit and power. To describe US misbehavior during the past 65 years as only anti communist overlooks the fact that prior to WWII and prior to the founding of the Soviet Union we did all of those things you decry and worse. Those activities continued and continued under the additional cover of containment, but the policy of containment did not require them.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@MrDibble

Worse directly because of South Africa and Rhodesia, actually.I’ve bolded where you’ve gone wrong. America didn’t have to deal with anyone. And even if you deal with someone, you can do so while demanding they make changes (like post-Reagan-veto-override USA) and not selling the oppressors weapons nor sending in the CIA.

I concede your point.

[septimus]

One must direct the question at at least three areas:

• military
• economic
• geopolitical

(1) Military success. There’s been no general regional war for 66 years. This record has been surpassed, IIRC, only by Pax Brittanica and Pax Romana. This is due to Cold War politics and the presence of nuclear WMDs. There were several minor wars of impact, e.g. Korea - good idea, Vietnam - bad, Iraq - mistakes.

(2) Economically good until the 70’s. I won’t quibble with TriPolar’s comment. Economically it should be pointed out that U.S. propping of Pinochet, Shah Pahlavi, etc. is Good for Americans, esp. the greedy rich ones. Frankly, dictators friendly to U.S. are often better for America and for world peace, at least in short- to medium-term, than conceding political freedom to uneducated, easily gulled masses.

(3) Truman and Eisenhower made, overall, sound, prudent decisions. Kennedy and Johnson made, IMO, big mistakes, especially in Vietnam. (Until OP should split this into two or more threads, set aside remarks on post-Johnson Presses.)

@TriPolar

Ok, good, now I don’t have to start this thread myself.

The problem started in the 70’s with detente. The general theory of massive defense spending which the Soviets could not keep up with worked very well. But we failed to realize that.

First, we wasted massive sums in Vietnam. This was a proxy war with the Soviets that cost them far less than it did us. We didn’t even realize that China was a non-player in this conflict, and just as worried about the USSR as we were.

Then, Nixon and Kissinger decided to pursue appeasement of the Soviets through trade, and as a result we were attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In 1980 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and attempted to host the Olympics based on an economy that we were now supporting through trade, which often meant giving them money to buy our goods. When Jimmy Carter called for a boycott of the Olympics and trade in response, he collapsed the Soviet economy. Only we didn’t know it because our intelligence services were busy looking for… well something I assume, but not the signs that our strategy had worked. By the winter of 1981, the USSR could not produce enough food to survive. Luckily Reagan stepped in an propped them up with the sale of US wheat (with our money again), a great way to pick up votes in the midwest. Continuing trade propped them up until the final fall in 1989.

I think we could have won the CW years earlier if we had unleashed the US economy to increase our standard of living instead of dragging it down with continued defense spending that no longer had a purpose. The Soviet system was doomed to failure based on a level of expenditures we had achieved by the 60’s. They could not maintain their own military and a feasible domestic economy based on their system.

@The_Second_Stone

George Kennan was the architect of the Cold War policy of “containment”, which worked, killed far less people than WW3 through WW6 would have, and was far less expensive. Eggs were broken, omelets made. George F. Kennan - Wikipedia

There were some other great heroes of that era, e.g. Dean Acheson, George Marshall, and especially Harry S Truman.