Foreign Affairs and Politics

Foreign Affairs and Politics in the 1950’s

    In the 1950’s political outlooks in America were based mainly on foreign affairs because of the Cold War . After World War II, the United States was concerned that the Communist government in the Soviet Union was trying to expand the communist bloc.The Western Bloc was made up of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, West Germany, Japan, and the Philippines. Their adversary was the Eastern Bloc, made up of China, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, lead by the Soviet Union. Politics and foreign affairs revolved around the Cold War and America’s rise to world leadership. The Cold War became a heated battle when the UN’s principles were challenged by the Communists in Korea. Because of the struggle and indecisive outcome of the Korean War, a fear of communism spread on the home front.When Eisenhower was elected President in 1952, he was looked to mainly for his foreign policy, because all feared the power of the communists and prayed for the end of the Korean War. A popular person among the public arouse in 1950 named Senator Joe McCarthy, who claimed to have a list of communists within America whose mission was to corrupt the democratic system. While the public feared communists, they also felt safer when they knew that there was something they could do about it, which gave them a sense of control, paving the road to power for Joe McCarthy.
    After World War II, the Soviet Union began to spread communism to other nations, as the Communist Manifesto dictated. The Communist Manifesto is a mission statement that provides that communism requires a world revolution and the destruction of capitalism in order to succeed. The United States as well as the Western Bloc felt that this was a threat to their existence and had to be stopped.There was always tension between the two blocs, and even the slightest conflict could be misunderstood or miscommunicated, leaving America in constant fear of WWIII (Kaufman 73). Truman did his best to prevent communism from expanding and in 1947 the Truman Doctrine was formed, stating that the United States would come to the aid of any country trying to resist communist attack (Miller 16). Later, the Truman Doctrine was known as the Containment Policy, because it was trying to contain communism.
    Spreading communism, however, was not the only problem, there was also a fierce competition for power between the Soviet Union and the United States. The power of nuclear weapons was demonstrated at the bombing of Hiroshima, making the United States a world power. The Communists raced to equalize atomic military power with their enemy, and began making nuclear weapons also. No such war was wanted on either side because of Assured Mutual Destruction. This was a theory which said that if one side actually dropped an atomic bomb, the other would fire back, and eventually it would destroy the whole world. When the Soviets had succeeded in detonating their first atomic bomb, the United States hurried to make a more powerful weapon, known as the hydrogen bomb. While they were ahead in the technological battle, the US put forth a proposal to stop the testing of nuclear weapons due the effects it had on the environment (Kaufman 27). The Soviet Union refused because it then gave the US an advantage in the Cold War.
    The Korean War resulted partly due to the tension between the Eastern and Western Blocs. In the years before 1945, Korea was a weak country constantly being pulled back and forth between China and Japan. At the time of the WWII, Korea was under Japan’s control, but not at it’s own free will. The Japanese thought of Koreans as inferior people, because they were not full citizens of Japan. They used Korea for its resources such as iron, and took over their country allowing the Koreans neither the rights of Japanese, nor freedom to create their own government. The Japanese shut down Korean schools, censored books, and held all positions of power, and so when Japan was defeated in World War II and abandoned Korea, they had the independence they had suffered for for so many years, yet were not stable enough to enjoy it (Fincher 34). The economy was thrown off balance, and they had no form of government. Korea was in desperate need of reconstruction.
    The United States and the Soviet Union each came to Korea’s aid. The country was split in half, as well as the families that lived there, by the 38th Parallel (see map). The Soviet Union was to aid the Northern portion of Korea, and the United States to help the South. However, after the war, the USSR began to pursue communism, which the US saw as a threat to freedom because of the Communist Manifesto. Because Korea was divided, America felt that there should be an election to see which form of government the people of Korea wanted, so that it could be reunited again. However, the Soviets refused to allow such an election to happen in the North (McGowen 22). The US developed South Korea as a democracy, called the Republic of Korea; and the Soviet Union created the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which had a communist government, as well as a much stronger army than the South. Both societies grew separately, but there was always a sense of tension between the two governments. During the Korean war, the power went back and forth between north and south Korea, with neither side willing to surrender.
    In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office and pledged to help end the fighting in Korea. Eisenhower’s campaign was based around his foreign policy, in which he believed that the United States could live in peace, when the world outside was facing so many problems. It was the United States’ duty to intervene, and in his campaign speeches he blamed previous president Truman for how he dealt with the troubles that the US was now facing. Another reason Eisenhower suited the job was because of his thirty years of military experience. He was a master strategist, who the public believed could block Communism altogether. While in office, Eisenhower stressed the importance of cooperation with the Allies, and he wanted to put money into nuclear weapons instead of ground troops (Richardson 46). However, he had no intention of using the nuclear weapons and rejected many requests from his advisors, but the nuclear weapons were a device to intimidate the Communist Bloc. The nuclear energy should not be put to waste, so Eisenhower proposed a program called Atoms For Peace, which would put the technological advances toward peaceful and productive use. From this program the International Atomic Energy Agency was created. President Eisenhower also gained a lot of respect for how he handled the crisis in the Suez. The Egyptian president had taken away power of the Suez Canal, a major source of access to oil, from France and Britain. In an effort to regain the canal, Israel, France, and Britain made an air and land attack, without consulting or notifying the UN. When Eisenhower heard this, he suspended loans to Britain because of what he considered to be betrayal (Richarson 17). This gave the American people great confidence in Eisenhower before he ran for his second term, which he won by a landslide. Eisenhower won both his first and second presidential terms based on his solid foreign policy.
    By the end of the war, Korea wound up in the exact same situation it had been in before, two divided nations. 54,246 American soldiers died in Korea, and it changed nothing (McGowen 12). However, if the war were never fought, then it is possible that the domino effect of communism might have taken hold, and life, not only in Korea, but all over the world would have been very different. Although the short term effects of life were small, in the long run, the US government believed Korea was a war worth fighting.

The Korean War also had a number of effects on the world. Politically, the United States had rearmed and become a world power. The Korean “War” also gave the president more power. Congress had the power to declare and wage wars, however this was only a “police action” and so Truman made all the decisions. Even though he called on Congress for help, he was playing the role that “the Constitution said belonged to Congress” (Fincher 34) At home, the Korean War increased the fear of communism, leading to McCarthyism. Joe McCarthy announced that he had a list of communist spies within the State Department. Although he never actually showed the list to anyone, he was using the people’s fear of communism to become a powerful man (Knowledge Adventure). He began a series of “witch hunts”, where he tracked people down and then they were forced to testify before international security. They then faced a double-edged sword, because if they said no, they were lying, and if they acknowledged the accusation, they were communists. McCarthy’s witch hunts ruined many careers because blacklisting began. Blacklisting meant that any person who opposed McCarthy’s persecution, was considered to sympathize communists, and was unwanted for a job, and any company who hired them could be searched by McCarthy’s committee (Knowledge Adventure). Many people, especially people in the movie business, who were constantly in the public eye, had to give up their careers because of Joe McCarthy. In 1954 McCarthy began to target members of the US Army. Eisenhower had reached his crossing point, and put a stop to McCarthy’s investigations. In fact, they began to investigate McCarthy, who lost most of his power and public attention almost as quickly as he had gained it.
The Korean War was also known as the “Forgotten War” because people allowed it to be forgotten. At home, the war was ignored, and people refused to accept the fact that the world was not what it seemed. Far away from America people were dying, for a country who didn’t seem to care. Instead they pretended that America was ideal, as they believed it should have been after winning WWII. Ignorance is what differentiated Korea from Vietnam. Although the nation wasn’t completely behind the war in Vietnam, it caused people to question authority and their own values, and it affected every person’s life; something that never happened during the Korean war.