The Berlin Wall divided East and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989.
During the Cold War, the American containment policy--the idea that communism had to be checked politically, economically and militarily so it could not expand globally--created a ideological impasse between the United States and Russia. The two nations spent 50 years jostling each other for military, cultural and global supremacy and polarized world diplomacy.
War After a War
The Cold War began before the Second World War ended as the Soviet Union gobbled up European countries and President Harry Truman and his advisers concluded Stalin envisioned a Soviet-dominated world instead of a democratic one. The 1948 Berlin airlift was one of the Cold War's opening confrontations, and it didn't end until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
George Keenan Makes Policy
George Keenan was one of the key policy-makers of the Cold War and author of the "containment" policy. He helped formulate the Truman administration's anti-communist doctrines and the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild war-ravaged Europe.
President Truman Declares His Doctrine
Incorporating Keenan's ideas in a speech to Congress on March 12, 1947, Truman declared that as the leader of the free world, the United States intended to support democracy and fight communism. This "Truman Doctrine" inspired diplomatic initiatives like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (NATO).
American Advisers Arrive in Vietnam
By 1950, the United States was fighting the communists in Korea. In July 1954, the Geneva Accord divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and in January 1955, American advisers began to arrive in Vietnam as a part of the American goal of defending South Vietnam against the North Vietnamese communists.
President Eisenhower's Domino Theory
On April 7, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the" domino theory," which speculated that if one country in a region became communist, it would infect the surrounding countries. The United States used the domino-effect policy to intervene in Vietnam and other countries from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Soviet Union Collapses
The domino theory compelled President John F. Kennedy to confront the Soviet Union in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and President Ronald Reagan to participate in the Able Archer NATO exercises in 1983 that some historians believe brought the Soviet Union and the United States once again to the brink of nuclear war. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in1991, the United States had forged military and economic interests in every region of the globe.
