More Resources

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A useful link to supplement what we have been discussing recently, looking at countries that gave up nuclear weapons and thus their overall ambitions:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214193?from=rss

Maestro.
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The Beginning of the American Policy of Containment

The rise of the Soviet Union and the dominance that it acquired after the Second World War were reasons enough to create certain “paranoia” in the United States, a fear of communism spreading worldwide. Though we could also say it was not an unfounded alarm, but a reality likely to happen. To defend democracy from the threat awaken by growing communism, the United States adopted its famous policy of containment (as we saw in class).
In 1947, president Truman said that it was the United States’ duty to help any country vulnerable to fall to communism. Out from this idea, the United States began to take various actions. One of them was the Truman Doctrine, the “beginning” of American war against communism.
After World War II, the United Kingdom supplied some countries, such as Greece and Turkey, with financial aid. However, the UK reached a point where it was unable to carry on with the help, so they asked America for a plan B. The reason why it was important to continue contributing with these two countries was that Greece was going through a civil war and Turkey was still on a process of recovering and modernization, which made them susceptible to adopt communism one day or another.
American support resulted in the defeat of the Greek Communist Party. But this was not the only consequence. The importance of Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment, established within American minds, led later to “bigger” things, such as the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam and Korean war.

Was it all worth it?
Was it really America's responsibility to maintain communism aside?
Was it the right way to stop communism?

For more information:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Truman_Doctrine
http://www.johndclare.net/cold_war8_TrumanDoctrine.htm
http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=qXeRALIwozgC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=greece+communism+us+truman+doctrine&source=bl&ots=hymjFEMYBa&sig=Suh2WYEmasrAIEJXGF12y2xdsqU&hl=es&ei=oHqbSoeMEY_-tQOsm_iUDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1780.html

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Advantages thet The Cold War brought to human race

While enjoying my weekend I realized that "The Cold War" gave many triumphs to human race. I think it is important to talk about this because if we just talk about the bad things, we would not be able to discuss the things that were invented in this époque of time.

For example, we would not have the ability to collaborate in this blog if it hadn't been for the invention of the transistor, because as we now transistors are used in the fabrication of computers and other technological devices we use in a daily basis.

If it hadn't been for the Russian entrepreneurs that wanted to conquer space we wouldn’t have the ability to make a cell phone call across seas at the speed we can. The Russians were the first ones to send an artificial satellite to space; that satellite was called The Sputnik, after this satellite was put on orbit, a few more started to circle the Earth. This has helped in many process of communication. Another step was when Neil Armstrong arrives to the Moon.

How can we forget about ARPANET??? ARPANET was a net between computers used in the military to send information between military bases. Maybe we can think that the ARPANET is not important for us, but ARPANET is the pre-stage of what we call nowadays "the internet."

So next time you login in Facebook remember that The Cold War was the catalyst for the internet and many other things.

Dasguta Partha, War and Progress. Retrieved August 21st, 2009, from Arizona State Universtiy Web Site: http://cactus.eas.asu.edu/Partha/Columns/09-24-war.htm

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