The Cold War and American Foreign Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Cold War and American Foreign Policy - Essay Example devil names more important than perhaps any other in terms of The unite States alien form _or_ system of govern ment and its impact, position and effect in the Cold war are those of Paul Nitze and George Kennan, senior officials in the American administration, with sharply contradicting views and positions of strategy. Each had a highly contrasted sense of policy from the other, in terms of how the United States should take a stand towards the Cold War and what would be the most favorable policy for their mastery and the Soviets defeat. These views and the lives of these two men are outlined in Nicholas Thompsons book, The Hawk and The Dove, and are investigated in the paragraphs to follow, on with the question of who influenced American overseas policy more favorably and what effect it would have on the eventual(prenominal) result of the Cold War. To outline their most fundamental disagreement in a nutshell, one believe d in prevention and the other believed in action. One of them, Nitze, believed their strategy should be to surpass any limits of capability the soviets whitethorn suckle them responsible for and then act on them, while the other, Kennan, believed to think like the soviets would, try to conk out their intentions and then counter or contain them until they themselves internally collapsed, known as his policy of containment. Kennan, who believed in the latter, was of the thought that the soviets were fundamentally weak and insecure and that it would not take much for them to collapse, assuming they were pass byled correctly. Nitze on the other hand was of the opposing view that the Soviets were fast gaining power and that Moscow would attain strategic superiority from the United States in a few years, which he hoped to counter before it occurred. Where Kennan believed that it just took to understand the Soviets intentions and thoughts to end the cold war, Nitze believed it took to discernment and surpassing their every capability. To understand how fundamentally different the two men were, it is of interest to note that foreign policy aside, they even differed on their own country Kennan condemned America for its vulgar culture, and its people for having a self-complacent and mediocre standard. Nitze on the other hand was convinced of Americas power and central hold on the world. Therefore, given their completely contrasting view, one ready to take the back-seat and one ready to rush with full force, they can both be said to sum up the two sides of a contemporariess argument on the Cold War and Americas foreign policy regarding it. Of course there were excessively many incidents where the two men, who were close friends, did agree, such as the Marshall Plan, or their stance on the American position in Vietnam, in which cases they tended to prove that they were quite correct in their judgment and often have favorable reaction. Nonetheless, those few time s aside, they had different viewpoints at a primary and fundamental level, thereby devising it more likely for them to disagree than agree. These differences however did not prevent them from seeking mutual benefit from all(prenominal) others policies. For example, Nitze extracted military benefit from Kennans theory of containment, by negotiating deals with Soviets regarding the United States military, and by memory the military and its allies safe. Kennan on the other hand enjoyed a certain level of military and otherwise superiority from which to excise his policy of containment, thereby proving that each was necessary factor in American policy on the Cold War and that while each contradicted each other, it did not necessarily mean that they clashed with each other. Where the differences in their thinking arose from is of no mystery, as it was indeed early experience in the lives of both these men that were to shape them for the rest of their life. Ones experience with the Co ld War, Nitzes, consisted of dealing with the live aftermath of a Nuclear War, on the scene