Discuss united states foreign policy in the 1940's, 1950's?

Question

and 1960's? did the containment policy fail or suceed during these decades?explains?

Answer 1

Containment didn't really work because the assumptions on which it was based were invalid.  The State Department and the Pentagon assumed that all Communist organizations in the world were working together trying to overthrow democratic capitalist governments.  Yugoslavia went Communist, but stayed out of the Soviet sphere of influence, and the Russia/China conspiracy collapsed after the Korean War.

However, because the US political and militarily opposed rising Communist movements abroad, those groups were forced to seek support from either China or the USSR.  Russia didn't start helping out Castro until after he'd seized power.

This led the US to support really nasty, repressive regimes like that of Pinochet and Peron (not to mention Saddam Hussein) because they were the only ones ruthless enough to exterminate their political enemies completely.

Hostility between the USSR and China grew to the point where it had become public knowledge to foreign policy makers of the time, but they stuck to the Domino Theory and Containment.  This led to support of the French colonials in Southeast Asia and ultimately the Vietnam debacle, when the US, by refusing to assist Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary movement, forced him into the arms of the Chinese.

By the 70s the whole thing had fallen completely apart, with the US supporting the Communists in Cambodia against the Communists in Vietnam while funding the insurgents in Afghanistan that would become the Taliban.

If the US had chosen engagement rather than containment, there would have been fewer opportunities squandered in the last half-century for democratizing the world.

Answer 2

yes