From Containment to Americanism. Ellias Aghili Dehnavi
which had previously shaped the international system through its interactions, was recognized as the biggest loser in the war and suffered devastation, distress, poverty and misery. These issues were cuases of a good platform for the growth of looting votes and ideas.
Thus, during the post-war era, the united enemies’ ranks of Nazism were torn apart. Interestingly, the fate of defeated Germany was the first cornerstone of a new animosity between former conquerors (R.P. PARINGAUX, 1994: 191-192). After that, Europe became another factor in heightening the conflict between the two new enemies. In his famous Fulton speech in 1946, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Churchill, mentioned the creation of the Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Adriatic, which divided Europe in two part. In contrast, the great Soviet theorist John, in 1947, mentioned the creation of two hostile camps of imperialism, with the aim of world domination and anti-imperialism, with the intention of overthrowing imperialism (S. PACTEAU et F- C. MOUGEL, 1993: 91).
With the creation of a new competition and the emergence of two superpowers that were the main actors in the international relations scene, a new system was formed based on the balance of bipolar powers. In this new world order, the United States, as the leader of the capitalist world, considered it as its duty to prevent the expansion of the Soviet-led socialist camp on the basis of modern foreign policy, which had previously been the responsibility of Britain and France.
Therefore, in the post-World War II era, there was a strong will to consider a new role for the United States on world politics: to share the collaborative efforts of the United States and Britain! In fact, Great Britain, with the dream of resuming its lost global sovereignty after the Reconstruction period, enjoyed many influential capabilities in the new direction of US foreign policy. On the one hand, it magnified the Soviet threat, and on the other hand, it hoped that the United Kingdom and the United States could work together to prevent the threat.
In this situation in the United States, governments such as Canan, Acheson, Marshall, Eisenhower, and even Truman, in order to justify the continued presence of the United States in Europe and elsewhere, magnified the presence of Soviet threat too much and and by intimidating, they created a hysterical atmosphere against communism. The era of McCarthyism and the grabbing whatever which was left like, were the consequences of this programming flow (L. Marcou, 1987: 237).
In the end, Britain's dream of reclaiming the world did not come true, and the old colonizer was forced to leave the international arena for the new imperialist actor. Following the continuation of Soviet influence in sensitive areas such as Iran, Turkey, and Greece, the British government explicitly denounced the declaration and sought US assistance. On February 12, 1947, in secret notes from the London government, he declared his inability to counter the spread of communism. Thus, with the removal of the United Kingdom, a bipolar system based on American and Soviet acting theory was formed from this date.
In this situation, the US government, more purposeful than ever, decided to take a permanent place in its former ally at the top of the capitalist world. Finally, on March 12, 1945, Harry Truman announced the new US foreign policy (Truman's doctrine). Considering its nuclear power, the new diplomatic and strategic principles of US, confrontation with the Soviet Union and the spread of communism were not within specific limits, but throughout the globe (Tabatabai, 2002: 11).
Thus, US global policy was based on deterrence or a barrier to Soviet expansion beyond the 1945 borders. However, a few years later, some extremist factions were interpreting the doctrine of a policy of going backwards which meant pushing back the Soviets, even to the pre-1945 borders.
In the end, it is worth mentioning that, with the exception of Truman, almost all US presidents have presented their doctrines since World War II! But all of them are derived from Truman's doctrine of deterrence and global politics, and their interpretation and modern analysis within their particular place and time, which have been based on the developments of the international system.
3. Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Security Strategy (January 20, 1953 - January 20, 1961)
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general and American politician who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. In January 1957, on the eve of his second term in office, Eisenhower called on the US Congress to pass resolutions authorizing the President to use force to block the aggression of communism in the Middle East.
This action, called the Eisenhower Doctrine, required Congress to delegate the right of declaring war, which was traditionally a congressional right, to the President (Schulzinger, 2000: 445). In his message to Congress, Eisenhower proposed three types of action: a) strengthening the economic ability of the Middle Eastnations; b) Implementation of military assistance and cooperation programs; c) Armed support for territorial integrity and political independence of nations threatened by communism (Lenjanski, 1994: 77). Dwight D. Eisenhower of the Republican Party of America was victorious on the presidential election of November 1952 due to his reputation during World War II, as well as McCarthyist propaganda about Truman's inability to contain communism due to Communist influence in the Democratic Party, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Security Services (Malakutian, 2001: 184-183).
Eisenhower called the Truman Barrier Doctrine a "Tread Mill Policy" and believed that it would keep the United States in a position in order to lose its incentive for dealing with international conspiracies and regional crises (Houshang Mahdavi, 2001: 59 - 55). He believed that the goal of the United States should not be peaceful coexistence with communism, but that it should be abolished by the United States (Malakutian, 2001: 184). Therefore, adopting the "New Look" and " The Great Revenge Doctrine" policy, he declared: "The United States is no longer required to use conventional weapons to fight the Soviet Union and multilaterally retaliate against any sudden and atomic attack." (Schulzinger, 2000: 416).
Thus, Eisenhower considered the development of the American model as the only optional choice of the people of the world, and to achieve this he concluded that regional treaties in Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand must be done. Eisenhower's goal was to develop the process that Truman had begun in Europe and to try to spread such collections and structures around the world (Mottaghi, 1997: 56).
Eisenhower's national security policy can be divided into two phases or periods that are somewhat in line with his presidency: the first period, in 1953 until 1957 that Eisenhower tried to keep the United States out of being as passive state and revive hope in the hearts of Western allies. Adopting the "New Look" policy was to some extent in the following of such a goal. The second period, which coincided with the years 1957-91, during which the Soviet Union was able to show not only equality but also to some extent superiority troward the United States by sending Sputnik missiles into space, also Eisenhower sought to counter Soviet domination in Africa and Asia by declaring his doctrine. (Darwish Seh Talani, 1997: 45-44).
The "New Look" policy, introduced in Document No. 2/162 of the US National Security Council in November 1953, was an attempt to regain initiative in the global confrontation with the Soviet Union while at the same time reducing US defense costs. Thus, the fundamental orientation of the US Armed Forces changed from conventional ground forces to increasing the capacity of the US Strategic Bomber Fleet so that it could carry out both limited nuclear strikes and "Massive Retaliation." (Gaziurovsky, 1992: 164).
In fact, the New Look policy was a military move to coordinate the military's desire to increase its defense budget and the Treasury Department's request to prevent a general budget deficit. The New Look policy called on the Department of Defense to reduce the number of conventional forces and to rely on nuclear weapons to intimidate the Soviet Union and force it to reconcile with the United States. Thus, the Air Force had the highest defense costs with heavy bombers, while the army, and especially the infantry, had to be reduced from twenty divisions to fourteen divisions (Schulzinger, 2000: 415).
"… The United States no longer have to use conventional weapons to fight the Soviet Union," John Foster Dulles stated in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on January 12, 1954, explaining the New Look policy. Dulles declared a policy of "retaliation with all the power" or "great revenge" to stop the aggression. In other word, the United States has threatened to use the most horrific weapons available against Soviet cities in cases such as the war on the Korean Peninsula (Schulzinger,