US Post Cold War Interventionism Foreign Policy Essay

US Post Cold War Interventionism Foreign Policy - Essay Example There is strong and credible argument that the United States foreign policy has encouraged widespread destabilization across the world, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The use of the United States military should be restricted to situations where the country’s regional integrity, liberty, or sovereignty is under threat. President George Washington, the founding father of the United States, established the country’s first foreign policy that forbids the new republic to engage in political and power struggles in other countries across the globe. During his farewell speech in 1796, the president stated that â€Å"the great rule of conduct for the United States foreign policy is extending the countries commercial relations, with minimal political involvement as possible† (Gordon and Shapiro, 2004, p52). The president further stated that it was in the United States’ foreign policy to avoid unnecessary permanent alliances with any reg ion across the globe (Dean 1999). Since that speech, the United States has been involved into numerous conflicts across all the six continents in the world. The main objective of the United States involvement in the Cold War was to deter expansion of communism across the world. According to Bleschloss and Talbot (1993), the progress of the Soviet Red Army in the Second World War established the Soviet Union as the most dominant power in European continent. The Red Army freed Eastern Europe from an unwarranted Nazi aggression which had claimed millions of lives in the continent. Blum (2003) noted that the Soviet Union had suffered the heaviest casualties, totalling over 20 million and the new government under President Josef Stalin was determined to prevent western style democracy to become entrenched in the European continent. From these developments, Winston Churchill, then English prime minister, warned of the descent of â€Å"iron curtain† in Europe (Cohen, 1993). This mar ked the beginning of the United States intervention in the region, driven by concerns about the prospect of communist rule in both Eastern and Western Europe. The opposing views pertaining to the political future of the European continent created conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States referred as the Cold War. The tension threatened outbreak of the Third World War as both countries engaged in massive military mobilizations and development of weapons of mass destruction. The competition for developing military weapons and desire to contain the Soviet influence caused a major shift in the United States foreign policy which became more inclined to aggression. According to Cameron (2005, p. 62), the United States committed itself to pursuing â€Å"a patient but firm, long-term policy for containing and eventually destroying the communism by indentifying and revealing major social and economic weaknesses associated with the ideology†. The resulting ideological war took over four decades, causing heavy economic losses to the American economy. Through Truman Doctrine, the United States made its first foreign intervention during peacetime. The country spent millions of dollars to support countries in Europe that were under threat of falling into soviet influence. These included Turkey and Greece in which the American government invested over