Current Events and U.S. Diplomacy - Research Paper Example

A president’s foreign policy can be thoroughly diplomatic, while his military stance can play merely the role of a diplomatic apparatus. It is normally determined by the country’s economic, military, and sociopolitical statuses. Whereas a presidential doctrine is usually objective-oriented, the implement of this doctrine needs in-depth knowledge of and proper response to home economy, politics, military strength, etc. Simultaneously the president should have in-depth knowledge of and proper response to counterparty’s economy, politics, military strength, etc.

During the developing stage of the Cold War in the first half of the 1960s, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s foreign policy had been more diplomatic than his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower’s unyielding view about the US presence in the world politics. The diplomatic essence of the Kennedy Doctrine initially played a crucial role in building up the very premises –“Flexible Response to the International Political Powers”, “Containment of Communism” and “Reversal of Soviet Progress in the West” –of the Kennedy Doctrine. . In this regard Gaddis (2005) opined that also the failed CIA-backed military coup in Cuba, in spite of Kennedy’s promise to refrain from Cuban Affairs, provoked the president to be bold to pronounce the United States’ defensive stance regarding the Berlin issue and the diplomatic acknowledgement of the Soviet Union’s concern in Germany.

(Gaddis, 2005, pp. 112-115) Kennedy’s policy for the “containment of communism” was essentially the legacy of Eisenhower and Truman’s foreign policy prerogatives. During the peak-hours of Cold War, Kennedy had no other choice but to follow his “White House predecessors” (Schweizer, 1994, pp. 65). Being panicked by the rapid communist advancement, both Truman and Eisenhower turned back to the country’s military strength -though they did not go into any direct war- to contain communism.

As a result, superpowers involved into proxy wars in various geographical regions of interests. Nuclear arm race between the two main parties of the war, the USA and the Soviet Union, began as a response to the superpowers’ desire to overpower each other. During the period, the world experienced a worldwide regrouping of the countries into the US block and the Soviet bloc. This regrouping in the Soviet block was mainly based on the Marxist political ideology of Communism, whereas capitalism and democratic interests dominated the countries in the US block.

This regroupings in both of the blocks often turned into expansionism and counter-expansionism. (Schweizer, 1994, pp. 69-74) The Soviet leadership’s expansionist desire to force Marxist ideals upon the rest of the earth panicked the wealthy capitalist west whose reaction to the communist expansionism eventually