Dyed-In-The-Wool History
The Cold War Era
As America emerged from WWII it was rapidly transformed from an isolationist state to a super power and the center of the new western economic structure. In this new world, all public decisions and policies would have to been seen in an international context to be understood. This wasn't the result of a sudden change in public opinion, or culture, of open public debate. It was the result of decisions made by a small group of unelected elites within the Roosevelt administration that had vast power to reshape the world.
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Within the administration there were both Progressive Utopians (New Dealers) and those who sought American economic and military dominance which was most closely associated with the "Wise Men" who became extremely powerful after FDR's death when Truman, who had not been involved with decision making under FDR, had to determine who he would trust to define policy.
Within years Russia would go from being an ally under FDR and the "New Dealers", to an economic adversary and regional threat that needed to be contained under the policies set in place by the "Wise Men", to an immediate and existential threat to America, Liberty Democracy, and Christianity as portrayed by the more radical Republican interventionalists like Joe McCarthy. This would lead to permanent military mobilization that drove the world to the brink of nuclear war on several occasions while driving endless budget deficits and inflation at home.
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The primary question to resolve in reviewing the period of the Cold War is whether or not America was really faced with an aggressive and mortal threat in the form of either "world communism" and/or the Soviet Union specifically. If the answer to that question is anything but a resounding yes, we must ask ourselves how these beliefs came to be so widely accepted and what the real impact of the policies that came from it were.
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​Origins of the Cold War 1944-1950
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The Cold War in China and Korea 1940-1954
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The New Right and Neoconservatives
Neoliberalism and Postmodernism
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