Old men built walls, and the youth tore them down.
The escalating tensions between Eastern and Western cultures during the four-plus decades following the Second World War globalized ideological disputes and spread violence across the world; in its wake, in places where the United States was compassionately committed to nation-building, came free trade, modernization, and international protections against violations of universal human rights. As the United States' global influence enlarged, the United States itself became the key actor in its own interest—the same interest articulated in President Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression: security. As the United States sought to hold international markets open to American manufacturers and to ensure the right to self-determination for peoples around the world, they continued the struggle that began in the American Revolution to build institutions of representative government that protected individual freedoms and opportunity for personal advancement. The United States worked to create a global society of nation-states ruled by governments that derived their existence from the governed, maintained free markets, and respected the human rights of their citizens. In ideological opposition, the Soviet Union sought governments loyal to the Soviet regime and aligned with the principles of socialism. Throughout this period of history, every United States leader was challenged to fight totalitarian enemies in defense of the principles of democracy without undermining those very principles.
This website is designed to give students an historical narrative that provides the global context for key documents that they will use to investigate our two essential research questions:
1) To what extent did the United States' foreign policy secure or undermine the right to self-determination for nation-states around the globe?
2) To what extent did the United States' foreign policy achieve its goal of providing security for the nation?
Primary source documents included for exploration:
- Kennan's Long Telegram
- The Truman Doctrine Speech
- The Marshall Plan Speech
- McCarthy's Wheeling, WV Speech
- Eisenhower's Chance for Peace Speech
- Eisenhower's Domino Theory Speech
- NSC-68
- Kennedy's Inaugural Address
- Rostow's Development Theory
- SIOP-62
- Robert Kennedy & Anatoly Dobrynin
- Johnson's Johns Hopkins Speech
- King's Riverside Church Speech
- Nixon's "To End the War" Speech
- Nixon's Detente Speech
- Nixon Doctrine Speech
- 1974 Bipartisan Congressional Report on Human Rights
- The Atlantic Charter
- Charter 77
- Carter's Notre Dame University Speech
- NCCB's "The Challenge of Peace"
- Cronkite and Reagan Interview
- Reagan's Westminster Speech
- Gorbachev's United Nations Speech