research paper

  After World War II, the threat of communism expanding led the United States to take lead to limit the worldwide influence of the Soviet Union and China. These Cold War actions were varying degrees of success. Two examples of the US leadership are NATO and the Marshall Plan. NATO would be the military defense and the Marshall Plan would be the economic aid.





  The Marshall Plan, which is named after George Marshall, provided $13 billion for rebuilding Europe in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after World War II. The main goal for the US was to rebuild war disaster areas, remove whatever is blocking trade, make Europe strong again, and prevent the spread of communism. The Marshall Plan was there to help out Europe so they wouldn't have to worry about losing jobs and going hungry. Jobs were hard find and farm land was broken and the US didn't want them to think that communism was the solution that could not be hungry and have a job.




  The United States after World War II worked to control the Soviets from spreading communism. This period of international relations is known as the Cold War. The Marshall Plan offered the same aid to the Soviet Union, but they did not accept it. The US tried to push back the Soviet Union as much as they could to stop them from spreading communism. The Soviets only were able to spread communism over eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan is one reason why they were not successful.
 


Another reason is NATO. NATO was a pact of security (created in 1949) between Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and the United States that if one was attacked, all would fight back together.  This alliance of democratic countries is one way to repel communist Russia and its intentions. A strong purpose of NATO is to  isolate Russia from spreading communism throughout the world. In response, Russia created the Warsaw Pact to lessen the threat of the democratic alliance. Ultimately, NATO had more success than the Warsaw Pact because it greatly lessened the expansion of communism in the world.


The Marshall Plan and NATO was two examples of the US trying to stop communism from spreading. These Cold War actions were varying degrees of success.