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Paige Simon
Due 23 April 2014
History 466
Instructor Dr. Snyder

Lawrence , Mark. The Vietnam War A Concise International History. New York: Oxford
University Press, Inc., 2008. Print.
McMahon, Robert . The Cold War In The Third World . New York: Oxford University
Press, Inc., 2013. Print.
Smith, Gaddis. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine 1945-1993. New York City:
Harper Collins Canada Ltd, 1994. Print.

Evaluating Race in the Shaping of American Foreign Policy During the Cold War

As World War II came to a close, a new global social conflict between the Soviet

Union and United States, communism verses capitalism, became the focal point for

American foreign policy. The global South took shape as an international stage in which

the Soviet Union and United States would compete for global hegemony through the

decolonization and state building of the third world. Whereas American foreign policy

from 1945 on expected to undertake much of the burden for defending freedom around

the world, it was unclear how the US would defend the freedom for those of color. The

Cold War would force the US to do much of its fighting in the colored third world

countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa now meaning that race was a problematic

international issue to which America would slowly have to adopt to preserve global

hegemony.

Long before the start of the Cold War, the United States had already doomed itself

to foreign policy steeped with unreliability and opportunistic attributes. The Wilsonian

language used in 1919 attracted many anti-colonial leaders to Paris such as Ho Chi Minh

of Vietnam and Sa'd Zaghlul of Egypt. With the objective of autonomy free from colonial

rule, these anti-colonial requests fell silent as Woodrow Wilson and European leaders
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showed no interest in granting sovereignty to politically insignificant and

disadvantageous countries of color. Upon being denied, anti-colonial leaders such as Ho

Chi Minh who were initially inspired by the liberal West now lamented its hypocrisy

(Lawrence 19). As a result, many of the ignored, colonized countries in the global South

turned to another global powerhouse, the Soviet Union, in support for the fight against

colonialism. While the United States was basking in its new heroic glow post World War

I, Ho Chi Minh was building relations with Moscow which would prove to be detrimental

to American diplomatic creditability later on during the Cold War. Americas overlooking

of the global South and its budding thirst for sovereignty would prove to be a huge

problem in the coming decades. The Cold War era would show how the US would need

to have closer ties with the global South, previously ignored, to achieve its own political,

military, and economic goals to preserve global hegemony.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States ideological stance had

become grounded in the belief that wherever communism could exist, democracy and

capitalism should exist. Yet, debates regarding whether Latin America, a close potential

communist threat to the US, comprised of political culture too weak and selfish to

support a democracy strong enough to resist the superior determination and skill of the

Communist enemy (Smith 70). Furthermore, the Monroe Doctrine, which in essence

kept a European presence out of the Western hemisphere, soon needed justification for an

American dogmatic preoccupation in Latin America. The Roosevelt Corollary which had

been authorized for certain protective interventions in Latin America was now replaced

with the Kennan Corollary, a more authoritarian, paternalistic involvement in Latin

America (Smith 72). Such a justification by white elitists in American society would
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make the entrance into Latin America, a region proving to be beneficial for American

motives, effortless. According to George Kennan himself, states with colored

populations were the neurotic products of exotic backgrounds and tentative Western

educational experiences (McMahon 158). In this sense, the United States was doing

Latin American countries a favor by providing them with knowledge and tools to

establish a Western style political system. In the eyes of American diplomats, this

implementation of supervised democratic governments was just the relationship the

United States desired. Kennan would argue that this would support the non-white

governments who werent politically mature and strong enough to prevent the infiltration

of communism (Smith 71). The coup in Guatemala in 1954 illustrated how American

abilities had changed in Latin America since the birth of the Monroe Doctrine and

continued to push a democratic government, whether welcomed or not, in Latin America.

Furthermore, the United States fully intended to carry out this theme of securing

democratic regimes throughout the rest of the world.

American Cold War foreign policy of intervention was broad and wide reaching

and most notably seen during the Vietnam War in the fight against communism. Upon

entering Vietnam, Americans were assured it would be a prompt and effortless win.

However, as the war ragged on President Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson

continued the fight not because they were confident of victory but because they feared

the consequences of defeat. They worried that a communist victory would damage

American interest around the world and cripple their presidencies by sparking a

conservative rebellion against the Democratic Party (Lawrence 68). How would it

reflect American hegemonic power if the United States could not suppress a communist
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uprising in a small remote region with millions of brown, yellow, and black people

(McMahon 178)? While in some cases the United States was critical of European

empires, such as the Dutch presence in Indonesia or Suez Crisis of 1956, the US in other

cases was ready to sustain American sponsorship of specific types of regimes such as the

case in Vietnam. A damaging of American interest worldwide would be catastrophic and

sure to hasten a communist and Soviet Union global dominance. In order for the United

States to preserve its hegemonic status, it had to show supremacy over all countries no

matter the race, religion, or political makeup. The USs failure in one of the most highly

publicized wars during the Cold War would show its failure to promote closer ties with

the global South, leaving a scar on the rest of American Cold War foreign policies.

One of the major downfalls in American foreign policy during the Cold War was

the treatment of racial minorities within its own boarders. The treatment of African

Americans at home was a huge handicap in trying to bring other regions into the

American camp. How could third world countries of color possibly unite with the United

States if discrimination was a common occurrence in American domestic policy making?

American civil rights activists and colonial nationalists communicated and were inspired

by one anothers fight for freedom in the decades of the Cold War. Furthermore, They

took inspiration from and found connections between national movements for racial

equality and freedom and their global counterparts, creating a genuinely transnational

assault on embedded structures of white supremacy (McMahon 5). Images of Emmett

Tills mutilated corpse and news of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts were significant

events of international scope and interest. As part of a push for action, the 1954 Supreme

Court decision of Brown verse Board of Education and Little Rock desegregation could
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be seen as the realization that American racial injustice was actually an international

liability. Yet, American disdain for African Americans was apparent as described in The

Cold War In The Third World. Andrew Rotter writes, At a White House reception, white

party-goers surreptitiously pulled on white gloves before shaking hands with dark

skinned visitors. A State Department Africa hand described African freedom fighters as

black baboons (McMahon 158). Evidently, US foreign policy during the Cold War

found race to be a sticky, yet ever occurring problem. With a growing civil rights

movement, the United States found a world intently watching how it diplomatically

dealt with countries of color, a problem the US hesitantly confronted during the Cold

War.

The Cold War and the emergence of the third world show great overlap in

historical timeline of the twentieth century. Some forty new nation-states were born

during those years alone creating race to be a problematic international issue for the

United States due to its own historical composition (McMahon 1). In order to preserve

American hegemony with a competing Soviet Union, American government officials

realized it was an international issue that had to be confronted head on whether that

meant conspiring in nakedly immoral situations.