What were America's major post World War 2 goals?

Question

As in.. Foreign and domestic policies during Truman and Eisenhower's presidency and forward.

Answer 1

The Marshall plan, a plan to get Japan and Germany up and running so they would not be able to be ripe pickings for totalitarianists again. Usually, as in the case of Rome, victorious nations sow salt into the soil of the vanquished, as the Romans did to Carthage. The US, instead, forced upon these vanquished people American values regarding individual economic, and religious freedom and productivity-- in other words, free-enterprise capitalism and democratic-republic operating ideals. Oddly enough (for leftists), their life-styles and GDP improved while other vanquished nations conquered by the Soviets and the Chinese Communists suffered greatly.

The Cold War immediately followed WWII, and it was really a Third World War. Once the objectives of reconstructing a free Japan and West Germany were accomplished, goals were strictly limited to stopping global nuclear warfare, and the US went on a haphazard defense strategy that obviously didn't work very well in bringing economic hope, stability, and freedom to anyone in particular. South Korea was the exception.

It has been often said that if you want to be conquered by a major power, nobody was nicer than the United States. And it was true.

The Marshall Plan was brilliant, it worked, was profitable to everybody, and the US stuck to it without the partisan violence you see in Washington today.

Answer 2

Both stressed economic expansion and social reform on the domestic agenda. The Truman administration was noted for the Marshall Plan and NATO, but Truman himself seems not to have had a foreign policy, and those programs may have had his approval primarily because they let him disengage and not bother with Europe. The man who ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki couldn't be bothered to take a briefing on US nuclear capabilities and strategy until well into his second administration, and he almost destroyed the US military. Those who didn't like Donald Rumsfeld would consider him a perfect god if presented with the alternative of Louis Johnson.
Retrospectively, John Foster Dulles' driving of US foreign policy during Ike's administration probably caused the US a lot more trouble than it solved, especially in the view of communism as a monolithic bogeyman, but that's the perspective of hindsight, so it's a bit harder to be critical.

Answer 3

1. To secure the dimensions outlined in their Grand Area planning documents--that is, taking over the old French and English colonial empires, using Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America as sources of economic expansion for the US while leaving Africa to be used by the Europeans for reconstruction(This explains the root causes of the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, US involvement in the MIddle East and Latin America--the later moreso than in the previous 150 years or so).
2. To counter any threat of expansion economically by the Communist countries, and to undermine Russias ability to be "a threat of a good example" to other third world countries who might want to escape the capitalist economic model. Again, world history after 1945 well illustrated the ability of the US to meet these goals, and they did, in most cases, successfully.

A note: our continued fascination with Cubas misery, as illustrated by the forty-year US embargo and a long list of recognized terrorist attacks against Castro's country show that these goals have not been completely achieved, even after the straw man "communist threat" has disappeared.
One could reasonably answer:
1. global military domination(check)
2. global economic domination(check)

Answer 4

so, yeah, i am basically just going to second what other people have said in saying that the main goals of Americas post war endeavors was to stop the spread of communism (we see this in its influence in eastern Europe and South America) and to re-establish the economy in Europe using the Marshal plan. (big success in W.Berlin and Italy)

Answer 5

Only one, really; to stop the spread of communism.