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What was the main foreign policy objective of the Marshall Plan?
D.
What was containment and how did the Marshal Plan enforce that policy in Europe?
to rein in the soviets and to unite western europe
Was the containment policy essentially offensive or defensive?
The Containment Policy of the Truman administration was basically an offensive threat to the expansion of the Soviet Union. It threatened to use force should the Soviets attempt to expand in areas that were not under Soviet control. Yet, it could also be considered defensive, because it let the Soviets know that we would protect our interests in Europe and Asia, but not make the first military move. Containment would be a reply to any aggressive action by the Soviets. The policy was not only military, but also an economic and diplomatic policy. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine are examples of diplomatic and economic attempts of the Containment Policy in action. Korea and Vietnam are also military examples.
What is the connection between the Marshall plan and Kennan's containment policy?
America realized that it was generally the poorer, less well off countries that turned to communism. So by creating the marshall plan, not only is america gaining european allies, but also reducing the number of poor nations and giving the remaining poor an alternative to communism, thus stopping its spread and containing it.
How did Containment and the Marshall Plan help define the second half of the 20th century?
The containment policy (its target: the worldwide containment, and blocking of the further spread, of Communism) led to first the Korean War and later, the Vietnam War. It was also a major driving force for the 'cold war' between the US and Russia that lasted until 1989. In the Third World, it led to often massive US support and development aid for any country or leader that called itself anti-communist or who was threatened by resistance or liberation groups that called themselves socialist or communist. The Marshall Plan led to massive and essential US help to European countries that had been hard hit by WW 2, to rebuild their economies. The Containment Policy played a clear role in this Plan, since the US in this way also wanted to prevent the spread of Communism in Western Europe. So Plan and Policy were interlinked, and they were directly or indirectly responsible for most of the major post-war developments in Europe, Asia and the Third World.
