Why Did Communism 'Need' to be Contained? (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE History)

US hysteria around Communism began after Russia experienced a Communist uprising in 1917. The Red Scare of the 1920s was the belief that immigration had meant that Communists were everywhere in the USA. The press sensationalised that Communism threatened the US way of life. Where the USA prided itself on the ‘American Dream’, the USSR believed wealth should be distributed. 

This attitude worsened after the Second World War due to a period called McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy was an ex-soldier and Republican representative in the US Senate. McCarthy used rumours and threats to become a powerful anti-Communist figure. In the early 1950s, he held hearings in an attempt to expose Communists at various levels of the US government. While the government turned against McCarthy in 1954, his accusations heightened the public’s fear of Communism. Voters applied pressure on the government to do more to protect global capitalism and human rights.

After 1945, the USA changed their approach to foreign policy. Before the Second World War, the USA had followed a policy of isolationism. They refused to get involved in other countries' affairs. The Long Telegram (1946) informed Truman that the USA should contain communism to the USSR. As a result, the Truman Doctrine (1947) officially replaced isolationism with containment. 

International events after the Second World War motivated the USA to try and contain communism. The USSR had created satellite states in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1948. China turned Communist in 1949 under Mao Zedong. Both events scared the USA. To them, it looked like China and the USSR were making the whole of Asia Communist. The USA formulated the idea of the Domino Theory. If one country fell to Communism, surrounding countries would fall like a row of dominoes. The USA believed that, if Asia fell to Communism, Europe and the USA would fall too.

The USA believed that it was their responsibility to stop the Communist takeover of the world. The USA applied containment in Korea (1950-1953), Cuba (1959-1962) and Vietnam (1955-1973). In each of these attempts, the USA failed to overthrow Communism. By 1973, containment ruined the USA’s international reputation.