Because what the world needs is more stick figures.
Okay, so I am absolutely certain this is going to come back to bite me in the ass later, but if my portrait of Ann Coulter doesn't ruin me, nothing will.
That said, I have decided to PICTORALLY explain my history senior thesis with my famous stick figures in MSPaint.
Um. This one's complicated, but it's the basis of my thesis, so!
George F. Kennan was an American diplomat working in Russia during the 1930s and 1940s, and was deputy head of the US mission in Moscow from 1944 to 1946. He was there long enough to observe the Russian mindset and approach to politics.
When Truman's Secretary of State asked Kennan for a quick snapshot of how to deal with Soviet Stalinist Russia in February 1946, he responded with a telegram that was over 8,000 words long -- known, unsurprisingly, as the Long Telegram. What is called Kennan-style containment comes from this document, and boils down to this:
Soviet Russia was not Nazi Germany -- they didn't attempt to take over just anywhere. They only took over places where there seemed to be a vacuum of power, and they seeped in and filled it.
When countered with an equal amount of strength in the military arena, economic arena, and diplomatic arena, it was most likely that they would back down. Any military overreaction or "blustering" response by the American government would only serve to fuel Soviet propaganda, make them look better and make us look worse.
If we met them equally, the non-aligned countries in the world would see whose policies are for the better, and who they should align themselves with.
Military force should be the last resort! Any military action should only have been an equal response, and it would force Soviet Russia into an economic and diplomatic war, which America could win.
THE BIG POINT: Equal pressure on all fronts would make the Soviets inevitably back down -- or at least, if they didn't back down, the odds were that Soviet Russia could not maintain their current government as long as we could maintain ours. Soviet Russian expansion should be countered -- NOT GENERAL COMMUNISM.
To Truman's credit, he tried. He saved West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade! Good Kennan-style stuff. Other than that, though...
But he fought in Korea! Korea had nothing to do with Soviet Russian expansion. Asian communism was nationalist communism, which, again, had NOTHING to do with Soviet Russian expansion. The fight is against Soviet Russian expansion -- NOT general communism.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, guys, especially when it has nothing to do with you.
Eisenhower upped the ante!
His policy was called the "New Look" and basically what he did was chop down the conventional military forces and create a ton of nukes. The main policy was called massive retaliation, which meant that the US would wave all their nukes at Soviet Russia, look tough, and hope that they'd stop taking stuff over.
Brinkmanship was also coined around here -- basically, it's holding a nuclear gun to Soviet Russia's head and saying, "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Soviet Russia just ignored the gun, since they weren't doing anything worth blowing up the world for and everyone knew it.
Yeah. Didn't work. Especially because the Soviets (now run by Khrushchev!) were using a policy called "peaceful coexistence," where they took their show on the road and decided to fight an economic war instead of a military one.
*COUGH*KENNAN-STYLE CONTAINMENT WAS RIGHT ON THIS ONE*COUGH*
He also got us involved in Vietnam and pretended like we weren't even considering doing recon flights over Russia, which was pretty embarrassing when one of said recon planes that we sent out anyway was shot down and the whole thing was outed! (Now known as the U-2 Affair.)
Needless to say JFK was good and screwed by this point. (In more than one way!)
JFK took the previous three guys into account, took their good points into consideration, and molded it all into this thing called "flexible response."
Basically, ONE POLICY WILL NOT WORK. You need to have the ability to have lots of options.
The Bay of Pigs kind of formed this for him, since JFK started to notice that the US blundering into a big plan without any way to back out if it went wrong, and the President not having all the information he needed, was not working out very well.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the epitome of this. They used a military measure (a blockade, called a "quarantine") and diplomatic measures to get the missiles the hell off that island, and all in equal pressure.
Some people will say that the Cuban Missile Crisis is a great example of brinksmanship. I say that when nukes are pointed at you, pointing your own nukes back at someone else is pretty damn close to equal pressure. This also counts as Kennan-style because this was ACTUALLY a counter to Soviet Russian expansion!
He also did a lot of economic aid for development and education for developing/Third World countries, as well as created the Peace Corps and began a dialogue with countries we hadn't spoken to in a long time, including African countries and Latin America.
OKAY, I LIKE KENNEDY, SUE ME. (He does have great hair. Check it out.)
Okay, there was still a lot of typing there and srs bsns but considering that I've already got 60 pages written and it's going to go 100+, that's pretty damn succinct.
I don't want to write anymore ;_;
I am not going to write a blog post as JFK as an undergrad writing his thesis Why England Slept. RESPECT THE DEAD, KITTY.
That said, I have decided to PICTORALLY explain my history senior thesis with my famous stick figures in MSPaint.
Um. This one's complicated, but it's the basis of my thesis, so!
George F. Kennan was an American diplomat working in Russia during the 1930s and 1940s, and was deputy head of the US mission in Moscow from 1944 to 1946. He was there long enough to observe the Russian mindset and approach to politics.
When Truman's Secretary of State asked Kennan for a quick snapshot of how to deal with Soviet Stalinist Russia in February 1946, he responded with a telegram that was over 8,000 words long -- known, unsurprisingly, as the Long Telegram. What is called Kennan-style containment comes from this document, and boils down to this:
Soviet Russia was not Nazi Germany -- they didn't attempt to take over just anywhere. They only took over places where there seemed to be a vacuum of power, and they seeped in and filled it.
When countered with an equal amount of strength in the military arena, economic arena, and diplomatic arena, it was most likely that they would back down. Any military overreaction or "blustering" response by the American government would only serve to fuel Soviet propaganda, make them look better and make us look worse.
If we met them equally, the non-aligned countries in the world would see whose policies are for the better, and who they should align themselves with.
Military force should be the last resort! Any military action should only have been an equal response, and it would force Soviet Russia into an economic and diplomatic war, which America could win.
THE BIG POINT: Equal pressure on all fronts would make the Soviets inevitably back down -- or at least, if they didn't back down, the odds were that Soviet Russia could not maintain their current government as long as we could maintain ours. Soviet Russian expansion should be countered -- NOT GENERAL COMMUNISM.
To Truman's credit, he tried. He saved West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade! Good Kennan-style stuff. Other than that, though...
But he fought in Korea! Korea had nothing to do with Soviet Russian expansion. Asian communism was nationalist communism, which, again, had NOTHING to do with Soviet Russian expansion. The fight is against Soviet Russian expansion -- NOT general communism.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, guys, especially when it has nothing to do with you.
Eisenhower upped the ante!
His policy was called the "New Look" and basically what he did was chop down the conventional military forces and create a ton of nukes. The main policy was called massive retaliation, which meant that the US would wave all their nukes at Soviet Russia, look tough, and hope that they'd stop taking stuff over.
Brinkmanship was also coined around here -- basically, it's holding a nuclear gun to Soviet Russia's head and saying, "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Soviet Russia just ignored the gun, since they weren't doing anything worth blowing up the world for and everyone knew it.
Yeah. Didn't work. Especially because the Soviets (now run by Khrushchev!) were using a policy called "peaceful coexistence," where they took their show on the road and decided to fight an economic war instead of a military one.
*COUGH*KENNAN-STYLE CONTAINMENT WAS RIGHT ON THIS ONE*COUGH*
He also got us involved in Vietnam and pretended like we weren't even considering doing recon flights over Russia, which was pretty embarrassing when one of said recon planes that we sent out anyway was shot down and the whole thing was outed! (Now known as the U-2 Affair.)
Needless to say JFK was good and screwed by this point. (In more than one way!)
JFK took the previous three guys into account, took their good points into consideration, and molded it all into this thing called "flexible response."
Basically, ONE POLICY WILL NOT WORK. You need to have the ability to have lots of options.
The Bay of Pigs kind of formed this for him, since JFK started to notice that the US blundering into a big plan without any way to back out if it went wrong, and the President not having all the information he needed, was not working out very well.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the epitome of this. They used a military measure (a blockade, called a "quarantine") and diplomatic measures to get the missiles the hell off that island, and all in equal pressure.
Some people will say that the Cuban Missile Crisis is a great example of brinksmanship. I say that when nukes are pointed at you, pointing your own nukes back at someone else is pretty damn close to equal pressure. This also counts as Kennan-style because this was ACTUALLY a counter to Soviet Russian expansion!
He also did a lot of economic aid for development and education for developing/Third World countries, as well as created the Peace Corps and began a dialogue with countries we hadn't spoken to in a long time, including African countries and Latin America.
OKAY, I LIKE KENNEDY, SUE ME. (He does have great hair. Check it out.)
Okay, there was still a lot of typing there and srs bsns but considering that I've already got 60 pages written and it's going to go 100+, that's pretty damn succinct.
I don't want to write anymore ;_;
I am not going to write a blog post as JFK as an undergrad writing his thesis Why England Slept. RESPECT THE DEAD, KITTY.