Essay Sample on George Washington's Advice: Avoid Entangling Alliances Still Relevant?

Introduction

In 1789, George Washington left a farewell address containing a piece of advice on how the US should relate to other countries. In his speech, he said, "avoid entangling alliances." His words were used to shape the United States foreign policies for more than a century. As of today, there are still a few Americans who think that his words should hold and that America should withdraw some of its alliances to the world. However, the United States has been involved in world politics for the better part of the 20th century and as such, the foreign policy takes a big part of the US government's time, money and energy. We are left with the question of if the isolatism way is outdated, what are the foreign policies being followed by the United States?

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

After World War II, the United States was left with the policy of 'containment.' This meant that they kept communism from spreading beyond the countries under their influence. This policy caused a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union as it applied to a world divided by the Cold War. In the year 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, containment no longer made sense. That said, it's true to argue that in the past 10 years the United States has been trying to redefine its foreign policies.

Does the United States have any responsibilities to the rest of the world? If so, what are they? Given that there is no longer the incentive to lure the rest of the world to its side as in the Cold War. Does the United States require to have some allies? What are some of the actions that must be taken should there be an eruption that affects the citizens of the countries involved? These and other questions regarding the foreign policy can only be answered by the State Department which is responsible for defining and directing it. The major themes of these policies include; promoting democracy, expanding across the continent, fighting international terrorism, developing the Third World countries and developing a strong world economy. Some of the principles and policies that were made to ensure these include; the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO and how the Soviet Union was contained from spreading communism using these three techniques.

The Truman Doctrine

The Truman Doctrine was one of the American foreign policies which had a purpose to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War period(a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, after the completion of WW2.). This period spans the 1947 Truman Doctrine up to the year, 1991 when the Soviet Unions were dissolved. This policy was presented to congress and the President of the time, Harry S. Truman in the year 1947 on March, 12th. It was then further developed on july 4, 1947 (Truman, 1947). This was done to contain threats in Turkey and Greece. There was no direct involvement of the United States military force, however, the Congress appropriated some funds to financially aid the economies and the militaries of the respective countries. In general, this policy was put in place to present the support of the United States to the nations that were allegedly facing threat from Soviet communism. The Truman Doctrine had now become the foundation of American foreign policy.

The President asked the congress to support Greek against the communists and to assist Turkey since it previously depended on British aid. During this time, the United States government believed that the communists in Greek were being supported by the Soviet Union (Gaddis, p. 390). As such, the American Government was worried that should the communists prevail in the civil war in Greek, the Soviets would have influence over the Greek policy. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin had refused to give any support to the Greek communists and deliberately forced Yugoslave Prime Minister Josip Tito to refrain from supporting them. However, there were other foreign policy problems that might have had some influence on the decision made by President Truman to provide aid to Turkey and Greek. There are four reasons that made post-war rapprochement with the Soviet Union unrealizable. Some of the reasons include; the Soviets failed to withdraw their troops from northern Iran in 1946 which was part of the terms from the Tehran Declaration of 1943; the Soviets were making attempts to pressure the government of Iran to grant them oil concessions while they were supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatist in the northern parts of Iran; the Soviet government rejected the Baruch plan for international control over all the nuclear energy and nuclear weapons in the year 1946.

Given the bad relationship between the Soviet Union and the American government, and the Soviets appearing to be meddling in the affairs between Greece and Turkey, British withdrawal from assisting Greece provided a catalyst to reorient the American foreign policy. During his speech, President Truman justified his actions stating that, if the communists won in the Greek civil war, that would be a danger to the political stability of Turkey undermining the political stability of the entire Middle East. This was not acceptable due to the region's importance to the US national security. Truman also added that "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." This policy led to the formation of NATO.

NATO

NATO stands for; North Atlantic Organization or in other terms called the North Atlantic Alliance. This is a political alliance that is still in effect to date. It is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 European and North American countries. NATO is a system of collective defense. Each independent member state is in the agreement of mutual defense in response to attacks by any external party. The headquarters of NATO are in Evere, Brussels, Belgium whereas the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons, Belgium. The admission of new members since being founded has increased from 12 to 29 countries the latest being in 2017, Montenegro (Daalder, et, al. P. 110). Some of its aspiring members are Ukraine, North Macedonia, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 21 of the countries in NETO are involved in the Partnership for Peace program and 15 in institutionalized dialogue programs. 70% of the global total military spending is from NETO. Their goal by 2024, is to maintain the target defense spending at 2% of the GDP.

The alliance was sought to bring on some counterweight to the Soviet armies that were stationed in Central and Eastern Europe after the completion of World War II (post-war foreign policies). Some of its original members include; Belgium, Canada, France, Denmark, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Iceland, Portugal, Luxembourg and the United States. They were later joined by; signatories such as Turkey and Greece, West Germany, Spain, Hungary, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Montenegro. France withdrew from the integrated military command in 1966 but remained a member of the organization and resumed its full membership in 2009.

The center of NATO is expressed in article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Signatory members also agree with it. It states that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." This article was for the very first time invoked in 2001, after the attacks on September 11 that were organized by Osama bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and a part of the Pentagon outside Washington D.C these attacks killed up to 3000 civilians.

In the year 1995, after World War II, Western Europe was militarily weak and its economy was also weakening. All its allies were also weakening and their armies were drastically reduced at the end of the war. During this time, new and very powerful communist groups were forming in France and Italy. In contrast, the Soviet Union had emerged from the war with armies that dominated the whole states of Central and Eastern Europe. During 1948, all the communists that were under Moscow sponsorship had already consolidated their control over those countries' governments and began to suppress all non-communists political activities. This is what Winston Churchill came to refer as to Iron curtains.

The relationship between the organization and France weakened as the president of France at the time (1958) criticized the domination of the US on the organization. He argued that such 'integrations' subjected the country to "automatic '' war at the decision of the foreigners. Leading to the withdrawal of France from the military command in 1966 to rejoin in 2009. The primary purpose of NATO was to create unity and bring strength to the Western Allies' military response in the case of invasion by the Soviet Union and its allies. In the 1950's they relied a lot on the threat of huge nuclear retaliation from the US to counter the much larger ground covered by the Warsaw Pacts (Heuser, p. 131). This allowed the US and the hosting country to gain veto power. This meant that Britain had control and the nuclear forces of France remained autonomous.

Work Cited

Daalder, Ivo, and James Goldgeier. "Global Nato." foreign affairs (2006): 105-113.

Gaddis, John Lewis. "Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?." Foreign Affairs 52.2 (1974): 386-402.

Heuser, Beatrice. NATO, Britain, France, and the FRG. St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Truman, Harry S. "The truman doctrine." Address, Joint Session of Congress, US Capitol. 1947.