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The Grand Alliance and Its Failures

This essay will evaluate the success of the Grand Alliance formed after World War II with respect to restructuring the global community and, more specifically, addressing the fate of a conquered Germany. It will be argued that just as the Treaty of Versailles failed, in the aftermath of World War I, to address the ôGerman questionö successful, the division of Europe taking place after World War II and the division of Germany itself into two countries (East and West Germany) was an indication of failure rather than success vis-a-vis the treaty0-making process.

Almost immediately after the end of World War II, the advent of a bipolar world divided between the West and the United States and the East and the Soviet Union ensured that tensions and hostilities would become endemic throughout the world. The period of the Cold War was an era in which American foreign policy was largely shaped by the idea of ôcontainment,ö a strategy developed by George Kennan. Kennan was the foremost American expert on the Soviet Union; he published a monograph in July, 1947, in the journal Foreign Affairs in which he proposed that the thrust of American policy should be on ôcontainingö Russian or Soviet influence in selected spheres and preventing that influence from increasing via the conquest or annexation of new countries or regions (Martin & Roberts, 1989). Containment involved confronting the spread of communism across the world and, as America soon learned, it came with a heavy price. It meant, in effect, supporting allies with billions of dollars in military and economic aid, and it involved the use of the American military services in the support of those allies (Martin & Roberts, 1989).

In the case of Germany, the West established its presence in West Germany, locating North American Treaty Alliance (NATO) military and administrative forces in that country û establishing a position from which Soviet aggr

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The Grand Alliance and Its Failures. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:32, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712758.html