Soviet expansionism in Europe, the battle for control of China, and the 1950 invasion of South Korea would shatter once-euphoric dreams of post-war cooperation with the Kremlin.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If America would withdraw from South Korea, there could be a power struggle between such as China and Japan.
In the Cold War, a lot of Soviet actions could be explained as extensions of Czarist imperial ambitions, but that didn't stop us from studying Marxism in theory and Communism in practice to better understand that adversary.
The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist.
With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then.
In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War.
And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see.
If we look at where relations between the Soviet Union and Germany were in 1945 and where we stand now, then we have achieved so much.
The unthinkable occurred: two communist countries went to war with each other.
Intervention continues to be a prominent dimension of the post-cold war world.
No opposing quotes found.