Outlining: Cold War Foreign Policy Cold War Domestic Politics?
The puzzle here is figuring out how to reconcile two facts: (1) all of the examples of how Americans experienced the Cold War at home (bomb shelters, Mertle the A-Bomb turtle, McCarthyism, cultural manifestations); and (2) the myriad ways in which Americans went about their lives outside of Cold War tensions, particularly in terms of expanding middle-class affluence, racial tensions, and a confident liberal consensus. The solution, I’d argue, is to understand American middle-class affluence, racial tensions, and liberalism as both the result of and justification for the Cold War abroad and at home.
- Standard narrative: Cold War deeply affected Americans at home
o Anti-Communism
- Against former real communists (Schrecker)
- Against homosexuals and un-manly men, alleged to be more susceptible to communist infiltration (Johnson and Dean)
o Communist threat abroad
- Soviet demonstrations of atomic capacity (Winkler)
- Early and potentially escalating incidents: Turkey, Greece, Korea, Suz Canal, Cuban Revolution, etc.
o Pop culture
- Atomic language (Winkler)
- Anti-communist pop movies and books (Whitfield)
- Counter narrative: No, it wasn’t
o Middle-class affluence
- Growth of suburbia
- Access to all sorts of consumer goods and entertainment distractions
o Race relations
- Continued growth in African-American presence in urban areas
- Growing calls for civil rights, and immediate conflict close to home (closer than Korea, anyway)
o American liberalism carrying the day
- Democrats control Congress and Presidency most of the time
- Truman’s sometimes-successful (although often limited) expansions of Social Security, minimum wage through Fair Deal
- Eisenhower won’t touch Social Security, etc.
- Bring it together
o Affluence as product and justification for Cold War
- Suburbia as product of federal cold war investment (Federal Aid Highway Act, defense spending-see Lisa McGirr)
- Suburbs as gendered refuge from the problems of the world (May)
- Justify: American standard of living proves superiority of American system (Nixon’s kitchen debate with Khruschev)
- Means by which Cold War is brought home: affluence and access to entertainment (Whitfield)
o Race relations
- Need to prove quality of human-rights liberalism abroad drives publicity and sometimes policy (Dudziak and Borstelmann)
- Racial hierarchy shaping foreign policy approach to third world (Borstelmann)
o American liberalism
- Constantly on guard against conservative accusations of communism (Dean, Johnson, Schrecker)
- Cold War taking time, energy, money away from domestic liberal efforts (JFK’s focus as a Cold Warrior; LBJ’s Vietnam robbing him of Great Society)
