ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the influence of anti-communism on the foreign policies of the Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy administrations. ‘Anti’ ideologies generally exist as forms of out-and-out opposition. The climate of political fear that McCarthyism fuelled saw US anti-communism develop into a very rigid set of beliefs which endorsed ‘hard-line’ responses to most foreign policy dilemmas. Democrats were particularly vulnerable to such claims as they had already been blamed for the compromises of the Yalta summit, the ‘loss’ of Eastern Europe to the USSR and the ‘loss’ of China to the communist forces. Anti-communism strengthened the defenders of the racial status quo in the South in the 1950s and helped to preserve the region from labour organisations. The Dulles-Eisenhower rhetoric of 1952–1953 was intended to strengthen American leadership and Western unity, justify a global policy of anti-communism and appease the fanatics at home.
