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with the ending of a war and he treated the situation as a peacetime situation. Truman also ended a war but his approach differed to Eisenhower. NSC-68 and its predecessors hinted at inevitability of war whereas New Look aimed to prevent one.

This essay focuses mainly on the direct tackling of the Soviet Union and to come to a wider conclusion on the effectiveness of both Eisenhower and Truman's tackling of the Soviet Union one must also consider the proxy challenges of the era both in Europe and Asia. If we are briefly to address this then both Truman and Eisenhower left office with unfinished business, For Truman it was Korea and Eisenhower it was both Cuba and the situation in South-East Asia.

To truly answer the question of whether Truman and Eisenhower differed in their approach to tackling the Soviet Union we must first address whether indeed both Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower actually wished to tackle the Soviet Union. The traditional view of Eisenhower has been a "do-nothing president" but maybe it was a unique form of aggressive self-containment of the Soviet Union, in which he did not tackle them but rather contained them through deterrent. Truman on the other hand pursued a policy of aggressive containment through an increased military budget and strong rhetoric but neither man tackled the Soviet Union. The hallmark of a cold war was that all conflicts were indirect and by proxy. Both men failed in their approach to the threats they faced and left their predecessors with more problems than they themselves took on. This is because both administrations followed policies that were constricting and ill-advised and therefore the only time progress was made was when the President strayed from their own
Grand strategy.

Learn more about this author, Lewis English Foxcroft.
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