America Begins to Rearm

37) List the new agencies or organizations that came into existence as a result of the Cold War (one of which we joined):

In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which established the following:

• Department of Defense (this basically consolidated all the previous departments of the navy, war, army, air force, etc., into one department)
• National Security Council (designed to give the president advice on matters of national security, what else?)
• Central Intelligence Agency (designed to give people an excuse to drive around town in fancy-looking sports cars equipped with the latest in high-tech defense weaponry under cool-sounding aliases and of course wearing dark-tinted sunglasses...actually, they mostly do stuff like gather information concerning foreign affairs)

In 1949, the US also joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was essentially an anti-Soviet, anti-Communist alliance. This marked an important reversal from the traditional isolationism of America.


Bad omen: groundbreaking for the Pentagon took place on September 11, 1941, only about 60 years before a rather ominous date.

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Reconstruction and Revolution in Asia, as well as 汉语 (Chinese) 101

Like, I don't know, read a bit of Chinese? (Don't worry, I'll help you.)

38) Who was in charge of reconstruction in Japan? What did he do and how successful was it?
General Douglas MacArthur, who had by now long fulfilled his promise to return, led the Japanese reconstruction. Basically, his goal was to make Japan more democratic. This goal proved greatly successful, as the Japanese cleverly figured out that if they cooperated with MacArthur, he would leave more quickly! They quickly drafted a new constitution and were well on their way to becoming a great economic power.


MacArthur, just chillin' in the Oriental.

39) What finally collapsed and gave the Cold War allies their worst defeat? What effect did this have in the US?
In late 1949, the Communist armies led by 毛泽东 (or for the less Mandarin-inclined, Mao Zedong, or Mao Tse-Tung, or simply Chairman Mao) defeated the Nationalist forces led by 蔣中正 (AKA Chiang Kai-Shek, or Jiǎng Jièshí, or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng) in the long Chinese civil war. 蔣中正 was forced to flee to 台灣 (Taiwan), and the rise of the communist regime under 毛泽东 in 中国 (China) gave great anxiety to many Americans. In fact, the Republicans attacked President Truman and British Prime Minister Dean Atchison for "lost 中国".


Everyone was "seeing red" in 中国, causing much anxiety in the NATO countries.

40) Critics of the "lost 中国" actually suggested that Democrats had withheld aid to 中国 for what reason?
The aforementioned critics assailed the Democrats under Truman for withholding aid to 蔣中正 on purpose so he would fall. The Democratic response consisted of various related arguments that stated that Truman never had 中国 in the first place, so he couldn't really "lose" it, or that 蔣中正 both lacked popular support and had never controlled all of 中国 at one time.


According to the Republicans, of course the buck didn't go to 蔣中正, it stopped on Truman's desk!

And now, let us commence with the blog tour with Brent's 出色的制作博客的那些没有一个博客

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