8.7: America as a World Power

Question 1

DECOLONIZATION

Answer 1

• empires crumbling
• feeding frenzy for US and USSR
• both provided new economically and politically unstable nations w/ aid

Question 2

GUATEMALA [1954]

Answer 2

• US coup to overthrow democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz
• had nationalized United Fruit Company’s banana cultivation lands
• intended to redistribute to impoverished
• offered to buy from company
• company refused
• CIA trained Guatemalan insurgents to overthrow and install military dictatorship

Question 3

CUBA

Answer 3

• military dictatorship at US will
• 1959: Communist Castro to power
• Communist threat in US backyard
• Eisenhower greenlighted CIA operation
• 1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion under Eisenhower
• CIA trained Cuban anti-Castro hostiles
• failure and embarrassment
• hostiles captured and killed
• 1963: Cuban Missile Crisis
• US intelligence on Soviet nuclear launch weapons stockpiled in Cuba
• US had also stockpiled in Treaty
• USSR stood down post intense negotiation

Question 4

IRAN

Answer 4

• 1953: CIA implemented plot to overthrow PM for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
• PM wanted to nationalize Iraqi oil
• But Shah = friendly with US

Question 5

INDOCHINA

Answer 5

• fought off French, Japanese and French
• 17th parallel division until election
• Communist North under Ho Chi Minh
• Democratic South
• US and Eisenhower sent billion in aid for economic stability
• Domino Theory

Question 6

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Answer 6

• Eisenhower warned against
• soon policy decisions regarding military intervention would be based on material interests of weapons producers