Week 13 AMH Quiz

“If the nations of that area should lose their independence, if they were dominated by alien forces hostile to freedom, that would be both a tragedy for the area and for many other free nations whose economic life would be subject to near strangulation. Western Europe would be endangered . . . The free nations of Asia and Africa, too, would be placed in serious jeopardy. And the countries of the Middle East would lose the markets upon which their economies depend. All this would have the most adverse, if not disastrous, effect upon our own nation's economic life and political prospects.”

-Source: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Eisenhower Doctrine,” 1957

The excerpt is best understood as a response to which of the following historical developments?

• the establishment of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

• the threat of a Communist-led uprising against the Greek government

• the emergence of powerful nationalist movements in Africa and the Middle East

• the rise of a Communist government in Cuba after Fidel Castro took power

“The unsettled nature of Latin American politics was well matched to the context of international relations as a whole. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed fundamental changes in the Cold War. . . Added to the concurrent collapse of European colonialism, these trends increasingly pushed U.S.-Soviet conflict into the underdeveloped world. . . They vied for access to the strategic real estate and resources of the underdeveloped countries . . . For the United States, this meant showing that democracy and liberal capitalism could serve as a path to wealth and political stability. For Moscow, it meant proving that state-directed socialism could bring about economic equity and social justice. The fight for the [underdeveloped world] revolved around ideology no less than economics or strategy.”

-Source: Hal Brands, historian, Latin America’s Cold War, 2012

Which of the following is one important continuity in American foreign policy throughout the mid-twentieth century?

• building a strong military to deter Soviet aggression

• refusing to make peacetime alliances in order to return to isolationism

• containing the Soviet Union’s attempts to spread communism

• engaging in direct military conflicts with the Soviet Union

The developments referenced by the image most directly contributed to which of the following United States actions?

• petitioning the United Nations to punish the Soviet Union’s actions

• offering North Vietnam financial assistance and arms to resist Soviet aggression

• declaring war on Vietnam and the Soviet Union to contain communism

• sending troops to Vietnam to support the Southern Vietnamese forces

“It is important to United States security interests that all practicable measures be taken to prevent further communist expansion in Southeast Asia. Indo-China is a key area of Southeast Asia and is under immediate threat. The neighboring countries of Thailand and Burma could be expected to fall under Communist domination if a Communist-dominated government controlled Indo-China. The balance of Southeast Asia would then be in grave hazard.”

-Source: Draft Report by the National Security Council, 1950

The ideas expressed in the passage most strongly influenced which United States foreign policy decision in the 1960s?

• withholding military resources from Thailand and Burma until the defeat of Communist-led governments

• placing sanctions on and ending trade with Southeast Asia and the Soviet Union

• joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to ensure collective security

• sending troops to Vietnam to overthrow the rising Communist government

“Those who uphold the Administration defense budget are right on one count: we cannot be certain that the Soviets will have, during the term of the next Administration, the tremendous lead in missile striking power which they give every evidence of building — and we cannot be certain that they will use that lead to threaten or launch an attack upon the United States. Consequently those of us who call for a higher defense budget are taking a chance on spending money unnecessarily. But those who oppose these expenditures are taking a chance on our very survival as a nation.”

Source: Senator John F. Kennedy, “An Investment for Peace,” 1960

Based on the excerpt, Kennedy would most likely support which of the following?

• increasing taxes on businesses producing military weapons

• engaging in talks aimed at disarmament with the Soviet Union

• creating federal grants for technological innovators in science

• expanding federal benefits for veterans of the armed services

“In the 1950’s this America worried about itself, yet even its anxieties were products of abundance. . . Now the American city has been transformed. The poor still inhabit the miserable housing in the central areas, but are increasingly isolated from contact with, or sight of, anybody else. . . . [T]he poor are politically invisible. It is one of the cruelest ironies of social life in advanced countries that the dispossessed at the bottom of society are unable to speak for themselves. The people of the other America do not, by far and large, belong to unions, to fraternal organizations, or to political parties. They are without lobbies of their own; they put forward no legislative program. As a group, they are atomized. They have no face; they have no voice . . .”

-Source: Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States, 1962

A historian would most likely use this passage to illustrate which of the following?

• the economic prosperity that led to a mass culture based on consumerism and conformity

• the social and economic effects of World War II on the American manufacturing industry

• the influence of political fundraising on legislation and goals for presidential administrations

• the rising concerns about widespread poverty and efforts to raise it as a national issue

“[In 1963,] peaceful protests— and the violent backlash against them— had spread across the South, from lunch counter sit-ins and ‘Freedom Rides’ aimed at desegregating public places and interstate buses, to firebombing mobs and defiant public school boards that had closed their districts’ doors rather than mix black and white students. Rigid racial segregation remained a fact of law and life in the states of the Old Confederacy nearly a century after the War Between the States had ended.”

-Source: Todd S. Purdum, historian, An Idea Whose Time Has Come, 2014

The pattern described in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following developments during the 1960s

• The United Nations sanctioned the United States for civil rights violations.

• The federal government used its power to promote racial equality.

• The National Guard enforced integration in southern schools.

• The state governors signed a petition to honor federal laws on civil rights.

“The present racial crisis in this country carries within it, powerful destructive ingredients that may soon erupt into an uncontrollable explosion . . .

“If capitalistic Kennedy and communistic Khrushchev can find something in common on which to form a United Front despite their tremendous ideological differences, it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge our ‘minor’ differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem posed by a Common Enemy.”

-Source: Malcolm X, in a letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., Stanford University, 1963

The key concern that the excerpt was designed to address was the:

• current government rolling back federal civil rights.

• rising anti-communist sentiment within the civil rights movement.

• growing divisions within the civil rights movement.

• increasing acts of violence like the bombing of federal buildings.

“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.”

-Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967

The ideas expressed in the passage most strongly influenced which United States foreign policy decision in the 1970s?

• the reallocation of the federal budget to increase military spending and reduce infrastructure spending

• the negotiations to end the international conflict with the Soviet Union in a series of peace talks

• the efforts to train Southern Vietnamese soldiers and withdraw American soldiers

• the creation of an international collective security organization for mutual defense

“We saw the seriousness of the early antiwar movement not so much in an analysis of whether it was a minority or a majority— it was always a minority. We saw that as affecting overall public opinion, we saw that as affecting the Congress, and as furthering the defection of the press. . . . This might be a bunch of wild-eyed kids or little old ladies in tennis shoes walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. . . but it had an insidious effect in public opinion and in the Congress.”

-Source: Roger Morris, in an interview with Tom Wells, printed in The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam, 1994

According to the passage, which of the following was the most important effect that the antiwar movement had on society?

• It swayed the American public towards disapproval of the war.

• It led to the American electorate replacing Johnson with Nixon.

• It divided American voters along generational lines.

• It caused the American public not to trust newspaper reports.