conclusion of employment law essay

Essay on Employment Law

This report aims to create elaborative and comprehensive recommendations concerning the dismissal of employees from Kurt Takis company without termination. The information includes all the principles and considerations the claimants should follow before the tribunal court reaches a final decision. In this report, the student is expected to understand the essential functions of employment law and how it safeguards employees’ rights. Also, the learning should understand how employees relate with employers as far as employment law is concerned.

Introduction

Employment law is a broad area of law that outlines and sets out the principles used during employees’ employment. The law demands all the private sectors and any other companies to observe and respect employees’ rights [1] . In this case study, the primary purpose of this report’s preparation is to make sure that Kurt Takis company operates within the stipulated laws. In this scenario, Kurt Takis company must engage in the employment law since the law states that any company dealing with more than one employee must be examined by the tribunal law. Following the requirements and expectations of employment law, the tribunals should be conducted to settle the issues concerning sucking and misusing the companies’ works [2] . She is basing the scenarios that happened in the Kurt Takis company; the following recommendations are made [3] . According to the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 , employment law proscribes any form of employment discrimination regarding personal race, gender, or even color. This act stipulates anybody can work in any company so long as he/she meets the qualifications need for the job.  [4]

Recommendations, principles, and considerations

According to the court proceedings  Act of 1992  in America, if the company dismisses an employee from work without reason, the employee should seek their reason for being ignored. [5]  According to this report, the employees should present their claims to the tribunal according to the employment law. The company needs to appreciate the positive efforts and contributions made by the employees. Additionally, the company should not take advantage of sucking the employees following the emergence of the pandemic. Instead, I recommend that the company provide employees with protections [6] . The provisions of the basic protections to the employees will maintain the Kurt Takis company’s constant development. They should use ethical and reasonable approaches to present their cases to the private international law society to the claimants. According to the court tribunal, the employer must inform the employees of the purpose and why the employee dissevers a specific disciplinary action [7] . But the case of Kurt Takis seems to be different than what the employment law demands. Another recommendation and principle that the dismissed employees can use are through the labor lawyers’ approach. In this, the lawyers will perform court tribunals concerning the dismissal of the employees without notice. According to the  National Labor Relations Act , all the formalities create ethical and reasonable interactions between employers and employees, either private companies or public businesses [8] . Therefore, this act recommends all the employees report any cases concerning the work’s dismissal without reasonable notice [9] . Labor lawyers will investigate and oversee why Manjit has been dismissed from the company despite working for an extended period.

Consequently, the employment law should be fair enough to investigate why Manjit does not entail annual leaves [10] . Following this fundamental principle, the claimants will get the right and impartial court tribunals. In this case, Kurt Takis company should understand that Manjit, despite being an artisan in the company, there are employment laws that safeguard his rights [11] . The scenario of dismissing the Manjit from work without explicit and reasonable consent is against civil rights. According to the  Barratt Act 2010 UKSC 41,  the tribunal court specified that any employee’s dismissal should be done through the latter containing effective termination dates. Basing the facts from court rulings, Kurt Takis company contravenes the law by dismissing Manjit from the company without issuing the latter, indicating the reason and grace period for the termination [12] . As the senior trainee supervisor, I recommend that Manjit be the claimant; he should use the same principle to know why he was dismissed from the company.

To satisfy the need of claimants, in this case, the tribunal must contact the Acas before submitting the complaints to the employment tribunal [13] . To respond to the second scenario, this report addresses all illegal abuses which employment law revokes. Specifically, the law provides inclusive civic rights that shall be followed when there are employment claimants in the company. In this case, the private international law is applied in the court tribunal. As we are aware, private international law defines the difference between public and private companies. It is the employment law’s work and functions to safeguard and protect the results’ working rights. This report’s main aim is to basically give the way forward to the Manjit as the employee to seek the reason why he was sucked from the company even without termination. This report provides elaborative principles and procedures for all the works in the three scenarios to present them complaints [14] . Basing this report, compressive recommendations must be made to ensure that the employees are not tortured in the working process [15] . The guidance clearly outlines the possible ways the claimants should use to appear before the tribunal courts.

In addition, the recommendations of this report elaborate under which circumstances the claimants should appear before the court if his/her rights are misused [16] . It’s the responsibility of the tribunal to take the following considerations before giving the final verdict. The tribunal should consider if the employee’s dismissal from the company was ethical and according to the active civil rights. The  National Labor Relation Act  stipulates that the employee must be issued with a letter of dismissal indicating the release’s reason and termination date [17] . Therefore, in these scenarios, the tribunal courts must put these acts into considerations. If the tribunal considers all these without omission of any employment law, then there will be fair and ethical judgment to the claimants, thus reaching the final decision. For the tribunal courts to have reasonable and appropriate case proceedings, all these factors must be considered. Another consideration the tribunal courts need to be aware of in this employment law is the ideological differences between the supervisors and local workers [18] . The court should investigate the reason why the Manjit was abused by the senior when he was late. According to the employment law, this is employee assault, and it is not accepted. Therefore, for tribunal courts to render a fair verdict, they have to consider that action; this will help the court reach the final decision.

In conclusion, employment law is a broad legislative law that ensures workers’ rights and working conditions are observed. It is a unique law that provides all court tribunals to consider the claimants’ factors and principles before reaching the final decision. This report focuses solve the issues of dismissal of employee firm Kurt Tikas company without consent reason.

References list

Primarily sources

Ziegler, J.K., 2000. Employment Law-An Employer’s Duty to Third Parties When Giving Employment Recommendations-Davis v. Board of County Commissioners of Dona Ana County.  NML Rev. ,  30 , p.307.

Clermont, Kevin M., and Stewart J. Schwab. “Employment discrimination plaintiffs in federal court: From bad to worse.”  Harv. L. & Poly Rev.  3 (2009): 103.

Moss, S.A., 2017. The Value of the Statement of Employment Law, Based on 50-State Empirical Analyses and the Importance of Clarifying Disputed Issues-But with Caveats about the Restatement’s Imperfect Work Product.  Emp. Its. & Emp. Polly J. ,  21 , p.409.

Lemus, Claudia. “The Adoption of Specialised Competition Tribunals in Latin American Countries: Lessons from Mexico.” Ph.D. diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2020.

Crooks, V. A. (2007). Women’s experiences of developing musculoskeletal diseases: Employment challenges and policy recommendations.  Disability and Rehabilitation ,  29 (14), 1107-1116.

Czepita, S., 2021. Polish Legislative Procedure and the Role of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from the Perspective of the Theory of Conventional Acts and Formal Acts in Law. In  Poznań School of Legal Theory  (pp. 231-248). Brill Rodopi.

Sardinha, E., 2020. Protecting Cultural Heritage in International Investment Law: Tracing the Evolution and Treatment of Cultural Considerations in Recent FTAs and Investor-State Jurisprudence.  Handbook of International Investment Law and Policy , pp.1-25.

O’Sullivan, M., Turner, T., Kennedy, M. and Wallace, J., 2015. Is individual employment law displacing the role of trade unions?.  Industrial Law Journal ,  44 (2), pp.222-245.

Salzman, Z., 2020. Liquidated Damages Clauses in Employment Agreements.  ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law ,  34 (2), pp.239-251.

Scoff, M.Z., and Owen, C.L., 2004. Content guidelines for an undergraduate human resources curriculum: Recommendations from human resources professionals.  Journal of Education for Business ,  80 (2), pp.80-85.

Zimmer, M., Sullivan, C.A. and Whit, R.H., 2020.  EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION: Selected Cases and Statutes 2017 Supplement . Aspen Publishers.

Dundon, T., Lucio, M.M., Hughes, E., Howcroft, D., Keizer, A., and Walden, R., 2020. Employment law cases. In  Power, politics, and influence at work . Manchester University Press.

Painter, R. and Holmes, A., 2015.  Cases and materials on employment law . Oxford University Press, USA.

Reisman, W.M., 2013. ‘Case Specific Mandates’ versus ‘Systemic Implications’: How Should Investment Tribunals Decide?: The Freshfields Arbitration Lecture.  Arbitration International ,  29 (2), pp.131-152.

Ranaldi, V., Equal Treatment and the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation: Recent Case Law Concerning Discrimination against temporary workers.

King, P., Baker, G., Jones, B., and Ingham, T., 2021. The Official Information Act: Maori with Lived Experience of Disability, and New Zealand Disability Data: a case study.  Policy Quarterly ,  17 (1).

[1]  O’Sullivan, M., Turner, T., Kennedy, M. and Wallace, J., 2015. Is individual employment law displacing the role of trade unions?.  Industrial Law Journal ,  44 (2), pp.222-245.

[2]  Clermont, Kevin M., and Stewart J. Schwab. “Employment discrimination plaintiffs in federal court: From bad to worse.”  Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev.  3 (2009): 103.

[3]  Lemus, Claudia. “The Adoption of Specialised Competition Tribunals in Latin American Countries: Lessons from Mexico.” PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2020.

[4]  Coetzer, N. and Thema, M., 2020. The Labour Court disposes of another hopeless case (and sanctions the attorneys): employment law.  Without Prejudice ,  20 (1), pp.40-43.

[5]  Zimmere, M., Sullivan, C.A. and Whit, R.H., 2020.  EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION: Selected Cases and Statutes 2017 Supplement . Aspen Publishers.

[6]  Dundon, T., Lucio, M.M., Hughes, E., Howcroft, D., Keizer, A. and Walden, R., 2020. Employment law cases. In  Power, politics and influence at work . Manchester University Press.

[7]  Goldberg, J. and Wilkinson, G., 2020. Case law emanating from COVID-19 in the employment space: employment law-COVID-19.  Without Prejudice ,  20 (7), pp.17-18.

[8]  Salzman, Z., 2020. Liquidated Damages Clauses in Employment Agreements.  ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law ,  34 (2), pp.239-251.

[9]  Painter, R. and Holmes, A., 2015.  Cases and materials on employment law . Oxford University Press, USA.

[10]  Moss, S.A., 2017. The Value of the Statement of Employment Law, Based on 50-State Empirical Analyses and the Importance of Clarifying Disputed Issues-But with Caveats about the Restatement’s Imperfect Work Product.  Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. ,  21 , p.409.

[11]  Ziegler, J.K., 2000. Employment Law-An Employer’s Duty to Third Parties When Giving Employment Recommendations-Davis v. Board of County Commissioners of Dona Ana County.  NML Rev. ,  30 , p.307.

[12]  Sincoff, M.Z. and Owen, C.L., 2004. Content guidelines for an undergraduate human resources curriculum: Recommendations from human resources professionals.  Journal of Education for Business ,  80 (2), pp.80-85.

[13]  Crooks, V. A. (2007). Women’s experiences of developing musculoskeletal diseases: Employment challenges and policy recommendations.  Disability and rehabilitation ,  29 (14), 1107-1116.

[14]  Reisman, W.M., 2013. ‘Case Specific Mandates’ versus ‘Systemic Implications’: How Should Investment Tribunals Decide?: The Freshfields Arbitration Lecture.  Arbitration International ,  29 (2), pp.131-152.

[15]  King, P., Baker, G., Jones, B. and Ingham, T., 2021. The Official Information Act: Maori with Lived Experience of Disability, and New Zealand Disability Data: a case study.  Policy Quarterly ,  17 (1).

[16]  Ranaldi, V., Equal Treatment and the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation: Recent Case Law Concerning Discrimination against temporary workers.

[17]  Czepita, S., 2021. Polish Legislative Procedure and the Role of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from the Perspective of the Theory of Conventional Acts and Formal Acts in Law. In  Poznań School of Legal Theory  (pp. 231-248). Brill Rodopi.

[18]  Sardinha, E., 2020. Protecting Cultural Heritage in International Investment Law: Tracing the Evolution and Treatment of Cultural Considerations in Recent FTAs and Investor-State Jurisprudence.  Handbook of International Investment Law and Policy , pp.1-25.

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Employment Laws and Regulations, Essay Example

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Employment laws and regulations are very essential for the task of ensuring and sustaining cordial relations between employers and employees. As of 1968, writes Weiler, within the preceding 25 years, 29 states in the United States had enacted fair employment laws that prohibit any form of discrimination on grounds of country or region of origin, creed, race, and color (12). Today, in all these states and many others, the orders of the agencies that administer these laws can be enforced judicially and failure by the concerned employers to comply with these orders may lead to imprisonment as well as fines.

Landes notes that during the period within which majority of states in the U.S enacted employment law that prohibited all forms of discrimination, about 50 municipalities had established commissions that dealt with discrimination (507). These commissions, says Landes, had been put in place without the power to enforce the newly-enacted laws, but with a design that made it possible for them to supplement the existing state commissions (507).

However, discrimination is not the only issue that should be addressed by employment laws and regulations. Weiler highlights a case whereby Luck, an employee with South Pacific Transportation company was awarded almost half a million dollars for objecting to the company’s newly conceived regulation that required all employees to be randomly sampled so that those who were selected would undergo a drug test. Luck had been fired for refusing to undergo the test (1).

Weiler observes that Luck’s case is the first one that he has ever heard of whereby the grounds for an employee’s dismissal, which the employee believed to be wrongful, were put under scrutiny after the aggrieved party sought legal redress(2). The case of Luck touches on issues of employees’ personal privacy. It also touches on matters of whether a simple test can be prioritized over past performance record of workers. It also highlights the issue of whether a program that is executed on a random basis should be generalized on the entire employee population. These are important issues that employment laws and regulations are meant to address in great detail.

All contemporary disputes that take place in the workplace have a legal dimension to them. Some of the most commonly legally contested issues include use of lie detector tests, drug tests, pay equity especially in case of jobs that are considered to be “traditionally for women”, affirmative action in the case of minority workers, closings of plants and mass layoffs that affect all employees. Employment law is important since it is always used to determine whether an issue like an employee drug test should be voluntary or mandatory.

Weiler observes that in recent years, private litigation cases have proliferated (2). It is debatable whether people like Luck always have to consult external sources of help whenever they feel that the management is overstepping its mandate of performing governance tasks within a business, organization or institution. On this same note, Weiler is quick to add that rarely are politicians in the American setting preoccupied with the subject of employment, meaning that it enjoys very limited popular critical appeal (2). This is not good since work and employment issues are very important in the development of every country. This is evident in Weiler’s observation that at any given time, about one hundred million Americans are employed in order to support themselves directly and to contribute their usual share towards the national economy, which, on average, stands at three quarters of the country’s gross national income (2).

Landes notes that for a long time, legislators and civil rights organization have been advocating for enactment of new laws on employment to replace the ones that have been in force for many years, if not centuries. (507). No wonder throughout the eighties, many economists and human resource management scholars intensified efforts to introduce different intellectual perspectives into the employment law reform debate. As Weiler says, these reforms, the scholars seemed to emphasize, were very crucial considering the importance that people were trying to attach to the world of work (10).

According to the United States Department of Labor, there are three core issues that a good employment law guide should address (1). These include (a) the law in its literal sense, (b) regulations governing conduct in the workplace and (c) regulations regarding technical assistance services. Within this framework of categories, the United States Department of Labor institutes a seven-point legal framework. The items contained in this framework include: wages and hours worked; safety and health standards; retirement standards, health benefits and workman’s compensation; workplace standards such as lie detector tests and whistleblower and retaliation protection; and federal contracts with regard applicable working conditions; and equal employment opportunity.

The pros and cons of employment laws and regulations

Weiler says that all organizations should be concerned about employees’ problems when enacting employment laws, adding that this is the only way through which a good policy of collective bargaining can be arrived at (8). When there is collective bargaining, it becomes very easy for different workplace problems to be settled privately, locally and voluntarily.

However, the institution of the workplace, owing to its nature that attracts public interest and scrutiny, requires some form of statutory regulation and legal influence. Cooper cites the example of the National Labor Relations Act, which came into existence more than a decade ago in order to encourage employees to organize themselves in the appropriate manner so that viable ideals of collective bargaining can be achieved with relative ease. (599). According to Cooper, this remains a very effective tool of protecting employees from being on the receiving end of coercive force coming from employers (600).

Employment laws and regulations are always very important in the sense that they facilitate arbitration of personnel matters  relating to choice of the optimal mix of workers, hours-employment trade-offs, the question of whether a firm should hire permanent or temporary workers, optimal compensation schemes, management of adverse selection processes, job destruction and human capital and training investment.

One of the greatest cons of employment laws and regulations is the assumption that labor markets the world over follow perfect competitive patterns, something that rarely happens. The reality is that the labor market is full of imperfections. Matters relating to issues of temporary help, retirement benefits, workman’s compensation and provision of training are very sensitive. It is impossible to ensure stability in the labor market without the existence of an employment law that is applicable across the labor spectrum, under all economic circumstances.

Employment laws are often legislated with reference to the most fundamental assumption being that economic times are unchanging, as if there is a certain form of equilibrium that should be considered as a reference point. However, this is seldom the case. Economic recessions are a reality and whenever they happen, employers are left with no any other feasible option but to lay off workers.

The current employment laws, if not properly enforced can be used to bring about fundamental personnel regulatory weaknesses within individual firms. Although it may be difficult to prevent bad, often ephemeral labor laws, from finding their way into statute books, business owners, heads of institutions and organizational leaders can come together to form regulatory networks whose regulations may be binding in all members of the network.  This is a very effective way of creating an active industrial policy that accommodates the views of as many stakeholders as possible.

HR practices to address the topic: Give specific guidelines on how HR can develop programs and/or policies to handle this issue

The effectiveness of employment regulations and laws depends largely on the approach that HR departments take towards their implementation. HR departments have the authority to offer guidelines on matters of restriction of workers’ freedom, grounds for their dismissal, limits on the extent to which workers can use temporary work agencies, limits on time shifts, night work and weekly hours and limits on how employers do part-time work. In other words, the manner in which the HR handles work-related issues determines whether employees will feel the need for legal redress or not.

Employment regulation affects patterns of work both directly and indirectly. For instance, the manner in which temporary work is regulated determines frequency of incidences of temporary work that are observed as well as the actual hours during which employees commit themselves to work. This may also bring about indirect effects such as induction of shift in the employment structure towards forms of work that are not regulated. Employment regulations, owing to their far-reaching effects on macroeconomic variables and aggregate employment effects, should be handled very sensitively. For this reason, it is not possible to enact employment laws without the active participation of HR officials and employees alike.

Employees, if left unsupervised, can make use of existing labor laws and regulations in order to exploit their employers. The converse applies to employers. However, within employer settings, the HR function is very fundamental since it is the work of the human resource department to initiate the selection process without which a contract between employer and employee can never exist.

In the process of executing their mandate, HR managers should put into consideration the views of both the management of the organization and the employees. Where no platforms of addressing the needs of employees exist, HR professionals should always refer to laws governing the rights, responsibilities and obligation of employees. From this reference point, an ideal employee regulatory framework, one that can never come into loggerheads with the law, can be put in place.

Examples of issues that can be addressed through regulations derived from existing employment and labor laws include the duration of notice that should be given before a lay-off comes into effect and the amounts of severance pay that should accrue to employees and under what circumstances that this should happen. However, the legal constraints that affect such regulations differ from one country to the other.

Enforcement of employment regulations within the provisions of the law is a very complicated thing for the HR department of any organization to do. It is a matter that calls for liaison between the department and the organization’s legal office. Alternatively, HR officials may do it on their own if they have many years’ experience of dealing with employee regulation issues as well as the confidence to do it.  A good starting point is composing an employment contract whose wording is legally admissible. Such an employment should imply a collective agreement between employer and employee upon signing by the employee.

Human resource managers should beware of unclear legislations that leave it upon judges to make decisions in matters of contention between employers and employees or their representatives. When regulation is required in such matters, the consent of both parties should be emphasized in order for both parties to the dispute to avoid far-reaching legal implications.

Normative approaches to collective agreements through government decrees constitute another option that human resource managers should use whenever they are called upon to do so. In most cases, any democratic government does not announce such decrees unless they are meant to benefit employees as well as employers in a certain branch or sector within an industry.

In conclusion, employment laws and regulations play a very crucial role in cultivating mutual interdependence between employers and employees in the workplace. As Weiler observes, any issue that affects performance of an employee should be addressed either through statutory provisions or through regulation by employees (10). In either case, the imperfections of labor and employment laws should be addressed through collective bargaining agreements between employers and employees. In some cases, governments put decrees in place in order to bring about immediate solutions to pressing employer and employee problems. It is the responsibility of human resource managers to ensure that the rights, obligations and responsibilities of the organization as well as employees are safeguarded at all times.

Works Cited

Cooper, George and Sobol, Richard. “Seniority and Testing under Fair Employment Laws: A General Approach to Objective Criteria of Hiring and Promotion” Harvard Law Review, 82.8 (1969): 598-1679.

“Employment Law Guide.” United States Department of Labor. 01 Jan. 2010. 05 Apr. 2010. <http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/>

Landes, William. “The Economics of Fair Employment Laws” The Journal of Political Economy, 76.4, (1968): 507-552.

Weiler, Paul. Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labor and Employment Law. New York: Routledge, 1990.

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Chapter 13 Introductory Essay: 1945-1960

Written by: Patrick Allitt, Emory University

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the context for societal change from 1945 to 1960
• Explain the extent to which the events of the period from 1945 to 1960 reshaped national identity

Introduction

World War II ended in 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union had cooperated to defeat Nazi Germany, but they mistrusted each other. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, believed the Americans had waited too long before launching the D-Day invasion of France in 1944, leaving his people to bear the full brunt of the German war machine. It was true that Soviet casualties were more than 20 million, whereas American casualties in all theaters of war were fewer than half a million.

On the other hand, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, who had become president after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, believed Stalin had betrayed a promise made to Roosevelt at the  Yalta summit  in February 1945. That promise was to permit all the nations of Europe to become independent and self-governing at the war’s end. Instead, Stalin installed Soviet  puppet governments  in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, the parts of Europe his armies had recaptured from the Nazis.

These tensions between the two countries set the stage for the Cold War that came to dominate foreign and domestic policy during the postwar era. The world’s two superpowers turned from allies into ideological and strategic enemies as they struggled to protect and spread their systems around the world, while at the same time developing arsenals of nuclear weapons that could destroy it. Domestically, the United States emerged from the war as the world’s unchallenged economic powerhouse and enjoyed great prosperity from pent-up consumer demand and industrial dominance. Americans generally supported preserving the New Deal welfare state and the postwar anti-communist crusade. While millions of white middle-class Americans moved to settle down in the suburbs, African Americans had fought a war against racism abroad and were prepared to challenge it at home.

The Truman Doctrine and the Cold War

Journalists nicknamed the deteriorating relationship between the two great powers a “ cold war ,” and the name stuck. In the short run, America possessed the great advantage of being the only possessor of nuclear weapons as a result of the Manhattan Project. It had used two of them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Far East, with destructive power so fearsome it deterred Soviet aggression. But after nearly four years of war, Truman was reluctant to risk a future conflict. Instead, with congressional support, he pledged to keep American forces in Europe to prevent any more Soviet advances. This was the “ Truman Doctrine ,” a dramatic contrast with the American decision after World War I to withdraw from European affairs. (See the  Harry S. Truman, “Truman Doctrine” Address, March 1947   Primary Source.)

President Harry Truman pictured here in his official presidential portrait pledged to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion with his “Truman Doctrine.”

The National Security Act, passed by Congress in 1947, reorganized the relationship between the military forces and the government. It created the National Security Council (NSC), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the office of Secretary of Defense. The Air Force, previously a branch of the U.S. Army, now became independent, a reflection of its new importance in an era of nuclear weapons. Eventually, NSC-68, a secret memorandum from 1950, was used to authorize large increases in American military strength and aid to its allies, aiming to ensure a high degree of readiness for war against the Soviet Union.

What made the Soviet Union tick? George Kennan, an American diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow who knew the Soviets as well as anyone in American government, wrote an influential article titled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Originally sent from Moscow as a long telegram, it was later published in the journal  Foreign Affairs  under the byline “X” and impressed nearly all senior American policy makers in Washington, DC. The Soviets, said Kennan, believed capitalism and communism could not coexist and that they would be perpetually at war until one was destroyed. According to Kennan, the Soviets believed communism was destined to dominate the world. They were disciplined and patient, however, and understood “the logic of force.” Therefore, said Kennan, the United States must be equally patient, keeping watch everywhere to “contain” the threat.

Containment  became the guiding principle of U.S. anti-Soviet policy, under which the United States deployed military, economic, and cultural resources to halt Soviet expansion. In 1948, the United States gave more than $12 billion to Western Europe to relieve suffering and help rebuild and integrate the economies through the Marshall Plan. The Europeans would thus not turn to communism in their desperation and America would promote mutual prosperity through trade. The Berlin crisis of 1948–1949 was the policy’s first great test. (See the  George Kennan (“Mr. X”), “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” July 1947  Primary Source.)

Berlin, jointly occupied by the major powers, lay inside Soviet-dominated East Germany, but access roads led to it from the West. In June 1948, Soviet forces cut these roads, hoping the Americans would permit the whole of Berlin to fall into the Soviet sphere rather than risk war. Truman and his advisors, recognizing the symbolic importance of Berlin but reluctant to fire the first shot, responded by having supplies flown into West Berlin, using aircraft that had dropped bombs on Berlin just three years earlier. Grateful Berliners called them the “raisin bombers” in tribute to one of the foods they brought.

After 11 months, recognizing their plan had failed, the Soviets relented. West Berlin remained part of West Germany, making the first test of containment a success. On the other hand, the United States was powerless to prevent a complete Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, whose government had shown some elements of independence from Moscow’s direction. (See  The Berlin Airlift  Narrative.)

Alarm about the Czech situation hastened the American decision to begin re-arming West Germany, where an imperfect and incomplete process of “de-Nazification” had taken place. The United States also supervised the creation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance of Western nations to forestall Soviet aggression in central Europe. The U.S. government also continued research on and development of new and more powerful nuclear weapons. Americans were dismayed to learn, in 1949, that the Soviets had successfully tested an atomic bomb of their own, greatly facilitated by information provided by Soviet spies. Europe and much of the world were divided between the world’s two superpowers and their allies.

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson along with the foreign ministers of Canada and 10 European nations gathered to sign the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4 1949 founding NATO.

Postwar Uncertainty

The postwar years were politically volatile ones all over the world, due to widespread decolonization. Britain, though allied with the United States during World War II, had been weakened by the conflict and could no longer dominate its remote colonies. The British Empire was shrinking drastically, and this made the Truman Doctrine all the more necessary. In 1947, an economically desperate Britain reluctantly granted India and Pakistan the independence their citizens had sought for years. Britain’s African colonies gained independence in the 1950s and early 1960s. The United States and the Soviet Union each struggled to win over the former British colonies to their own ideological side of the Cold War. (See the  Who Was Responsible for Starting the Cold War?  Point-Counterpoint and  Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace,” March 1946  Primary Source.)

Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948, on land that had been a British-controlled  mandate  since the end of World War I. The Zionist movement, founded in the 1890s by Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodore Herzl, had encouraged European Jews to immigrate to Palestine. There, they would buy land, become farmers, and eventually create a Jewish state. Tens of thousands, indeed, had migrated there and prospered between 1900 and 1945. Widespread sympathy for the Jews, six million of whom had been exterminated in the Nazi Holocaust, prompted the new United Nations to authorize the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. From the very beginning, these two states were at war, with all the neighboring Arab states uniting to threaten Israel’s survival. President Truman supported Israel, however, and in the ensuing decades, most American politicians, and virtually all the American Jewish population, supported and strengthened it.

In 1949, a decades-long era of chaos, conquest, and revolution in China ended with the triumph of Mao Zedong, leader of a Communist army. Against him, America had backed Chiang Kai-Shek, the Chinese Nationalist leader, whose defeated forces fled to the offshore island of Taiwan. American anti-communist politicians in Washington, DC, pointed to the growing “red” (Communist) areas of the map as evidence that communism was winning the struggle for the world. Domestically, Truman and the Democrats endured charges that they had “lost” China to communism.

War in Korea

Korea, one of the many parts of Asia that Japan had conquered in the earlier twentieth century but then lost in 1945, was now partitioned into a pro-Communist North and an anti-Communist South. In June 1950, the Truman administration was taken by surprise when North Korea attacked the South, overpowering its army and forcing the survivors back into a small area of the country’s southeast, the Pusan perimeter. Truman and his advisors quickly concluded they should apply the containment principle to Asia and procured a resolution of support from the United Nations, which was unanimous because the Soviet representatives were not present in the Security Council during the vote. See the  Truman Intervenes in Korea  Decision Point.)

U.S. troops were sent to Korea shortly after Truman’s decision to apply containment to the region. Pictured is a U.S. gun crew near the Kum River in July 1950.

An American invasion force led by General Douglas MacArthur thus made a daring counterattack, landing at Inchon, near Seoul on the west coast of the Korean peninsula, on September 15, 1950. At once, this attack turned the tables in the war, forcing the North Koreans into retreat. Rather than simply restore the old boundary, however, MacArthur’s force advanced deep into North Korea, ultimately approaching the Chinese border. At this point, in October 1950, Mao Zedong sent tens of thousands of Chinese Communist soldiers into the conflict on the side of North Korea. They turned the tide of the war once again, forcing the American forces to fall back in disarray.

After a brutal winter of hard fighting in Korea, the front lines stabilized around the  38th parallel . MacArthur, already a hero of World War II in the Pacific, had burnished his reputation at Inchon. In April 1951, however, he crossed the line in civil-military relations that bars soldiers from dabbling in politics by publicly criticizing one of President Truman’s strategic decisions not to expand the war against the Chinese. MacArthur was so popular in America, he had come to think the rules no longer applied to him, but they did. Truman fired him with no hesitation, replacing him with the equally competent but less egotistical General Matthew Ridgway. The war dragged on in a stalemate. Only in 1953, after the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a truce declared between the two Koreas. It has held uneasily ever since. (See  The Korean War and The Battle of Chosin Reservoir  Narrative.)

Prosperity and the Baby Boom

The late 1940s and early 1950s were paradoxical. They were years of great geopolitical stress, danger, and upheaval, yet they were also a time of prosperity and opportunity for millions of ordinary American citizens. Far more babies were born each year than in the 1930s, resulting in the large “ baby boom ” generation. Millions of new houses were built to meet a need accumulated over the long years of the Great Depression and the war. Suburbs expanded around every city, creating far better and less-crowded living conditions than ever before. Levittown housing developments were just one example of the planned communities with mass-produced homes across the country that made homeownership within the reach of many, though mostly white families, thanks to cheap loans for returning veterans (See the  Levittown Videos, 1947–1957  Primary Source). Wages and living standards increased, and more American consumers found they could afford their own homes, cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, and even television sets—TV was then a new and exciting technology. The entire nation breathed a sigh of relief on discovering that peace did not bring a return of depression-era conditions and widespread unemployment. (See  The Sound of the Suburbs  Lesson.)

Television became a staple in U.S. households during the 1940s and 1950s.

Full employment during the war years had strengthened trade unions, but for patriotic reasons, nearly all industrial workers had cooperated with their employers. Now that the war was over, a rash of strikes for better pay and working conditions broke out. In 1945, Truman expanded presidential power by seizing coal mines, arguing it was in the national interest because coal supplied electricity. He then forced the United Mine Workers to end their strike the following year.

Although coal miners won their demands, the power of organized labor waned over the next few decades. Republican members of Congress, whose party had triumphed in the 1946 mid-term elections, passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, aiming to curb the power of unions by banning the closed shop, allowing states to protect the right to work outside the union, setting regulations to limit labor strikes and excluding supporters of the Communist Party and other social radicals from their leadership. Truman vetoed the act, but Congress overrode the veto. In 1952, Truman attempted to again seize a key industry and forestall a strike among steelworkers. However, the Supreme Court decided in  Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer  (1952) that Truman lacked the constitutional authority to seize private property, and steelworkers won significant concessions.

Watch this BRI AP U.S. History Exam Study Guide about the Post-WWII Boom: Transition to a Consumer Economy to explore the post-World War II economic boom in the United States and its impacts on society.

Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare

Fear of communism, not only abroad but at home, was one of the postwar era’s great obsessions. Ever since the Russian Revolution of 1917, a small and dedicated American Communist Party had aimed to overthrow capitalism and create a Communist America. Briefly popular during the crisis of the Great Depression and again when Stalin was an American ally in World War II, the party shrank during the early Cold War years. Rising politicians like the young California congressman Richard Nixon nevertheless discovered that anti-Communism was a useful issue for gaining visibility. Nixon helped win publicity for the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), whose hearings urged former communists to expose their old comrades in the name of national security, especially in government and Hollywood. In 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order No. 9835, establishing loyalty boards investigating the communist sympathies of 2.5 million federal employees. (See  The Postwar Red Scare  and the  Cold War Spy Cases  Narratives.)

The most unscrupulous anti-communist was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI), who used fear of communism as a powerful political issue during the early Cold War. He made reckless allegations that the government was riddled with communists and their sympathizers, even including Secretary of State George Marshall. Intimidating all critics by accusing them of being part of a great communist conspiracy, McCarthy finally overplayed his hand in publicly televised hearings by accusing the U.S. Army of knowingly harboring communists among its senior officers. The Senate censured him in December 1954, after which his influence evaporated, but for four years, he had been one of the most important figures in American political life. Although he was correct that the Soviets had spies in the U.S. government, McCarthy created a climate of fear and ruined the lives of innocent people for his own political gain during what became known as the “Second Red Scare.” (See the  McCarthyism DBQ  Lesson.)

Senator Joseph McCarthy (left) is pictured with his lawyer Roy Cohn during the 1950s McCarthy-Army clash.

Be sure to check out this  BRI Homework Help video about The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy  to learn more about Joseph McCarthy and his battle against communists in the U.S. government.

Several highly publicized spy cases commanded national attention. Klaus Fuchs and other scientists with detailed knowledge of the Manhattan Project were caught passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. In 1950, Alger Hiss was prosecuted for perjury before Congress and accused of sharing State Department documents with the Soviets. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried for espionage in 1951 and executed two years later. Julius was convicted of running a spy ring associated with selling atomic secrets to the Russians, though the case against Ethel’s direct involvement was thinner.

From Truman to Eisenhower

After the 1946 midterm election, in which Republicans won a majority in the House and the Senate, the Democratic President Truman struggled to advance his domestic program, called the Fair Deal in an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. For instance, Truman was the first American president to propose a system of universal health care, but the Republican Congress voted it down because they opposed the cost and regulations associated with the government program and called it “socialized medicine.” Truman did succeed in other areas. He was able to encourage Congress to pass the Employment Act of 1946, committing the government to ensuring full employment. By executive order, he desegregated the American armed forces and commissioned a report on African American civil rights. He thus played an important role in helping advance the early growth of the civil rights movement.

Truman seemed certain to lose his re-election bid in 1948. The Republicans had an attractive candidate in Thomas Dewey, and Truman’s own Democratic Party was splintering three ways. Former Vice President Henry Wallace led a Progressive breakaway, advocating a less confrontational approach to the Cold War. Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina senator, led the southern “Dixiecrat” breakaway by opposing any breach in racial segregation. The  Chicago Daily Tribune  was so sure Dewey would win that it prematurely printed its front page with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” One of the most famous photographs in the history of American journalism shows Truman, who had upset the pollsters by winning, holding a copy of this newspaper aloft and grinning broadly.

President Truman is pictured here holding the Chicago Daily Tribune with its inaccurate 1948 headline.

Four years later, exhausted by Korea and the fierce stresses of the early Cold War, Truman declined to run for another term. Both parties hoped to attract the popular Supreme Allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to be their candidate. He accepted the Republicans’ invitation, defeated Adlai Stevenson in November 1952, and won against the same rival again in 1956.

Rather than roll back the New Deal, which had greatly increased the size and reach of the federal government since 1933, Eisenhower accepted most of it as a permanent part of the system, in line with his philosophy of “Modern Republicanism.” He worked with Congress to balance the budget but signed bills for the expansion of Social Security and unemployment benefits, a national highway system, federal aid to education, and the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In foreign policy, he recognized that for the foreseeable future, the Cold War was here to stay and that each side’s possession of nuclear weapons deterred an attack by the other. The two sides’ nuclear arsenals escalated during the 1950s, soon reaching a condition known as “ mutually assured destruction ,” which carried the ominous acronym MAD and would supposedly prevent a nuclear war.

At the same time, Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles supported the “New Look” foreign policy, which increased reliance on nuclear weapons rather than the more flexible but costly buildup of conventional armed forces. Despite the Cold War consensus about containment, Eisenhower did not send troops when the Vietnamese defeated the French in Vietnam; when mainland China bombed the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu; when the British, French, and Egypt fought over the Suez Canal in 1956; or when the Soviets cracked down on Hungary. Instead, Eisenhower assumed financial responsibility for the French war effort in Vietnam and sent hundreds of military advisers there over the next several years. (See the  Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 1961  Primary Source.)

Birth of the Civil Rights Movement

Encouraged by early signs of a change in national racial policy and by the Supreme Court’s decision in  Brown v. Board of Education  (1954) , African American organizations intensified their efforts to challenge southern segregation. Martin Luther King Jr., then a spellbinding young preacher in Montgomery, Alabama, led a Montgomery bus boycott that began in December 1955. Inspired by the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a city bus, African Americans refused to ride Montgomery’s buses unless the company abandoned its policy of forcing them to ride at the back and to give up their seats to whites when the bus was crowded. After a year, the boycott succeeded. King went on to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which practiced nonviolent resistance as a tactic, attracting press attention, embarrassing the agents of segregation, and promoting racial integration. (See the  Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott  Narrative and the  Rosa Parks’s Account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Radio Interview), April 1956  Primary Source.)

In 1957, Congress passed the first federal protection of civil rights since Reconstruction and empowered the federal government to protect black voting rights. However, the bill was watered down and did not lead to significant change. In August, black students tried to attend high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, but were blocked by National Guard troops. Over the next few weeks, angry crowds assembled and threatened these students. President Eisenhower decided to send in federal troops to protect the nine black students. In the postwar era, African Americans won some victories in the fight for equality, but many southern whites began a campaign of massive resistance to that goal.

Check out this BRI Homework Help video about Brown v. Board of Education to learn more about the details of the case.

Thus, the pace of school desegregation across the south remained very slow. White southerners in Congress promised massive resistance to the policy. When it came to the point, however, only one county, Prince Edward County, Virginia, actually closed down its public schools rather than permit them to be desegregated. Other districts, gradually and reluctantly, eventually undertook integration, but widespread discrimination persisted, especially in the South.

Mexican Americans, like African Americans, suffered from racial discrimination. Under the  bracero  program, inaugurated during the 1940s, Mexicans were permitted to enter the United States temporarily to work, mainly as farm laborers in the western states, but they too were treated by whites as second-class citizens. They were guest workers, and the program was not intended to put them on a path to U.S. citizenship. (See  The Little Rock Nine  Narrative.)

Pictured are Mexican workers waiting to gain legal employment and enter the United States as part of the “ bracero ” program begun in the 1940s.

The Space Race

The desegregation of schools was only one aspect of public concern about education in the 1950s. The Soviet Union launched an artificial orbiting satellite, “Sputnik,” in 1957 and ignited the “ Space Race .” Most Americans were horrified, understanding that a rocket able to carry a satellite into space could also carry a warhead to the United States. Congress reacted by passing the National Defense Education Act in August 1958, devoting $1 billion of federal funds to education in science, engineering, and technology in the hope of improving the nation’s scientific talent pool.

NASA had been created earlier that same year to coordinate programs related to rocketry and space travel. NASA managed to catch up with the Soviet space program in the ensuing years and later triumphed by placing the first person on the moon in 1969. Better space rockets meant better military missiles. NASA programs also stimulated useful technological discoveries in materials, navigation, and computers. (See the  Sputnik and NASA  Narrative and the  Was Federal Spending on the Space Race Justified?  Point-Counterpoint.)

Another major initiative, also defense related, of the Eisenhower years was the decision to build the interstate highway system. As a young officer just after World War I, Eisenhower had been part of an Army truck convoy that attempted to cross the United States. Terrible roads meant that the convoy took 62 days, with many breakdowns and 21 injuries to the soldiers, an experience Eisenhower never forgot. He had also been impressed by the high quality of Germany’s autobahns near the war’s end. A comprehensive national system across the United States would permit military convoys to move quickly and efficiently. Commerce, the trucking industry, and tourism would benefit too, a belief borne out over the next 35 years while the system was built; it was declared finished in 1992. See  The National Highway Act  Narrative and the  Nam Paik,  Electronic Superhighway , 1995  Primary Source.)

New Roles for Women

American women, especially in the large and growing middle class, were in a paradoxical situation in the 1950s. In one sense, they were the most materially privileged generation of women in world history, wealthier than any predecessors. More had gained college education than ever before, and millions were marrying young, raising their children with advice from Dr. Spock’s best-selling  Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care  (1946), and enjoying labor-saving domestic devices and modern conveniences like washing machines, toasters, and electric ovens. Affluence meant many middle-class women were driving cars of their own. This  1950s advertisement for Ford automobiles  persuaded women to become a “two Ford family.” At the same time, however, some suffered various forms of depression and anxiety, seeking counseling, often medicating themselves, and feeling a lack of purpose in their lives.

This situation was noticed by Betty Friedan, a popular journalist in the 1950s whose book  The Feminine Mystique , published in 1963, helped ignite the new feminist movement. Its principal claim was that in America in the 1950s, women lacked fulfilling careers of their own, and material abundance was no substitute. (See the  Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Baby Boom  Narrative.) A feminist movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s seeking greater equality. In the postwar period, however, not all women shared the same experiences. Millions of working-class and poor women of all races continued to work in factories, retail, domestic, or offices as they had before and during the war. Whether married or single, these women generally did not share in the postwar affluence enjoyed by middle-class, mostly white, women who were in the vanguard of the feminist movement for equal rights for women.

By 1960, the United States was, without question, in a superior position to its great rival the Soviet Union—richer, stronger, healthier, better fed, much freer, and much more powerful. Nevertheless Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned against the dangers of an overdeveloped “military-industrial complex,” in which American traditions of democracy, decentralization, and civilian control would be swallowed up by the demands of the defense industry and a large, governmental national security apparatus. He had no easy remedies to offer and remained acutely aware that the Cold War continued to threaten the future of the world.

Timeline of events in the postwar period from 1945 to 1960.

Additional Chapter Resources

• Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations Narrative
• The G.I. Bill Narrative
• Jackie Robinson Narrative
• The Murder of Emmett Till Narrative
• The Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate Narrative
• William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement Narrative
• Truman Fires General Douglas MacArthur Decision Point
• Eisenhower and the Suez Canal Crisis Point-Counterpoint
• Richard Nixon “Checkers” Speech September 1952 Primary Source
• Critics of Postwar Culture: Jack Kerouac On the Road (Excerpts) 1957 Primary Source
• Kennedy vs. Nixon: TV and Politics Lesson

Review Questions

1. The major deterrent to Soviet aggression in Europe immediately after World War II was

• that the Soviets lost 20 million people during the war
• the Truman Doctrine
• the United States’ possession of atomic power
• the presence of U.S. troops in western Europe after World War II was over

2. Why did the United States maintain large armed forces in Europe after World War II?

• To stop renewed German aggression
• To halt Soviet aggression despite the wartime alliance
• To help the British relinquish their empire
• To maintain high levels of employment at home

3. The memorandum NSC-68 authorized

• the formation of the CIA
• the creation of the Department of Defense
• increases in the size of U.S. military forces
• the formation of an independent air force

4. The United States’ first successful application of its policy of containment occurred in

• Prague Czechoslovakia
• Moscow U.S.S.R.
• Berlin Germany
• Bombay India

5. During the late 1940s the Truman Administration supported all the following countries except

• Republic of Korea
• People’s Republic of China

6. When North Korea invaded South Korea the Truman Administration resolved to apply which strategy?

• The Truman Doctrine
• Containment
• A plan similar to the Berlin Airlift
• The bracero program

7. Events in which European country led the United States to allow the re-arming of West Germany?

• East Germany
• Czechoslovakia

8. The Taft-Hartley Act was most likely passed as a result of

• fear of labor involvement in radical politics and activities
• concern that strong labor unions could rekindle a depression
• fear that labor would restrict the freedom of workers
• desire to make the labor strike illegal

9. Why was it reasonable to expect Truman to lose the presidential election of 1948?

• McCarthyism was creating widespread dislike of the Democratic Party.
• Truman had been unable to win the Korean War.
• The Democratic Party split into three rival branches including one dedicated to racial segregation.
• The Democrats had controlled Congress since 1933.

10. Why were many middle-class women dissatisfied with their lives in the 1950s?

• They were excluded from most career opportunities.
• The cost of living was too high.
• Fear of losing their traditional roles caused them constant anxiety.
• They opposed the early civil rights movement.

11. All the following were Cold War based initiatives by the Eisenhower Administration except

• the creation of NASA
• the National Defense Highway Act
• the National Defense Education Act
• the Taft-Hartley Act

12. Anti-communist crusader Senator Joseph McCarthy overplayed his advantage in the Red Scare when he

• claimed members of the president’s Cabinet were known communists
• charged Martin Luther King Jr. with being a communist
• asserted the U.S. Army knowingly protected known communists in its leadership
• hinted that President Eisenhower could be a communist

13. As a presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower recognized the significance of all the following except

• the success of some New Deal programs
• the Cold War’s impact on U.S. foreign policy
• racial integration
• mutually assured destruction (MAD)

14. Which of the following statements most accurately describes the United States’ foreign policy during 1945-1960?

• The United States distanced itself from the global free-market economy.
• The United States based its foreign policy on unilateral decision-making.
• The Cold War was based on military policy only.
• The United States formed military alliances in reaction to the Soviet Union’s aggression.

15. Betty Friedan gained prominence by

• supporting women’s traditional role at home
• promoting the child-rearing ideas of Dr. Benjamin Spock
• researching and writing about the unfulfilling domestic role of educated women
• encouraging more women to attend college

16. Before leaving the office of the presidency Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the danger of

• falling behind in the space race
• having fewer nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union
• allowing the growth of the military-industrial complex
• overlooking communists within the federal government

Free Response Questions

• Explain President Harry Truman’s reaction to the Taft-Hartley Act.
• Describe President Truman’s role in advancing civil rights.
• Describe Dwight D. Eisenhower’s reaction to the New Deal programs still in existence when he was elected president.
• Explain the main reason for the United States’ military participation in Korea.

AP Practice Questions

Political cartoon by Clifford Berryman regarding civil rights and the 1948 election.

1. The main topic of public debate at the time this political cartoon was published was the

• deployment of U.S. troops in Korea
• dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan
• integration of the U.S. military

2. Which of the following groups would most likely support the sentiments expressed in the political cartoon?

• Progressives who argued for prohibition
• William Lloyd Garrison and like-minded abolitionists
• Antebellum reformers in favor of free public education
• Members of the America First Committee

“It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world. Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence. Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East. We must take immediate and resolute action. I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400 0 000 for the period ending June 30 1948.”

President Harry S. Truman The Truman Doctrine Speech March 12 1947

3. President Truman’s speech was most likely intended to increase the public’s awareness of

• rising tensions over oil reserves in the Middle East
• the Cold War and the struggle against Communism in Europe
• the United States’ need for access to the Black Sea
• the need to rebuild Europe after World War II

4. The immediate outcome of the event described in the excerpt was that

• the United States unilaterally rebuilt Europe
• worldwide freedom of the seas was guaranteed for all nations
• the United States’ foreign policy of containment was successfully implemented
• Europe was not as vital to U.S. interests as initially believed

5. Based on the ideas in the excerpt which of the following observations of U.S. foreign policy in the post World War II years is true?

• The United States was making a major shift in foreign policy from its stance after World War I.
• More people opposed the idea of U.S. involvement in world affairs.
• A majority believed that U.S. foreign policy was being dictated by the United Nations.
• The United States needed to reassert the “Good Neighbor Policy” but with a focus on Europe.

“Women especially educated women such as you have a unique opportunity to influence us man and boy and to play a direct part in the unfolding drama of our free society. But I am told that nowadays the young wife or mother is short of time for the subtle arts that things are not what they used to be; that once immersed in the very pressing and particular problems of domesticity many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirring debates for which their education has given them understanding and relish. . . . There is often a sense of contraction of closing horizons and lost opportunities. They had hoped to play their part in the crisis of the age. . . . The point is that . . . women “never had it so good” as you do. And in spite of the difficulties of domesticity you have a way to participate actively in the crisis in addition to keeping yourself and those about you straight on the difference between means and ends mind and spirit reason and emotion . . . In modern America the home is not the boundary of a woman’s life. . . . But even more important is the fact surely that what you have learned and can learn will fit you for the primary task of making homes and whole human beings in whom the rational values of freedom tolerance charity and free inquiry can take root.”

Adlai Stevenson “A Purpose for Modern Women” from his Commencement Address at Smith College 1955

6. Which of the following best mirrors the sentiments expressed by Adlai Stevenson in the provided excerpt?

• Women should be prepared to return to a more traditional role in society.
• The ideals espoused by Republican Motherhood should be upheld.
• The United States would not have won World War II if women had not worked in factories.
• Women had the opportunity to influence the next generation of citizens.

7. The reference that “many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirring debates for which their education has given them understanding and relish” is a reference to the ideas espoused by

• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Betty Friedan
• Dr. Benjamin Spock

Primary Sources

Eisenhower Dwight D. “Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation.” http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm

Eisenhower Dwight D. “Interstate Highway System.” Eisenhower proposes the interstate highway system to Congress. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-regarding-national-highway-program

“‘Enemies from Within’: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s Accusations of Disloyalty.” McCarthy’s speech in Wheeling West Virginia. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456

Friedan Betty. The Feminine Mystique . New York: W. W. Norton 1963.

Hamilton Shane and Sarah Phillips. Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford Books 2014.

Kennan George F. American Diplomacy . New York: Signet/Penguin Publishing 1952.

King Martin Luther Jr. “(1955) Martin Luther King Jr. ‘The Montgomery Bus Boycott.'” http://www.blackpast.org/1955-martin-luther-king-jr-montgomery-bus-boycott

King Martin Luther Jr. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story . New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers 1958.

MacLean Nancy. American Women’s Movement 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford Books 2009.

Marshall George C. “The ‘Marshall Plan’ speech at Harvard University 5 June 1947.” http://www.oecd.org/general/themarshallplanspeechatharvarduniversity5june1947.htm

Martin Waldo E. Jr. Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford Books 1998.

Schrecker Ellen W. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford Books 2016.

Story Ronald and Bruce Laurie. Rise of Conservatism in America 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books 2008.

Truman Harry. “A Report to the National Security Council – NSC 68 April 12 1950.” https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/report-national-security-council-nsc-68

Truman Harry. “The Fateful Hour (1947)” speech. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/harrystrumantrumandoctrine.html

Suggested Resources

Ambrose Stephen and Douglas Brinkley. Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938. Ninth ed. New York: Penguin 2010.

Branch Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 . New York: Simon and Schuster 1988.

Brands H.W. American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 . New York: Penguin 2010.

Brands H.W. The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War . New York: Anchor 2016.

Cadbury Deborah. Space Race: The Epic Battle Between American and the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space. New York: Harper 2007.

Cohen Lizabeth A. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America . New York: Vintage 2003.

Coontz Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap . New York: Basic Books 2016.

Dallek Robert. Harry S. Truman . New York: Times Books 2008.

Diggins John Patrick. The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace 1941-1960 . New York: W. W. Norton 1989.

Fried Richard. Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective . Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991.

Gaddis John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History . New York: Penguin 2005.

Halberstam David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion 2007.

Hitchcock William I. The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s. New York: Simon and Schuster 2018.

Johnson Paul. Eisenhower: A Life. New York: Penguin 2015.

Lewis Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways Transforming American Life. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2013.

May Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era . New York: Basic 2008.

McCullough David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster 1993.

Patterson James T. Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996.

Whitfield Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1996.

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

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May 27, 2024

Arts & culture, fattal | annotations for an essay that will never exist: reading barbara johnson and narrativizing a week in new york, by max fattal | may 27, 2024.

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My apartment smells like weed: I have been here for three days and been offered some two dozen joints from my roommate. I haven’t taken one yet — my psychiatrist’s anti-scientific fear mongering must have gotten to me. Anyways, I’m busy and I’ve got to get out of the house. I need a new suit, a haircut, housing for the second half of the summer and (if my insurance lets me swing it) prescription sunglasses. I haven’t started my law school essays though they’re due in less than a month and I can’t seem to pick a coffee shop in which to work. I go to The Strand — I’ve decided that it’s finally time to read Walter Benjamin. 

I Google: “Where start Walter Benjamin” 

“DO NOT DARE READ BENJAMIN IF YOU HAVEN’T READ HEGEL FIRST” 

Gotta love philosophy Reddit. Whelp, time to finally read Hegel. 

“Where start Hegel” 

“DO NOT TRY TO READ HEGEL WITHOUT AT LEAST ONE PHD.” 

I pick up Philosophy of History . Knowing, inevitably, that I’ll be bored or confused, I also grab a copy of Barbara Johnson’s The Feminist Difference — last week I’d had it recommended (perhaps that’s overselling). I check out with both. I might as well have preemptively deposited Philosophy of History in my storage unit to gather dust. The Feminist Difference , on the other hand, has already been read twice cover-to-cover. It’s all I can think about. 

Lacking the intellectual ammunition to place Barbara Johnson within a broader history of critical theory, or to analyze the texts she analyzes, I can only speak to what it feels like The Feminist Difference is doing. So here goes nothing. Obviously, Johnson knows what Freud or Lacan are going to conclude about that case of insanity or trauma — don’t we all. She knows that Baudelaire had already decided to uplift Desbordes-Valmore above all other women poets before he’d written a word about her — why he made that decision becomes semi-irrelevant. The conclusions are given and uninteresting; just as boring is the unremarkable observation that many of those conclusions neither make sense nor fit within their own internal logic. At this point that’s baked into the whole deal of reading the masculine literary and psychoanalytic canon. 

So, rather than a righteous feminist assault or precise dismantling of silly observations, Johnson simply refracts the narratives her subjects develop. She takes, for a moment, Baudelaire or Freud or Kohut at their word and enables their line of reasoning to expand outward —  the positing “as universal what may be the perspective of a particular place and time.” As the logic balloons outward and slams into walls of contradictions, cascading back and down with the force of true nonsense, she keeps going. With each essay’s final paragraphs, having successfully universalized beyond any one idea’s legitimate reach, she allows us a look at the fallen pieces of titular difference. Her conclusions are the various strands within which her subject’s reasoning cannot fit, and the perhaps unexpected places where they can.

In perhaps the collection’s best essay, Johnson cites Patricia Williams, writing about style and the often toxic veneer of face neutrality with its violations. Johnson’s appreciation for Williams is unsurprising, given the two’s common attention to causal directionality: Johnson frames the essay around The Alchemy of Race and Rights , where Williams describes the narratives necessary in the interpretation of the law. As I read her, we might view our unjust legal bedrock as a given, existing in order to preserve systems of inequality that predate it. Thus, jurisprudence follows the exact same formula of intermediating through narrative: How can we make this make sense from a social or logical perspective? Why is this injustice legally sound? From there, we can read the law as a story, knowing that it began with the ending and examining how the author gets to that point. 

So now, back to New York. I’d decided I wanted to start my column with an essay on NYC about two months ago — it was the longest stretch of my adult life that I’d spent away from the city, and my bus ticket was booked for the inevitably traumatic, closing, perhaps cathartic return just a couple weeks down the road. Before I had even arrived I was certain that the proceeding events would become the opening salvo of my next phase of writing — I’d even developed some preliminary theses. I was preparing to treatise on the process of retraumatization before I even knew an experience to be traumatic. In perhaps a libidinal display of masculinity (or maybe a preemptive pre-law hubris), I was attempting to tell a story (that is, accurately convey my internal monologue) with my conclusion already decided. 

Re-reading the half-drafted essay I attempt to follow Johnson’s approach — the perpetual expansion of my own conclusions until they collapse under the weight of an impossible universalism. My past self anticipated the draw of bold claims and offered up plenty (after all, what even is a city). In expanding I quickly came to the contradictions of my own writing; I already tend to notice the possibility as I outline, but I’ll shut my brain off for fear of perpetual dissonance — I love contradiction unless it’s my own, then I fear it. As an act of exposure therapy, the retraumatization I’d been pursuing in the original essay, that is the exercise of slamming one’s own thoughts into walls of failed universalism, was manageable. But with regards to its replacement (I still insisted upon starting my column with New York, but I’ve above flattened the phony philosophizing into a precise-diary entry reflection), I worry that I may have lost something in the deliberate attempt not to make everything about the things I make everything about. 

After a first skim of “Muteness Envy” (the first of the collection I encountered), I was asked what I thought. I said I liked it and pointed out a few quotes, but shied away from any fuller articulation. I felt thrown in the middle of a narrative without an understanding of either theses or reference points. Reading the whole collection I felt better for my fitting silence, and perhaps wonder if I’ve erred in my above articulation. For all its little digressions, thorny lines and moments of fascinating internal conflict, the overly conclusive lesson I’ve learned from The Feminist Difference is to avoid dogmatic interpretation and check for the causality of narrativization. Then again, it is precisely those things that make for such exhilarating criticism… I’ve already hit a contradiction. 

Max Fattal is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. They* can be reached at [email protected] .   Let’s Unpack That is an arts column that traverses autocriticism and borderline psychotic hyperfixation through the lenses of pseudo-intellectualism and film analysis. It runs occasionally throughout the year.

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Article citations more>>.

E. T. Usenko, “Essay on Theory of International Law,” Norma, Moscow, 2008.

has been cited by the following article:

TITLE: Place and Role of Norms and Sources of International Law in the Legal System of the Russian Federation: The Doctrinal Exploration and the Legislative Development of the Constitutional Principle

KEYWORDS: Constitution; Constitutional Principle; Generally Recognized Principles and Norms of IL; International Treaties of Russia; Sources of Law; Legislation; Doctrine; Legal Theory; Research-and-Practice Commentaries

JOURNAL NAME: Beijing Law Review , Vol.3 No.2 , June 28, 2012

ABSTRACT: The article introduces one of the aspects of the national legislation and of the Russian doctrine concerning the entire problem—implementation of generally recognized principles and norms of international law (IL) and international treaties as an integral part of the legal system of Russia. It can be interesting for at least two reasons. First, the Constitution of the country establishes the direct application of international obligations in the domestic matters without their incorporation into the legislation. Not many countries go this way. Second, one can say about the whole theory consisting of a complex of aspects elaborated by the Russian doctrine of IL concerning of operation and realization of international norms. Some propositions and conclusions of this theory could be interesting and useful for colleagues in the countries where implementation of IL norms is also based on the principle of their direct application. In particular, the article examines the question of how the constitutional provision on the place and role of international obligations is being interpreted in the theory and developed in the legislation. The situation of the 90’s years of the past century and in the first decade of the current century is being compared. It is noted that the practice (especially judicial) moves forward leaving the legislation and legal theory behind in understanding of the constitutional principle’s content, what does not conduce to full and precise realization of one of the foundations of the constitutional system of the country.

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The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant Essay

Introduction, pestel analysis, swot analysis of the coca cola company, porter’s five forces analysis of the coca cola company, recommendations.

According to the requirement of the assignment (to chose and write about one of the global top ten brands), the Coca Cola Company has been chosen. In this paper, a short background of the Company has been included. The mission and vision statements, and goals & objectives have also been listed.

Further, the most important task for any organization i.e., the various analyses such as PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis, and Porter’s five forces analysis have been done. A thorough research on the subject has been done and it has been the endeavour of the writer to include authentic information throughout the paper.

In 1886, when the Statue of Liberty, one of the wonders of the world, was being constructed in New York, little did the people know that eight hundred miles away, in Atlanta, another master piece was being invented that would create history. Yes, it was none other than Coca Cola, the most favoured soft drink in the world today.

John Pemberton was a pharmacist based in Atlanta. Out of curiosity and somewhat coincidence Pemberton invented the formula for Coca Cola that has become one of the most renowned soft drinks in the world. It is interesting that the style in which Pemberton wrote Coca Cola about 126 years ago has become the logo of the company.

Within three years of Pemberton’s death (he died in 1888), an Atlanta businessman named Asa Griggs Candler purchased the Coca Cola business for $2300 and became the first president of the Company. Candler took the Coca Cola brand to great heights by innovative promotions. It was in 1894 when Coca Cola was bottled by Joseph Biedenharn who had business interests in Mississippi.

In 1923, Ernest Woodruff purchased the company from Candler. After four years, Ernest’s son Robert Woodruff became the company president. It was under his tenure as the president of the Company that Coca Cola was launched worldwide.

Woodruff introduced new flavours such as Fanta in 1950s, Sprite in the year 1961, Tab in the year 1963 and Fresca in the year 1966. Today, there are more than 500 different brands of the Company and one can find Coca Cola in the remotest parts of the world. All this has been possible due to the foresightedness of the Company’s management.

Mission statement of the Coca Cola Company

“Our roadmap starts with our mission, which is enduring. It declares our purpose as a company and serves as the standard against which we weigh our actions and decisions” (The Coca Cola Company).

Vision statement of the Coca Cola Company

“Our vision serves as the framework for our roadmap and guides every aspect of our business by describing what we need to accomplish in order to continue achieving sustainable quality growth” (The Coca Cola Company).

Goal and objectives of the Coca Cola Company

“To continue to thrive as a business over the next ten years and beyond, we must look ahead, understand the trends and forces that will shape our business in the future and move swiftly to prepare for what’s to come” (The Coca Cola Company).

Structure of the Coca Cola Company

The following are the members of the Board of Directors of the Coca Cola Company:

Apart from the Board of Directors, following are the holders of different portfolios in the Functional Leadership at the Coca Cola Company:

Corporate culture at the Coca Cola Company

“Our inclusive culture is defined by our seven core values: leadership, passion, integrity, collaboration, diversity, quality, and accountability” (The Coca Cola Company). The Company has a diverse workforce from all over the world and considers operating in a multicultural world as a crucial aspect of sustainability.

PESTEL stands for the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal aspects that may have an impact on the performance of any organization. This kind of analysis is generally done by organizations in order to get information on the aforementioned aspects prevailing in a specific country or area where they want to launch their products.

The analysis can also be done to have the latest trends and current information of the aspects. This analysis helps the organizations to understand the market (current or future) and the external factors that may have an impact on their performance.

The Coca Cola Company is no exception and as such it also has to undertake the PESTEL analysis. This is vital because it is important for the company to know its competitors and also the existing opportunities. This way the Company can keep pace and sustain the competitive market.

Political factors

All nations have their own laws and policies pertaining to business. Moreover, there are separate policies for foreign companies. It differs from nation to nation with regard to the extent of intervention by the government in the functioning of any company. The intervention may be in the form of taxes, trade and environment restrictions, labour laws, and/or the facilities or services available.

The Coca Cola Company comes under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and as such it has to follow stringent rules and regulations laid down by the governments of different nations. The Coca Cola Company has to take approval from FDA for any of its new products to be launched. Governments of nations can impose heavy penalties on the Company if the FDA standards and norms are found to be disregarded.

There are other laws that the Company has to abide by in a particular country. These laws may pertain to the accounting system, income tax, import and export duties, and excise duties.

Another important political factor that may have an impact on the performance of the Company is the political unrest. If the government of a country changes or there is any kind of protest then there are chances of the demand of the Company’s products being decreased.

Terrorist activities in any country might hamper the Company’s marketing plans in that country.

Economic factors

The performance of an organization in any country depends mainly on the prevailing economic condition. There are various factors that come under the economic condition. These are economic growth or progress of that country, the interest and exchange rates, the labour wages, and the current level of unemployment. The Coca Cola Company has been smart to have judged this aspect before venturing in any new area or country.

If the economic growth or progress of a country is good, it means that the purchasing power of its citizens is good. Due to the fluctuations in the exchange rates of a nation’s currency, the overall revenue of the Company is affected. The interest rate on the loans that the Company has taken from the government affects the profitability. The Coca Cola Company uses special financial instruments to tackle with this issue.

If the inflation of a country increases, it means that the cost of living has increased. In such circumstances, the employees expect higher wages. This factor also has an impact on the profitability.

Social factors

Social factors include the culture, attitude of people, awareness about health among people, and the rate of population growth. It is not possible for the Coca Cola Company to change the social attributes of a country.

So the Company has to adapt itself and mould its policies according to the prevailing social values and culture trends. This is very important for the Company because it is a soft drink manufacturing company and as such is a typical B2C company. In order to flourish, the Company has to consider this aspect.

Even though the Coca Cola Company manufactures hundreds of products, all of them cannot be launched everywhere. So the Company first studies the social and cultural trends and then launches the right products only.

Technological factors

Technology is of utmost importance in all walks of life and if it is a manufacturing process then it becomes all the more important to have the latest technology. Coca Cola Company has got the latest technology for its manufacturing facilities. Due to its technological advancements, the Company has introduced various new methods of obtaining a drink of its brands.

It is understood that the Coca Cola Company has bottling partners in most of the countries where it has business interests. The Company has to rely on its bottling partners for delivering quality products and at the same time it has to provide the required support and guidance.

Legal factors

The Coca Cola Company has to abide by all the laws of a country where it is doing business. The governments of all nations have the right to prosecute the Company if it violates any of the laws.

Sometimes these laws are the reason for increase in costs of production. But the Coca Cola Company is very careful about all such laws.

Environmental factors

Since the products of the Coca Cola Company are to be served chilled, the environment plays a vital role in the sales. Apart from this, there are certain environment protection laws in every country. The Coca Cola Company has to abide by them. A special mention of plastic bottles is eminent. The Coca Cola Company takes great care in using only renewable plastic for its PET bottles.

Likewise the PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis is also a popular analysis done by organizations in order to know their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in the global competitive market. In the following paragraphs we shall do the SWOT analysis for the Coca Cola Company.

Coca Cola is the world’s leading brand. “Coca Cola Company is the leading brand in the soft drinks marketplace and is responsible for an array of brands including MyCoke collection, Fanta, Sprite, 5 Alive, Schweppes, Powerade, Kia Ora, Dr Pepper, Lilt, Relentless, Oasis and Glaceau Vitaminwater” (O’Reilly, 2012).

The Coca Cola Company is the largest manufacturer of soft drinks (non-alcoholic). It is also the biggest distributor for soft drinks.

The Coca Cola Company has a very strong financial base. The Company has a vast infrastructure spread across the globe. Due to this, the company can penetrate the worldwide markets with ease.

The Coca Cola Company is also into the manufacturing of bottled mineral water and juices.

There have been certain events in the past that have jeopardized the image of the Coca Cola Company. Like for example, there have been instances of human rights violation against the Company. The Company came under criticism due to its stand on the Middle Eastern countries. In India also, the Company had to face negative publicity due to the fact that the Company products being sold in the country contained some traces of hazardous pesticide.

In 2008, the FDA warned the Company that Diet Coke, one of its products, was in violation of the FDA norms.

The company was unable to garner the expected sales in North America.

“Coca Cola’s Dasani brand of bottled water was found to have illegally high levels of bromated a cancer-causing chemical” (Adams, 2004).

Opportunities

During the past years, the Coca Cola Company has acquired a few companies across the globe. Some of the acquired companies are Kerry Beverages (KBL) in Hong Kong, Apollinaris in Germany, and TJC Holdings in South Africa. Apart from the mentioned companies, the Company also acquired other companies in Australia and New Zealand.

The acquisitions have helped the Company in strengthening its base in those countries and increase its revenue. This has also helped the Company in penetrating the world markets.

The incessant growth of the bottled water industry has been a boon to the Company. As the Company has also started bottled water plants, this growth is encouraging.

The Hispanics are believed to have great purchasing power and are good consumers of soft drinks. The increase of Hispanic population in the United States is encouraging since the consumption will increase.

Due to the fact that the soft drink market is flourishing, many companies have started venturing into this field. Even though many of them are small time players but it does affect the overall performance of the Coca Cola Company.

Apart from these small time players, there are the bigger companies like the PepsiCo, Nestle, Cadbury, etc., who pose a real threat to the Company. Due to the competition, the Company has to keep a nominal profit margin.

In countries where the Coca Cola Company doesn’t have its own bottling plants, it has to rely on its bottling partners. In such cases, the Company doesn’t have much control over the operations.

During recent times, people have become more health conscious and have started avoiding carbonated drinks. In future, there is a threat of the Company’s sales going down. According to an online article, “Don’t drink cola if you want to be healthy. Consuming soft drinks is bad for so many reasons that science cannot even state all the consequences” (Nutrition Researchers, 2007).

Porter’s five forces analysis is based on five points namely, threat of new competitors, the intensity of the competition, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of the customers, and finally the bargaining power of the vendors. It is very important for the Coca Cola Company to do this analysis.

Threat of new competitors

There are already so many players in the soft drink field that more companies entering in this business is not good for the Coca Cola Company. In order to avoid such intrusions, the Company does the following:

The Company does extensive marketing and advertisement campaigns. Billions of dollars are spent on advertising and marketing. “Coca Cola spends $2.8B a year (10% of revenue) on advertising” (Gaudet, 2008). As a result, the brand Coca Cola has entered into the minds of even the layman. It becomes very tough for new companies to replace the brand.

The Company gives good margin to the retailers such that new companies cannot offer more and cannot replace the brand.

The bottling partners of the Coca Cola Company have to sign a contract before starting the business. According to this contract, the bottling partners cannot do the bottling for any other brand.

The intensity of the competition

Apart from Pepsi, there is no other brand that can come in competition with Coca Cola in the global market. Other brands are small players and are limited to local markets.

Threat of substitutes

There can be many substitutes to Coca Cola products such as aerated water, ice tea, beer, fruit juice, cold coffee, etc. But such substitutes need a lot of advertising and marketing to reach the brand image of Coca cola. So as such, there no such threat in the near future.

Bargaining power of customers

The revenue figures are arrived at from the sales and the sales depend on the customers. Since the revenues of the coca cola Company are quite encouraging, it means that the buying power of its customers is good. The major sales of the Company are from the bulk buyers that include super markets, vending machine operators, food chains, restaurants, etc.

Bargaining power of the vendors

The raw materials used in manufacturing the products by the Coca Cola Company include essence, colour, and sweeteners. Packaging is required for packing the products. Since the raw material is purchased in bulk, there is very little profit margin allowed to the vendors.

The vendors of the Coca cola Company don’t have any bargaining power. This is because instead of more profit margins they are being compensated with huge quantity orders. Moreover, there is no dearth of suppliers of raw materials. So if any particular vendor acts smart, there is always another vendor ready to supply the required raw materials.

The most important recommendation that I would like to make is that the Coca Cola Company should try and amend the contracts with its bottling partners. The Company should have the power to intervene in the operations of its bottling partners.

Incidents like the one that happened in India where the Company was accused of mixing hazardous pesticides. Had the Company had the power to intervene, probably this would not have happened.

My second recommendation is in the financial interests of the Company. It is evident that the Company hires renowned personalities for its advertising campaigns. It is for sure that the company might be paying hefty amounts to these renowned people for their services.

Instead of showing such people in the advertisements, the Company should hire people from the masses. This will serve a twin purpose. Firstly, the company will save huge amounts which it may use as cost cutting on its products. Secondly, since the people in the advertisements will be from the masses, it will have a greater appeal.

In concluding, it is evident that the Coca cola Company is one of the top global brands and the leader in non-alcoholic drinks. There are a few things that have been mentioned in the recommendations and if the Company management gets convinced and executes them, I am sure the Coca cola Company will reach unprecedented heights of success.

Adams, M. (2004). Coca-Cola’s Dasani water found to contain alarming levels of cancer-causing chemicals . Web.

Gaudet, B. (2008). Coca Cola . Web.

Nutrition Researchers. (2007). What happens to your body within an hour of drinking a coke . Web.

O’Reilly, L. (2012). Coca Cola . Web.

The Coca Cola Company. Mission, vision and values. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2019, May 16). The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-coca-cola-company-essay/

"The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant." IvyPanda , 16 May 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/the-coca-cola-company-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant'. 16 May.

IvyPanda . 2019. "The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant." May 16, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-coca-cola-company-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant." May 16, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-coca-cola-company-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Beverage Giant." May 16, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-coca-cola-company-essay/.