complete Sovietization of their societies, and Roosevelt was blind to
the internal logic of the Soviet system which in effect required this.
Roosevelt believed that the dissolution of Comintern in
1943, along with the defeat of Trotsky, meant that Stalin was looking
to move the Soviet Union westward in its political alignment. While
Stalin might have been primarily concerned with socialism in one
country, communist revolution was a paramount, if deferred policy
goal. Roosevelt s desire for a favourable post-war settlement appears
to be naive at first glance. The post war plan that he had created
was dependant upon the creation of an open market economy, and the
prevailing nature of the dollar. He was convinced that the Soviet
Union would move westward and abandon its totalitarian political
system along with its policy of closed and internal markets. When
seen from such a perspective, Roosevelt s agreement to let the Soviet
Union dominate half of Europe does not seem as ludicrous. His
fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Soviet state can be
forgiven, once it has been allowed that an apparently peaceful nature
was apparent at the time, and that it had existed for a relatively
short time. While the United States wanted to eschew isolationism,
and set and example of international co-operation in a world ripe for
United States leadership, the Soviet Union was organising its ideals
around the vision of a continuing struggle between two fundamentally
antagonistic ideologies.
The decisive period of the century, so far as the eventual fate
of democracy was concerned, came with the defeat of fascism in 1945
and the American-sponsored conversion of Germany and Japan to
democracy and a much greater degree of economic liberalism . Such
was the result of America attempting to spread its ideology to the
rest of the world. The United States believed that the world at
large, especially the Third World, would be attracted to the political
views of the West if it could be shown that democracy and free trade
provided the citizens of a nation with a higher standard of living.
As United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, To the extent
that we are able to manage our domestic affairs successfully, we shall
win converts to our creed in every land. It has been seen that
Roosevelt and his administration thought that this appeal for converts
would extend into the Soviet sphere of influence, and even to the
Kremlin itself. The American ideology of democracy is not complete
without the accompanying necessity of open markets.
America has tried to achieve an open world economy for over a
century. From the attempts to keep the open door policy in China to
Article VII of the Lend-Lease act, free trade has been seen as central
to American security. The United States, in 1939, forced Great
Britain to begin to move away from its imperial economic system.
Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State, was extremely tough with Great
Britain on this point. He used Article VII of the Lend-Lease, which
demanded that Britain not create any more colonial economic systems
after the war. Churchill fought this measure bitterly, realising that
it would mean the effective end of the British Empire, as well as
meaning that Great Britain would no longer be able to compete
economically with the United States. However, Churchill did eventually
agree to it, realising that without the help of the United States, he
would lose much more than Great Britain s colonies.
American leadership of the international economy–thanks to the
institutions created at Bretton Woods in 1944, its strong backing for
European integration with the Marshall Plan in 1947 and support for
the Schuman Plan thereafter (both dependent in good measure on
American power) created the economic, cultural, military, and
political momentum that enabled liberal democracy to flourish in
competition with Soviet communism.
It was the adoption of the Marshall Plan that allowed Western
Europe to make its quick economic recovery from the ashes of World War
II. The seeds of the massive expansion of the military-industrial
complex of the early fifties are also to be found in the post war
recovery. Feeling threatened by the massive amount of aid the United
States was giving Western Europe, the Soviet Union responded with its
form of economic aid to its satellite counties. This rivalry led to
the Western fear of Soviet domination, and was one of the precursors
to the arms-race of the Cold War.
The foundation for the eventual rise of the Superpowers is
clearly found in the years leading up to and during World War II. The
possibility of the existence of superpowers arose from the imperial
decline of Great Britain and France, and the power vacuum that this
decline created in Europe. Germany and Italy tried to fill this hole
while Britain and France were more concerned with their colonial
empires. The United States and the Soviet Union ended the war with
vast advantages in military strength. At the end of the war, the
United States was in the singular position of having the world s
largest and strongest economy. This allowed them to fill the power
gap left in Europe by the declining imperial powers.
Does this, however, make them Superpowers? With the strong
ideologies that they both possessed, and the ways in which they
attempted to diffuse this ideology through out the world after the
war, it seems that it would. The question of Europe having been
settled for the most part, the two superpowers rushed to fill the
power vacuum left by Japan in Asia. It is this, the global dimension
of their political, military and economic presence that makes the
United States and the USSR superpowers. It was the rapid expansion of
the national and international structures of the Soviet Union and the
United States during the war that allowed them to assume their roles
as superpowers.
—
Bibliography
Aga-Rossi, Elena. Roosevelt s European Policy and the Origins of the
Cold War Telos. Issue 96, Summer 93: pp.65-86.
Divine, Robert A. The Cold War as History Reviews in American
History.
Issue 3, vol. 21, Sept 93: 26-32.
Dukes, Paul. The Last Great Game: Events, Conjectures, Structures.
London: Pinter Publishers, 1989
Le Ferber, Walter. The American Age: US Foreign Policy at Home and
Abroad 170 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1994.
Morrison, Samuel Elliot. The Two-Ocean War. Boston, MA: Atlantic
Little, Brown, 1963.
Overy, R.J. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: Longman
Inc, 1987.
Ovyany Igor. The Origins of World War Two. Moscow: Novosti Press
Agency Publishing House, 1989.
Smith, Tony. “The United States and the Global Struggle for
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[http://epn.org/tcf/xxstru 03.html.] 1995
Strik-Strikfeldt, Wilfried. Against Stalin and Hitler. Bungay,
Suffolk: Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), 1970.
—
End Notes
1. Overy R.J. The Origins of the Second World War (Longman: New
York) 1987 p.7 Overy pp. 88-89
2. Overy p .8
3. Ovsyany, Igor. The Origins of World War Two (Novosti Press
Agency: Moscow) 1989 pp. 31-34.
4. Overy p. 70
5. Overy p. 85
6. Overy p. 89
7. Overy p. 91
8. Aga-Rossi p. 81
9. Divine, Robert A. “The Cold War as History” Reviews in
American History, Sept 93, vol 21. p. 528.
10. Aga-Rossi, Elena. “Roosevelt’s European Policy and the
Origins of the Cold War” Telos Summer 93.
Issue 96 pp. 65-66
11. Aga-Rossi p. 66
12. Aga-Rossi p. 69
13. Aga-Rossi p. 72
14. Aga-Rossi p. 73
15. Aga-Rossi p. 77
16. Aga-Rossi p. 70
17. Divine p. 528
18. Aga-Rossi p. 80
19. Aga-Rossi p. 68
20. Aga-Rossi pp. 74-75
21. Aga-Rossi p. 79.
22. Aga-Rossi p. 83.
23. Tony Smith, “The United States and the Global Struggle for
Democracy,” in America’s Mission: The
United States and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995)
[http://epn.org/tcf/xxstru 03.html.] 1995
24. Dukes, Paul. The Last Great Game: Events, Conjectures,
Structures (Pinter Publishers: London) 1989
p. 107.
25. Le Ferber, Walter. The American Age: US Foreign Policy at
Home and Abroad 170 to the Present.
(W.W. Norton Company: New York) 1994 p. 417-418.
26. Tony Smith, “The United States and the Global Struggle for
Democracy,” in America’s Mission: The
United States and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995)
[http://epn.org/tcf/xxstru 03.html.] 1995