Rise Of Superpowers After WWII Essay Example For Students

Rise Of Superpowers After WWII Essay It is often wondered how the superpowers achieved their position of dominance. It seems that the maturing of the two superpowers, Russia and the United States, can be traced to World War II. To be asuperpower, a nation needs to have a strong economy, an overpoweringmilitary, immense international political power and, related to this, a strong national ideology. It was this war, and its results, that caused each of these superpowers to experience such a preponderance of power. Before the war, both nations were fit to be described as great powers, but it would be erroneous to say that they were superpowers at that point.To underezd how the second World War impacted these nations sogreatly, we must examine the causes of the war. The United Statesgained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economicpower. In the years before the war, America was the worlds largestproducer. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his?five year plans to modernise the Soviet econ omy. From thesesituations, similar foreign policies resulted from widely divergentorigins. Roosevelts isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic desire to remain neutral in any international conflicts. It commonly widely believed that Americans entered the first World War simply in order to save industrys capitalist investments in Europe. Whether this is the case or not, Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherently isolationist Congress, only expanding its horizons after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935, making it illegal for the United States to ship arms to the belligerents of any conflict. The act also stated that belligerents could buy only non-armaments from the US, and even these were only to be bought with cash. In contrast, Stalin was by necessity interested in European affairs, but only to the point of concern to the USSR. Russian foreign policy was fundamentally Leninist in its concern to keep the USSR out of war. Stalin w anted to consolidate Communist power and modernise the countrys industry. The Soviet Union was committed to collective action for peace, as long as that commitment did not mean that the Soviet Union would take a brunt of a Nazi attack as a result. Examples of this can be seen in the Soviet Unions attempts to achieve a mutual assiezce treaty with Britain and France. These treaties, however, were designed more to create security for the West, as opposed to keeping all three signatories from harm.At the same time, Stalin was attempting to polarise both the Anglo-French, and the Axis powers against each other. The important result of this was the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, which partitioned Poland, and allowed Hitler to start the war. Another side-effect of his policy of playing both sides was that it caused incredible distrust towards the Soviets from the Western powers after 1940. This was due in part to the fact that Stalin made several demands for both influence in the Dardane lles, and for Bulgaria to be recognised as a Soviet dependant. The seeds of superpowerdom lie here however, in the late thirties. R.J. Overy has written that ?stability in Europe might have been achieved through the existence of powers so strong that they could impose their will on the whole of the international system, as has been the case since 1945?.?At the time, there was no power in the world that could achieve such a feat. Britain and France were in imperial decline, and more concerned about colonial economics than the stability of Europe. Both imperial powers assumed that empire-building would necessarily be an inevitable feature of the world system.German aggression could have been stifled early had the imperial powers had acted in concert. The memories of World War One however, were too powerful, and the general public would not condone a military solution at that point. The aggression of Germany, and to a lesser extent that of Italy, can be explained by this decline of imp erial power. They were simply attempting to fill the power vacuum in Europe that Britain and France unwittingly left. After the economic crisis of the 1930s, Britain and France lost much of their former international ezdingas the world markets plummeted; so did their relative power. The two nations were determined to maintain their status as great powers however, without relying on the US or the USSR for support of any kind.They went to war only because further appeasement would have only served to remove from them their little remaining world ezding and prestige. The creation of a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany can be viewed as an example of imperial decline as well. Stalin explained the fact that he reached a rapprochement with Germany, and not one with Great Britain by stating that ?the USSR and Germany had wanted to change the old equilibrium? England and France wanted to preserve it. Germany also wanted to make a change in the equilibrium, and this com mon desire to get rid of the old equilibrium had created the basisfor the rapprochement with Germany.?The common desire of many of the great European powers for a change in the world state system meant that either a massive war would have to be fought; or that one of the great powers would need to attempt to make the leap to superpower status without reaping the advantages such a conflict could give to the power making the attempt. Such benefits as wartime economic gains, vastly increased internal markets from conquered territory, and increased access to resources and the means of industrial production would help fuel any nations drive for superpowerdom.One of two ways war could have been avoided was for the United States or Russia to have taken powerful and vigorous action against Germany in 1939. Robert A. Divine, holds that ?superpowerdom gives a nation the framework by which a nation is able to extend globally the reach of its power and influence.?This can be seen especially as the ability to make other nations (especially in the Third World) act in ways that the superpower prefers, even if this is not in the weaker nations self interest. The question must then be raised, were the United States and Russia superpowers even then, could coercive, unilateral actions taken by them have had such significant ramifications for the international order? It must be concluded that, while they were not yet superpowers, they certainly were great powers, with the incredible amount of influence that accompanies such status. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union possessed the international framework necessary to be a super power at this time. It is likely that frameworks similar to Nato or the Warsaw Pact could have been developed, but such infrastructures would have necessarily been on a much smaller scale, and without influence as the proposed Anglo-American (English speaking world) pact was. At this time, neither the United States nor Russia had developed the o verwhelming advantages that they possessed at the end of the war. There are several factors that allowed them to become superpowers: apreponderance of military force, growing economies, and the creation of ideology-backed blocs of power. The United States, it seems, did not become a superpower by accident. Indeed, Roosevelt had a definite European policy that was designed from the start to secure a leading role for the United States. The US non-policy which ignored Eastern Europe in the late thirties and forties, while strongly supported domestically, was another means to Roosevelts plans to achieve US world supremacy. After the war, Roosevelt perceived that the way to dominate worldaffairs was to reduce Europes international role (vis-?-vis the United States, as the safest way of preventing future world conflict), the creation of a permanent superpower rivalry with the USSR to ensure world stability.Roosevelt sought to reduce Europes geopolitical role by ensuring the fragmentation of the continent into small, relatively powerless, and ethnically homogenous states. When viewed in light of these goals Roosevelt appears very similar to Stalin who, in Churchills words, ?Wanted a Europe composed of little states, disjointed, separate, and weak.?Roosevelt was certain that World War Two would destroy continental Europe as a military and economic force, removing Germany and France from the stage of world powers. This would leave the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR as the last remaining European world powers. The Happiness of Others Essay?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 ezdard 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 Britains colonies. American leadership of the international economythanks to theinstitutions created at Bretton Woods in 1944, its strong backing forEuropean 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 worlds 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, th e 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. BibliographyAga-Rossi, Elena. ?Roosevelts European Policy and the Origins of theCold 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 andAbroad 170 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1994. Morrison, Samuel Elliot. The Two-Ocean War. Boston, MA: AtlanticLittle, Brown, 1963. Overy, R.J. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: LongmanInc, 1987. Ovyany Igor. The Origins of World War Two. Moscow: Novosti PressAgency Publishing House, 1989. Smith, Tony. The United States and the Global Struggle for Democracy,in Americas Mission: The United States and Democracy in the TwentiethCentury (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995) 1995Strik-Strikfeldt, Wilfried. Against Stalin and Hitler. Bungay,Suffolk: Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), 1970.End Notes1. Overy R.J. The Origins of the Second World War (Longman: NewYork) 1987 p.7 Overy pp. 88-89 2. Overy p .8 3. Ovsyany, Igor. The Origins of World War Two (Novosti PressAgency: 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 inAmerican History, Sept 93, vol 21. p. 528. 10. Aga-Rossi, Elena. Roosevelts European Policy and theOrigins 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 forDemocracy, in Americas Mission: TheUnited States and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (New York:Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995) 1995 24. Dukes, Paul. The Last Great Game: Events, Conjectures,Structures (Pinter Publishers: London) 1989p. 107. 25. Le Ferber, Walter. The American Age: US Foreign Policy atHome 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 forDemocracy, in Americas Mission: TheUnited States and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (New York:Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995) 1995