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The Second World War gave rise to a multitude of new ideas which changed the course of modern society, the idea which has had the greatest impact on the world as a whole is the concept of the superpower nation. To be a superpower, a nation needs to have a strong economy, an overpowering military, immense international political power, and related to this, a strong national ideology. It was this war ( WWII), and its results that spawned the formation of superpowers and lead them to experience such a preponderance of power. To understand how the Second World War impacted birth of superpowers it is important to first understand and examine the causes of the war.
The United States gained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economic power and as a heavily industrialized nation. In the years preceding the war and the Great Depression, America was the world's largest producer and arguably had the strongest and most stable economy. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his 'five year plans' to modernize the Soviet economy. From these situations, similar foreign policies resulted from widely divergent origins.
Roosevelt's isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic desire to remain neutral in any international conflicts. It was widely believed that America entered the First World War simply in order to save its industry's 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 Harbor. He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935, making it illegal for the United States to ship arms to the belligerent governments of any conflict.
The act also stated that belligerent nations 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 wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernize the country's 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 assistance 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 polarize 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 Dardanelles, and for Bulgaria to be recognized as a Soviet dependant. The seeds of superpower dom lie here however, in the late thirties.
R. J. Over 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 imperial power.
They were simply attempting to fill the power vacuum in Europe that Britain and France unwittingly left. After the economic crisis of the 1930 's, Britain and France lost much of their former international standing-as 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 standing 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 common desire to get rid of the old equilibrium had created the basis for 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 nation's drive for superpower dom. 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 superpower dom 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 nation's self interest. 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 Roosevelt's plans to achieve US world supremacy. After the war, Roosevelt perceived that the way to dominate world affairs was to reduce Europe's international role the creation of a permanent superpower rivalry with the USSR to ensure world stability.
Roosevelt sought to reduce Europe's 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 Churchill's 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. Some might question why Roosevelt did not plot the fall of the British Empire in much the same way as he did the French by presenting General Eisenhower with control of the country under the facade of restoring civil order. A cynical answer to this is that Roosevelt understood that the United States was not powerful enough to check the Soviet Union's power in Europe by itself. It made sense that because the United States and Britain are cultural cousins, the most commodious solution would be to continue the tradition of friendliness, set out in the Atlantic Charter earlier.
As far as economic or military competition, Roosevelt knew that if he could open the British Empire to free trade it would not be able to effectively compete with the United States. This is because an imperial paradigm allows one to sell goods in a projectionist manner, finding markets within the Empire. This allows a nation to have restrictive tariffs on imports, which precludes foreign competition. A nation, that is primarily concerned with finding markets on the other hand, is in a much better position for global economic expansion, as it is in its interest to pursue free trade.
Roosevelt also underestimated the power of the Russian ideology. He believed that the Russians would back away from communism for the sake of greater stability and union with the West. Roosevelt saw the Soviet Union as a country like any other, except for her preoccupation with security (the safety corridor in Eastern Europe that Stalin insisted on), but he thought that the cultural and historical background of...
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