Which communist nation became a rival

At Potsdam, the U. Truman, who relied on a set of advisers who took a harder line toward Moscow than his predecessor Franklin Roosevelt. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in part a calculated effort on the part of Truman to intimidate the Soviet Union, limiting its influence in postwar Asia.

Indeed, the bombings fueled Soviet distrust of the U. The U. Determined to avoid another economic catastrophe like that of the s, U. This Europe required a healthy Germany at its center. The postwar U. It also required new international agencies: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, created to ensure an open, capitalist, international economy. The Soviet Union opted not to take part.

The American vision of the postwar world conflicted with the goals of Soviet leaders, who were also motivated to shape postwar Europe. Since , the Soviet Union placed a high priority on its own security and internal development. During and immediately after the war, the Soviet Union annexed several Eastern European countries as satellite states, a move viewed as expansionist and aggressive by Western powers.

Many of these were originally countries effectively ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, before Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In February , U. Kennan delivered a memo from his post in Moscow which came to be known as the Long Telegram.

It argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by both traditional Russian imperialism and Marxist ideology, which advocated the expansion of socialism and the toppling of capitalist regimes. That September, the Soviets produced the Novikov Telegram. This telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the U. In response to perceived western aggression, in September the Soviets created Cominform to enforce orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in the Eastern Bloc.

The Cold War had begun. The Suez Crisis suggested that Britain, financially weakened by two world wars, could no longer pursue its foreign policy objectives on an equal footing with the new superpowers without sacrificing convertibility of its reserve currency as a central goal of policy.

Despite attempts to create multinational coalitions or legislative bodies such as the United Nations , it became increasingly clear that the U. The two countries opposed each other ideologically, politically, militarily, and economically. The Soviet Union promoted the ideology of communism, characterized by a planned economy and a one-party state. In contrast, the U. The division of the world along U. These alliances implied that these two nations were part of a world organized into a bipolar balance of power, in contrast with a previously multi-polar world.

In Asia, the Red Army overran Manchuria in the last month of the war and went on to occupy the large swath of Korean territory north of the 38 th parallel. The Eastern European territories liberated from the Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them into satellite states.

The Soviet-style regimes that arose in the satellite states not only reproduced Soviet command economies, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition. In Allied-occupied Germany, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control. Soviet occupation of Eastern bloc states was viewed with suspicion by Western powers, as they saw this occupation as a sign of Soviet willingness to use aggression to spread the ideology of communism.

In early , Britain, France and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods, and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. In June , in accordance with the Truman Doctrine, the United States enacted the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union.

The plan also stated that European prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery. These would become the main bureaucracies for U. Stalin opposed the Marshall Plan. He had built up the Eastern Bloc protective belt of Soviet controlled nations on his Western border and wanted to maintain this buffer zone of states and a weakened Germany under Soviet control. Fearing American political, cultural, and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbade Soviet Eastern bloc countries from accepting Marshall Plan aid.

Stalin believed that economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that the U.

As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany in early , representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan, they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased.

Those that have, including the U. Putin, Assad, Kim Jong-un will have more room to maneuver. Contact us at letters time. By Madeline Roache. Related Stories. Already a print subscriber? Top image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, Western Allied leaders did not forget the initial nonaggression pact made between Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler in The subsequent race for superior military power sparked an era of espionage, wars over the spread of communism , and a build-up of nuclear arms that threatened global annihilation.

While President Roosevelt hoped to see a lasting peace emerge in the postwar world order, relations with the Soviet Union complicated that vision. Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution in , in which the Russian monarchy fell to Soviet forces, the spread of communism beyond Russia remained a persistent fear throughout the twentieth century. This fear was not unfounded, as Soviet leaders actively sought to infiltrate or target nations to advance the global influence of the USSR.

By , the United States adopted a policy of containment to restrict Soviet global power. Outlined in a speech delivered to Congress, what became the Truman Doctrine was an open promise of US support to any country threatened by the Soviet Union. Mutual efforts to undermine their foe pushed the United States and the Soviet governments to plant spies within both the USSR and the United States to subvert policy, spy on intelligence, and seek out ways to hinder any effort at growing global power.

While popular images of Cold War-era spies feature high-stakes missions, assassinations, and hidden recording devices that call to mind the world of characters like James Bond, these images were pulled from real-life acts of espionage.

Many such gadgets, including poisoned pellets hidden in umbrellas or guns disguised as tubes of lipstick, emerged in the s and s. Check out a lesson plan based on this article: Twitter Cold War.

The United States military begins preparing for war against Russia again, unveiling plans to quadruple military spending in the region and deploy more heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and other equipment.

Russian warplanes fly through the English Channel. Russia transfers new missiles to Kaliningrad. NATO countries station new air forces in the Baltic states. Many observers have noted a return to some of the conditions of the Cold War that defined international politics between and Some have even proclaimed the start of a new Cold War between East and West.

A few believe the new tensions may lead beyond a new Cold War, to a new world war. The blame for these tensions is difficult to assign. Some point to Russia for reacting to the fall of its ally Yanukovich in Ukraine by sparking a civil war in eastern Ukraine, designed to weaken the new Western-leaning government of Petro Poroshenko below, left and pull Ukraine back firmly into the Russian orbit. As Russia has emerged from the chaos and economic troubles that characterized the initial years after the fall of the Soviet Union , it has become more assertive on its borders and less willing to cooperate with other European states.

Under Putin , the Russian state has become more centralized and autocratic. They have moved their sphere of influence east in spite of Russian objections, raising long-standing Russian fears of encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence.

NATO itself has become more willing to take an active role in areas outside its normal scope, moving from a deterrent protecting Western Europe to operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Yet looking at the history of NATO shows that since its origins in the alliance has often changed its mission, its strategy, and even its geographic scope of membership and activity.

The most dramatic shift came at the end of the Cold War, when the alliance found it needed to justify its existence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Starting with the formation of NATO itself, changes were often driven by political rather than military or strategic factors. The alliance has always needed to keep an eye on its internal political cohesion, to ensure that it speaks with one voice to the extent possible.

Disagreements over the future of Germany, the growing division of Europe, and increasing ideological competition created an adversarial relationship between the Soviets and the Western allies.

As the Soviets gained control over the countries of Eastern Europe that they occupied during the war, the Western allies reacted by tying Western Europe more closely together, including the western portion of Germany.

But the political and economic situations in Western Europe were still unstable and some feared communist-led governments could take power in countries like Italy and France.

These fears prompted leaders in Western countries, including the United States, to seek new ways to strengthen anti-communist governments. Much of this support was economic, through the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction. Some of the support was military, as promised by the so-called Truman Doctrine.

President Harry Truman articulated this position to the nation as he announced American military assistance to the Greek and Turkish governments fighting communist-supported guerillas.

But the threat remained. In February , when communists in Czechoslovakia staged a coup and evicted non-communists from the government, it appeared that the continuing instability in Europe might facilitate the further spread of Soviet communism.

In the wake of the Czechoslovakian coup, leaders in Western Europe began to look for ways to solidify the region against this communist threat.