WWII Rise of the Superpowers
WWII - Rise of the SuperpowersRise of the Superpowers (USA & USSR) from events prior to and during
WWII
World War II: the process of superpowerdom
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 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, 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 understand how the second World War impacted these nations so
greatly, we must examine the causes of the war. The United States
gained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economic
power. In the years before the war, America was the world’s largest
producer. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his
‘five year plans’ to modernise 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 commonly
widely believed that Americans entered the first World War simply in
order to save 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 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 wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernise 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
polarise both the Anglo-French, and the Axis powers against each other.
The important result of this...
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