The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The U.S

This article reassesses U.S. Cold War policy in 1945, with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe. The article considers how the U.S. government proposed to deal with the Soviet Union in the postwar period more generally. The article looks closely at U.S. policy toward Poland and toward Romania and Bulgaria and sets these policies into context in order to determine whether U.S. leaders had “written off” the East European countries by the end of the year, consigning them to a Soviet sphere of influence. The article traces the strategic concept underlying U.S policy and analyzes key aspects of Secretary of State James Byrnes's policy at the July 1945 Potsdam conference and in the October–December 1945 negotiations with the USSR about the occupation of Japan.

The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn't: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s—A Research Note

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Podvig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Military Buildup ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Exchange ◽  
The U.S

The Soviet strategic modernization program of the 1970s was one of the most consequential developments of the Cold War. Deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and the dramatic increase in the number of strategic warheads in the Soviet arsenal created a sense of vulnerability in the United States that was, to a large degree, responsible for the U.S. military buildup of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the escalation of Cold War tensions during that period. U.S. assessments concluded that the Soviet Union was seeking to achieve a capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Estimates of missile accuracy and silo hardness provided by the U.S. intelligence community led many in the United States to conclude that the Soviet Union was building a strategic missile force capable of destroying most U.S. missiles in a counterforce strike and of surviving a subsequent nuclear exchange. Soviet archival documents that have recently become available demonstrate that this conclusion was wrong. The U.S. estimates substantially overestimated the accuracy of the Soviet Union's missiles and the degree of silo reinforcement. As the data demonstrate, the Soviet missile force did not have the capability to launch a successful first strike. Moreover, the data strongly suggest that the Soviet Union never attempted to acquire a first-strike capability, concentrating instead on strategies based on retaliation.

The Battle for Minds in Cold War Afghanistan: Outlining the United States Information Management Regime

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-207
Author(s):  
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Information Management ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Regime ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The essay examines four files from the U.S. National Archives dealing with information management in Afghanistan at the onset of the Cold War. The files describe the structure of information dissemination by the U.S. in Kabul, providing considerable detail about the materials distributed, their varying appeal to local communities and constituencies, and their function in the larger ideological competition with the Soviet Union.

Advertising America: Official Propaganda and the U.S. Promotional Industries, 1946–1950

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-63
Author(s):  
Inger L. Stole
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information Services ◽  
Commercial Media ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The U.S

In the mid-1930s, the notion that the U.S. government would collaborate with the country’s private industries to project official policies and shape public opinion abroad as well as at home would have been controversial and considered a violation of the nation’s democratic values. Yet, by the early 1950s, institutions and practices were in place to make this a regular activity. Much of this ideological work was done surreptitiously, in conjunction with commercial media, and there was little public or news media discussion demanding exposure and accountability for it. What had once been unthinkable had become unquestionable. This monograph chronicles the development of U.S. “information services” in the immediate postwar years. It chronicles the synergetic relationship between government interests, represented by the U.S. State Department, and major American corporations, represented by groups like the Committee for Economic Development and the Advertising Council in portraying the rapidly escalating Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in a manner that would secure economic world dominance for American interests in the postwar era.

scholarly journals Policy Watch: U.S. Economic Policy Toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M Collins
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The U.S

As the Soviet Union and the countries in Eastern Europe take steps towards market economies and democratic political systems, the U.S. and other western countries have been confronted by a range of difficult and important questions about the appropriate economic policy response. What role should government policies play? How much assistance should be given? In what form? What actual policies have been undertaken? Are they a lot or a little? At one extreme, some argue that the United States and other developed countries should finance the rebuilding of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—even though it may cost tens of billions of dollars per year, for at least a decade. At the other end of the spectrum are those who argue that Eastern Europe does not warrant official U.S. assistance, other than for humanitarian purposes, because the situation is just too precarious, because there are worthier uses of scarce government resources, or because any restructuring should be undertaken by the private sector. This paper suggests a framework for answering these questions that considers both the nations of Eastern Europe and recent proposals for direct assistance to the Soviet Union. It draws upon the valuable lessons to be learned from assistance to the developing countries and from historical experience.

The United States and the Kurds: A Cold War Story

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Little
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Iraqi Kurdistan ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Kurdish Issue ◽  
The U.S

In a prolonged quest for independence after 1945, Kurdish nationalists reportedly sought help from U.S. officials who viewed the Kurdish issue through a Cold War prism and who regarded the Kurds as querulous mountain tribes useful primarily in keeping the Soviet Union and its Arab clients off balance. Recently declassified documents shed new light on three key episodes in this story: first, the secret encouragement provided by Washington to Kurds opposed to Iraq's Abdul Karim Qassim, who tilted toward Moscow after seizing power in 1958; second, the covert action launched by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in Iraqi Kurdistan after Saddam Hussein allied himself with the USSR in 1972; and third, the half-hearted U.S. attempts to foment regime change in Iraq in the early 1990s. In each case, the U.S. government stirred up anti-Arab resentments among the Kurds, helped ignite an insurrection, and then pulled the plug when events spiraled out of control. U.S. duplicity plus Kurdish factionalism equaled tragedy in the mountains of Kurdistan.

scholarly journals The Northern Front in the Technological Cold War: Finland and East-West Trade in the 1970s and 1980s

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 150-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Jensen-Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Small Countries ◽  
Important Player ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West ◽  
The U.S

This article shows how the United States and the Soviet Union competed technologically in northern Europe during the final decades of the Cold War. The article highlights the U.S. government's ability to enlist neutral countries, and even vulnerable neutral states like Finland, into Western technology embargoes against the Soviet Union. Yet, the Finnish case also demonstrates that determined small countries and their companies were not simply helpless actors and could protect their political and commercial interests. Finland exported high-technology goods such as electronics and telecommunications equipment to the Soviet Union, even though Finland itself was dependent on technology flows from the United States. In fact, the Finns managed to get the best of both worlds: their country was an important player in East-West trade, but at the same time it was able to modernize its economy and strengthen trading links with the U.S.-led Western alliance.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby C. Rider
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter captures in brief the strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the years following World War II. In particular it looks at the Olympic Games, indicating that, for U.S. officials, the war would also largely be fought in the trenches of public opinion. And in order to win what has so frequently been called a “battle for hearts and minds,” U.S. policymakers increasingly deployed techniques of persuasion that they referred to as propaganda or psychological warfare, which manifested in the way the U.S. employed culture against the Soviet Union—among them, sports. The chapter goes on to emphasize the significance of sports and the Olympics in understanding a facet of these Cold War relations, and lays out further contextual details as well as the thematic groundwork for the rest of this volume.

Helsinki, Human Rights, and the Gorbachev Style

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 113-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Korey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Point ◽  
Limited Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The U.S

Human rights is one of three issues addressed by the Helsinki Accord, alongside security and trade matters. In the mid-seventies the accord was greeted with enthusiasm by the Soviet Union, which saw it as a means to reduce the U.S. presence in Europe. The United States, which played a limited role in drafting the accord, feared it might result in a betrayal of the various nationalities of Eastern Europe by its tacit acceptance of Soviet territorial arrangements. Over the next ten years the human rights section of the accord would become a central point of contention between the superpowers. Korey traces the evolution of the dispute and discusses Gorbachev's uneven attempts to improve the Soviet Union's recognition of human rights.

scholarly journals The Tragedy of American Diplomacy? Rethinking the Marshall Plan

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cox ◽  
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
Cooperative Relationship ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Recovery Program

Two British scholars reassess what they view as the decisive episode in the early Cold War, the Marshall Plan. Far from seeing the Plan as a mere act of generosity by the United States, they argue that it was an integral part of an increasingly aggressive U.S. posture toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was still seeking a cooperative relationship with the United States, but the U.S. decision to establish a European Recovery Program (ERP) without a sincere intention of including the Soviet Union posed a threat to Soviet security interests. Josif Stalin wanted to prevent the United States from luring the East European countries away from the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and into the Western sphere. Although Stalin was reluctant to abandon his bid for close cooperation with the West, the Marshall Plan left him with little choice. As the ERP progressed, Stalin drastically tightened his hold over Eastern Europe and imposed Soviet-style systems on the countries in the region. The Marshall Plan thus had the “tragic” effect of creating a long-term divide in Europe that consigned tens of millions of people to life under tyranny.

United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Byrnes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control

The signing in Helsinki of the agreement on security and cooperation in Europe has led to bitter criticism of President Ford and of the policy under which the United States drifted into recognizing Soviet acquisition of 114,000 square miles of Finnish, Polish, German, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territory, apparently sanctified as well Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and recognized the “permanent” division of Europe. In return for endorsing these Soviet conquests, the Western states received some vague promises that the Soviet Union and the East European states would take a “positive and humanitarian attitude” towards applications from their citizens to rejoin their families in the West, would “facilitate the improvement of the dissemination” of publications from other countries, would provide three weeks' notice of large military maneuvers within 156 miles of frontiers, and assured that every European state would be free from “external influence.” All these phrases seem small recompense for such great concessions and from two years of negotiation by 492 diplomats, especially when hope in Western Europe in particular had been high for an end to jamming, censorship, and control over travel. Critics noted in particular that the formal summit agreement awarded the Soviet Union prizes it had sought since 1954, while the parallel discussion of reducing military forces in Eastern and Western Europe, in which the Soviet Union and its associates maintain immense superiorities, has long been stalled. Indeed, now that the West no longer has the lever of the Geneva talks, it has little pressure to persuade the Soviet Union to discuss mutual balanced force reductions. Many now fear that the Soviet Union will press instead for a collective security agreement, which would have no meaning, but which would totally demolish NATO, while leaving the Soviets on the commanding military heights in Eastern Europe.

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