The U.S. and Soviet Response to Britain’s Decline

Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson

Building on the preceding chapter, Chapter 3 analyzes U.S. and Soviet responses to the decline of the United Kingdom. This portion of the book shows that the United States and Soviet Union each adopted supportive strategies towards Britain in 1945-1947, calculating that each could use Great Britain to compete against the other. However, once Britain decisively aligned with the United States after mid-1947, U.S. and Soviet efforts diverged: U.S. strategy remained highly supportive, whereas the Soviet Union turned toward predation. These results provide strong evidence in support of the argument, matching predictions derived from predation theory (see Chapter 3) while disconfirming the course of events expected by alternative arguments.

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Matz

This article provides an in-depth examination of the U.S. government's role in the case of Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish envoy who died mysteriously in the Soviet Union after being arrested by Soviet occupation forces at the end of World War II for unknown reasons. The article recounts how U.S. officials, particularly the diplomat Herschel V. Johnson, tried to alleviate the plight of Hungarian Jews after German forces occupied Hungary in 1944. A key part of this policy was their effort to work with Sweden in enlisting Wallenberg's help. The U.S.-Swedish relationship was never particularly close, and the mistrust that officials in each country felt toward the other side impeded any coordinated action. The article discusses the bureaucratic impediments on the U.S. side and highlights some of the obstacles that Johnson strove to overcome. The article builds on the report produced by the Eliasson Commission documenting the Swedish government's handling of the Wallenberg case. Although the Swedish authorities bore by far the greatest amount of blame for doing nothing in the face of Soviet stonewalling, Matz argues that U.S. officials also made significant misjudgments that may have exacerbated the situation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Ariel Davis

Since the end of World War II, the United States has been a leading proponent of liberal internationalism and Western democratic values around the world. Modern historians generally agree that the post-war order, which produced multi-national institutions and promoted democracy, free trade, and peace, was largely shaped by the United States and the other two Allied powers, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. This paper explains how the Tehran and Yalta Conferences served as early examples of President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for international cooperation and American global leadership. Specifically, this essay analyzes how Roosevelt used these conferences to unite the other Allied powers in an effort to end World War II and establish the foundations for the liberal international post war order. To demonstrate the significance of these conferences and their role in the development of the liberal post-war order, conference minutes between the leaders of the Allied powers and their respective foreign policy experts are analyzed. Academic writings from military and international historians are also used to evaluate the execution and outcomes of the agreements reached during these conferences.


2020 ◽  
pp. 114-139
Author(s):  
David F. Schmitz

With the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese taking all of Indochina, Roosevelt prepared the country for war and began to implement his grand strategy for victory. The president implemented his expansive vision of the Monroe Doctrine to allow naval escorts of lend-lease supplies across the North Atlantic, extended American aid to Russia, creating the Grand Alliance of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, and joined with London in enumerating Western war aims through the adoption of the Atlantic Charter. At the same time, he extended the economic embargo against Japan to include oil, bringing the final break in relations with Tokyo. By the fall 1941, the U.S. Navy was engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic with German submarines. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 brought the United States directly into World War II.


Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson

Chapters 2 and 3 examine the U.S. and Soviet response to the decline of the United Kingdom in the mid-to-late 1940s. Chapter 2 first reviews the course of the United Kingdom’s decline in the early post-war period, and details efforts by the United States and Soviet Union to assess Britain’s changing relative position. Subsequently, it discusses the existing literature on U.S. and Soviet policy toward Great Britain, and relates this work to the alternative arguments discussion in the Introduction. From there, it uses extensive archival research to derive predictions of U.S. and Soviet strategy in light of predation theory. These predictions are evaluated against the alternative arguments in Chapter 3.


1989 ◽  
Vol 26 (02) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
R. A. Dick ◽  
J. E. Laframboise

This paper utilizes available data on existing icebreaking ships to compile a review of the design features that influence ship performance. The data were extracted from a recently completed review of the state of the art of Arctic ship technology and include icebreaking ships from Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, and West Germany. It is the aim of this paper to offer guidance in the initial stages of icebreaker design and thereby give confidence to the designer in the selection of dimensions, hull shape and propulsion.


1979 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 297-298
Author(s):  
C. T. Bolton

A coordinated campaign of radio, optical, and x-ray observations of the bright x-ray source Cygnus X-1 took place August 7–21, 1977 under sponsorship of Commission 42 of the International Astronomical Union. Radio flux measurements, optical spectra, photometry, and polarimetry were obtained during this period by ten groups from Canada, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The x-ray flux was monitored continuously by the SAS-3 satellite between August 11.0 and 17.0.


2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-36
Author(s):  
William I. Hitchcock

Three scholars offer separate responses to the article by Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg. The responses include some common points, but they diverge sharply in other respects. The first two respondents generally agree with the conclusions reached by Creswell and Trachtenberg, but one of them believes that the article goes too far (in its contention that France's anxiety about the Soviet Union eclipsed its concerns about Germany), whereas the other argues that the article does not go far enough in showing how the United States adapted its policy to accommodate French leaders. The second respondent also questions whether Creswell and Trachtenberg have added anything new to the latest “revisionist” works on French-German relations in the first decade of Cold War. The third respondent, unlike the first two, rejects the main thrust of the article by Creswell and Trachtenberg and seeks to defend the traditional view that France was very reluctant to go along with U.S. and British policies on the German question. This respondent also questions whether Creswell and Trachtenberg have focused on the most appropriate sources of evidence.


Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 8-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester R. Brown

Each day two 20,000-ton freighters loaded with grain leave the United States for the Soviet Union. This flow of grain between two major adversaries is influenced by economic considerations such as the size of the Soviet grain deficit, the U.S. capacity to supply, and the Soviet ability to pay. Political considerations include the risk to both trading partners of such a heavy interdependence, whether as supplier or market.Never before has a country dominated the world grain trade as the United States does today. Its 55 per cent share of world grain exports in 1981 easily overshadows Saudi Arabia's 24 per cent share of world oil exports in 1978. And while the amount of oil traded internationally has been falling since 1979, grain shipments are continuing to grow.


Polar Record ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 5 (39) ◽  
pp. 427-436 ◽  

The Three-Power Conference on Aid to Russia between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union opened in Moscow on 29 September 1941. The British and American missions, headed respectively by Lord Beaverbrook and Averill Harriman, travelled in H.M.S. London which left Scapa Flow on 22 September and arrived at Arkhangel'sk five days later.


1965 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 633-637
Author(s):  
Homer C. Sherman ◽  
Robert E. Belding

Authorities have long agreed that the textbook is the most indispensable teaching instrument used in the classrooms of both the Soviet Union and the United States. Therefore, if the arithmetic program of one nation is superior to that of the other, a comparison of the texts used in each nation may well reveal some important reasons for the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness, of each nation's arithmetic program.


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