Rise of the Superpowers :: Superpowers International Affairs War Essays

Rise of the Super provides It is often wondered how the superpowers achieved their position ofdominance. It seems that the maturing of the two superpowers, Russiaand the United States, can be traced to World War II. To be asuperpower, a nation call for to have a strong economy, an overpoweringmilitary, immense international political power and, related to this, astrong national ideology. It was this war, and its results, that causedeach of these superpowers to experience such a preponderance of power. Before the war, both nations were fit to be described as great powers, yet it would be erroneous to say that they were superpowers at thatpoint. To assure how the second World War impacted these nations sogreatly, we must examine the causes of the war. The United Statesgained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economicalpower. In the years before the war, America was the worlds largestproducer. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing hisfive year plan s to modernise the Soviet economy. From thesesituations, similar hostile policies resulted from widely divergentorigins. Roosevelts isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domesticdesire to remain neutral in either international conflicts. It commonlywidely believed that Americans entered the prototypic World War simply inorder to save industrys capitalist investments in Europe. Whether thisis the case or not, Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherentlyisolationist Congress, only expanding its horizons after the bombing ofPearl Harbour. He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935, making it illegalfor the United States to ship arms to the belligerents of any conflict. The act also stated that belligerents could buy only non-armaments fromthe US, and even these were only to be bought with cash. In contrast, Stalin was by necessity interested in European affairs, butonly to the point of concern to the USSR. Russian foreign policy wasfundamentally Leninist in its concern to ke ep the USSR out of war. Stalin wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernise the countrysindustry. The Soviet Union was committed to collective action forpeace, as long as that commitment did not mean that the Soviet Unionwould school a brunt of a Nazi attack as a result. Examples of this canbe seen in the Soviet Unions attempts to achieve a mutual assistance treaty with Britain and France. These treaties, however, were designedmore to create security for the West, as opposed to keeping all threesignatories from harm. At the same time, Stalin was attempting to