TOPICS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

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The Cold War originated in an accumulation of tensions and conflicting interests between the Soviet Union and the Western powers which developed in the first few years after the end of World War II and which ripened into permanent hostility in the years 1946-1947. Hitler's aggression forced them into a wartime alliance of convenience which worked effectively to defeat fascism and Japanese militarism but which left power vacuums in both Europe and Asia which were largely filled by the new victorious superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

As the Red Army swept West, the Russians installed in Eastern Europe regimes friendly to it, and eventually eliminated non-communist opposition. Despite collaboration between Allied and Soviet military leaders in the closing phases of the war, tensions rapidly developed in 1945-1946 over the domination by the Soviets of governments throughout most of Eastern Europe. Shortly before his death, President Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said: "Averell [Harriman, American Ambassador to the Soviet Union] is right . . . we can't do business with Stalin . . . He has broken every one of his promises he made at Yalta" (Thomas, 1987, p. 121).

FDR's successor, President Harry Truman, was reluctant in 1945 to rupture relations with America's recent Soviet allies and wavered in the face of conflicting advice. According to Chace, "in 1945 and 1946 American foreign policy fluctuate

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f pogroms and political repression, emigrated to America, 300,000 in 1913 alone (Daniels, 1985, p. 71). After the turn of the century, the American government under its Open Door Policy opposed the dismemberment of China by or disproportionate influence of any foreign power there. Prior to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Russia was seen as the primary threat to China to be replaced later by the Japanese. President Theodore Roosevelt mediated a settlement of that war which effectively reduced Russian influence in Manchuria. Even though TR's efforts were criticized in both St. Petersburg and Tokyo, he merely ratified what the Tsar's decrepit military forces lost on the battlefield. The Americans entered World War I a month after the February 1917 revolution in Russia which they welcomed thinking that it meant the end of autocracy. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in November 1917 poisoned relationships with the United States (and other Western nations) for decades. The Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war which the Allies never forgave. The Bolsheviks supported revolution, which temporarily succeeded in Berlin in 1918 and Bavaria and Hungary in 1919 and attempted to subvert governments in Germany and elsewhere. The Allies, wit
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Approximate Word count = 2847
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

TOPICS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

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