This paper will cover Soviet-American relations in the years following the Second World War, as well as the evolution of events that led to the end of the Cold War in 1990. At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, began to expand its military influence into the weakened nations of Eastern Europe. The threat of further Soviet expansion was found in such "flashpoints" as Manchuria, Iran and Turkey. Manchuria was a potential flashpoint because the Soviet Union provided military equipment (seized from the Japanese) to assist the Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung in his efforts to conquer the region. The Middle East was a potential trouble spot because Soviet interest in oil concessions culminated in the support of an Azerbaijanian rebellion in Northern Iran. Turkey was considered a problem area because of the Soviet Union's desire to control the Daranelles Straits and thereby gain permanent access to the Mediterranean Sea. Soviet interest in these areas led to an early version of the "domino theory," which was based on the assumption that Stalin, like Hitler, was "intent on unlimited conquest" (LaFeber 96). This theory led to the United States developing policies for the containment of Soviet expansionism. Containment was designed to control, or "contain," the expansionist intentions of the Soviet Union (Kennan 104). The idea of containment was that the United States would use counterforce to stop Russian expansion wherever it might occur in the free world.
There were other problems in the world at the time which contributed to the development of the American containment policy. In 1946, for example, both Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made speeches which could be taken as "declarations of Cold War" (LaFeber 96). Stalin claimed that there would never be peace in the world as long as capitalism continued to exist, and Churchil...