Chapter 27 Flashcards
sources of Sino-American tension
At the heart of the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union in the 40s was a fundamental difference in the ways the great powers envisioned the postwar world. One vision, first openly outlined in the Atlantic Charter in 1941, was of a world in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs in military alliances and spheres of influence and governed their relations with one another through democratic processes, with an international organization serving as the arbiter of disputes and the protector of every nation’s right of self determination. That vision, inspired in part by Wilson, appealed to many Americans, including FDR.
The Soviet Union’s vision and kinda Great Britain as well was different. Both Stalin and Churchill had signed the Atlantic Charter. But Britain had always been uneasy about the implications of the self determination ideal for its own enormous empire. And the Soviet Union was determined to create a secure sphere for itself in Central and Eastern Europe as protection against possible future aggressors from the west. Therefore, Churchill and Stalin tended to envision a postwar structure in which the great powers would control areas of strategic interest to them, in which something vaguely similar to the traditional European balance of power would reemerge.
Gradually, the difference between these two positions would turn the peacemaking process into a form of warfare
Poland issue
There were some matters where the origins of future disagreements were visible. Poland was one such example. ROosevelt and Churchill were willing to agree to a movement of the Soviet border westward, allowing Stalin to anne some historically Polish territory. But on the nature of the postwar government in the rest of Poland, there were sharp differences. Roosevelt and Churchill supported the claims of the Polish government in exile that had been functioning in London since 1940; Stalin wished to install another procommunist exiled government that had spend the war in Lublin, in te Soviet Union. The three leaders avoided a bitter conclusion to the Teheran conference only by leaving the issue unresolved.
Big Three
Winston Churchill, FDR, Joseph Stalin
Yalta Conference
In February 1945, Roosevelt joined Churchill and Stalin for a great peace conference in the Soviet city of Yalta-a resort on the Red Sea that was once a summer palace for the Tsars On a number of issues, the Big three reached agreements. In return for Stalin’s renewed promise to enter the Pacific war, FDR agreed that the Soviet Union should receive some of the territory in that Pacific that Russia had lost in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War
Produced ratification of the league of nations.
On other issues there was no real agreement. There was still disagreement about the postwar Polish government. There was also not agreement about the future of Germany. Roosevelt seemed to want a reconstructed and reunited Germany. Stalin wanted to impose heavy reparations on Germany and to ensure a permanent dismemberment of the nation. The final agreement was, like the Polish accord, vague and unstable. Th e decision would be referred to a future commission.
In the weeks following the Yalta Conference, FDR watched as the Soviet Union moved to establish pro communist governments in Central or Eastern European nations. But Roosevelt did not abandon hope. He left Washington to vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia. There, on April 12, 1945, he died of a sudden stroke.
Postdam Conference
Truman met in July at Postdam, in Russian occupied Germany with Churchill and Stalin. Truman reluctantly accepted the adjustment of the Polish German border that Stalin had long demanded; he refused, however, to permit the Russians to claim any reparations from the US, French, and British zones of Germany. This stance effectively confirmed that Germany would remain divided, with the Western zones united into one nation, friendly to the US and the Russian zoned surviving as another nation, with a Soviet dominated, communist government
Chinese civil war
Chiang Kai-shek was generally friendly toward the US, but his government was corrupt and incompetent with feeble popular support, and Chiang was himself unable or unwilling to face the problems that were threatening to engulf him. Since 1927, the nationalist government he headed had been engaged in a prolonged and bitter rivalry with the communist armies of Mao Zedong.
Some Americans wanted the government to support someone other than Mao or Chiang. Some thought that the US should reach some accommodation with Mao. Truman decided that he had no choice but to continua supporting Chiang. For the next several years, as the long struggle between the nationalists and the communists erupted into a full scale civil war, the US continued to send money and weapons to Chiang. Eventually, Truman sent general George Marshall, former army chief of staff and future secretary of state, to study the Chinese problem and recommend a policy for the United States. Marshall came to believe that nothing short of an all out war with China would be necessary to defeat the communists, and he was unwilling to recommend that the president should accept such a war.
containment
Any realistic hope of a postwar constructed according to the Atlantic Charter ideals that FDR and Churchill had agreed upon was in shambles. Instead, a new American policy,. known as containment, was slowly emerging. Rather than attempting to create a unified, “open” world, the United States and its allies would work to “contain” the threat of further Soviet expansion.
George F. Kennan
Truman decided to enunciate a firm new policy. In doing so, he drew from the ideas of the influential American diplomat George F. Kennan, who had warned not long after the war that the only appropriate diplomatic approach to dealing with the Soviet Union was a “long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies”
Truman Doctrine
On March 12th, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress and used Kennan’s warnings as the basis of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. “I believe,” he argued, “that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Helped ease soviet pressure on Turkey and helped the Greek government defeat the communist insurgents. More* importantly, it established a basis for American foreign policy that would survive for more than 40 years.
Marshall Plan
In June 1947, Sec. of State George C. Marshall announced a plan to provide economic assistance to all European nations (including the Soviet Union) that would join in drafting a program for recovery. Although RUssia and its Eastern satellites quickly and predictably rejected the plan, 16 Western European nations eagerly participated. Whatever domestic opposition to the plan there was in the US largely vanished after a sudden coup n Czechoslovakia February 1948 that established a Soviet dominated Communist government there.
Over the next 3 years, the Marshall Plan channeled over 12 billion dollars of American aid into Europe, helping to spark a substantial economic revival. By the end of 1950, European industrial production had risen 64 percent, communist strength in the member nations had declined, and opportunities for American trade hd revived.
Atomic Energy Comm.
established in 1946, became the supervisory body charged with overseeing all nuclear research, both civilian and military.
National Security Act of 1947
1947-reshaped the nation’s major military and diplomatic institutions. It created a new department of defense to oversee all branches of the armed services, combining functions previously performed separately by the War and Navy Departments.
Created the National Security Council, NSC as well as the CIA
Berlin crisis 1948-49
Convinced that a reconstructed Germany was essential to the hopes of the West, Truman reached an agreement with England and France to merge the three western zones of occupation into a new West German republic. Stalin responded quickly. On June 24, 1948, he imposed a tight blockade around the western sectors of Berlin.
If Germany was to be divided, he implied, then the country’s western government would have to abandon its outpost in the hart of the Soviet controlled eastern zone. Truman refused to do so. Unwilling to risk war through a military challenge to the blockade, he ordered a massive airlift to supply the city with food, fuel, and other needed goods. The airlift continued for more than ten months, transporting nearly 2.5 million tons of material, keeping a city of 2 million people alive, and transforming West Berlin into a symbol of the West’s resolve to resist communist expansion.
In the spring of 1949, Stalin lifted the now ineffective blockade and in OCtober, the division of Germany into two nations (Federal republic in west and democratic republic in east) became official.
North Atlantic Treaty Org.
The crisis in Berlin accelerated the consolidation of what was already in effect an alliance among the US and the countries of Western Europe. On April 4 1949, twelve nations signed an agreement establishing NATO and declaring that an armed attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. The NATO countries would maintain a standing military force in EUrope to defend the threat of a Soviet invasion. Spurred the Soviet Union to create an alliance of its own with the communist governments in Eastern Europe—an alliance formalized in 1955 with the Warsaw Pact
shocks of 1949
A series of events in 1949 propelled the Cold War in a new direction. An announcement in September that the Soviet Union had successfully exploded its first atomic weapon shocked and frightened many Americans. So did the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government in China, which occurred with startling speed in the last months of 1949. Chiang fled with his political allies and the remnants of his army to the offshore island of Formosa and the entire CHinese mainland came under control of a communist government.
