UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY SINCE 1945

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UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY SINCE 1945
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Debate on the Origins of the Cold War

• Whos fault?
• Personalities
• Role of economic factors
• National security
• Ideology

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OUTLINE

• I Plans for Peace
• II Iron Curtain
• III Marshall Plan
• IV Germany
• V NATO

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PLANNING FOR PEACE

• Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam
• Percentage Agreement
• German Question

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BIG THREE
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IRON CURTAIN

• TAKEOVERS 1944-48
• -Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria,
  Romania, Czechoslovakia
• -land reform
• -occupation
• -ACC
• -salami tactics

• STALINIZATION
• Cominform, 1947
• Tito-Stalin Break, 1948
• Reaction to Marshall Plan?

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IRON CURTAIN
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CONTAINMENT

• 1946 Long Telegram, George Kennan
• In general, all Soviet efforts on unofficial
  international plane will be negative and
  destructive in character, designed to tear down
  sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet
  control (...) The Soviet regime is a police
  regime par excellence, reared in the dim
  half-world of Tsarist police intrigue, accustomed
  to think primarily in terms of police power. This
  should never be lost sight of in gauging Soviet
  motives.

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TRUMAN DOCTRINEMarch 1947

• Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this
  fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to
  the West as well as to the East. We must take
  immediate and resolute action. I therefore ask
  the Congress to provide authority for assistance
  to Greece and Turkey (...) This is an investment
  in world freedom and world peace (...)
• The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by
  misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil
  soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full
  growth when the hope of a people for a better
  life has died. We must keep that hope alive.

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MARSHALL PLANJune 1947

• Our policy is directed not against any country or
  doctrine but against hunger, poverty,
  desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be
  the revival of a working economy in the world so
  as to permit the emergence of political and
  social conditions in which free institutions can
  exist.. Any government that is willing to assist
  in the task of recovery will find full
  cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United
  States Government. Any government which maneuvers
  to block the recovery of other countries cannot
  expect help from us. Furthermore, governments,
  political parties, or groups which seek to
  perpetuate human misery in order to profit there
  from politically or otherwise will encounter the
  opposition of the United States.

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EUROPEAN RECOVERY PROGRAM

• 1948-52 13 billion in loan guarantees and aid
  (about ( 90 billion in 2000 )
• most West European countries (not Finland)
  participate
• debate did the ERP  save  Western Europe?

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SOVIET RESPONSE

• The so-called Truman Doctrine and the Marshall
  Plan are particularly glaring examples of the
  manner in which the principles of the United
  Nations are violated..
• It is becoming more and more evident to
  everyone that the implementation of the Marshall
  Plan will mean placing European countries under
  the economic and political control of the United
  States and direct interference by the latter in
  the internal affairs of those countries.

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GERMANY

• denazification, democratization,
  demilitarisation, decartellisation DIVISION
• BIZONE
• Berlin Blockade and Airlift
• FRG and GDR
• Postscript Stalin Note, 1952

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NATO4.4. 1949

• United States
• Canada
• Great Britain
• France
• Italy
• Portugal

• Belgium
• Netherlands
• Luxembourg
• Norway
• Denmark
• Iceland

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A DIVIDED EUROPE

• The North Atlantic Treaty is designed to frighten
  states which do not agree to submit to the
  dictates of the Anglo-American grouping of
  powers, which aspire to world domination (...)
  At the same time one cannot but see the
  groundlessness of the anti-Soviet motives of the
  North Atlantic Treaty, since as everyone knows
  the Soviet Union does not intend to attack anyone
  and in no way threatens either the United States
  of America, Great Britain, France, or other
  parties to the Treaty.
• Soviet Ambassador to the United States A.
  Paniushkin, 1949