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What the West Expects
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19693 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
2,750 Words |
| Author
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Adam B. Ulam
Adam B. Ulam is director of the Russian Research Center at
Harvard University. |
It is conventional wisdom that the essential characteristics of world politics from shortly after World War II until perestroika can be best expressed by the term Cold War, with the United States and the USSR cast as the primary adversaries. Yet, the term obscures, rather than clarifies, the nature of relations between the two superpowers during those forty or so years. Certainly their attitudes and policies vis-à-vis each other varied greatly during that period. In 1948-49, during the blockade of Berlin, and again in the fall of 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was widely believed that the United States and the Soviet Union were on the verge of a real war. In the late 1960s, the two powers ratified a nuclear nonproliferation treaty and began negotiations that eventually led to détente and SALT I. To get a correct perspective on today's picture, we must first rid ourselves of some of the stereotypes of past Soviet-American relations.
Cold War is a fitting description of the state of world politics between 1946 and Stalin's death in 1953. From a recent ally, the USSR became in the eyes of the West a nation bent on expanding its power and influence at the expense of the Free World. What triggered that perception was Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe where Moscow, either through armed force or through threats, imposed communist regimes upon the countries just recently librated from the Nazi yoke. To expand its sphere of domination further, the USSR was supporting the communist uprising in Greece and demanding territorial concessions from Turkey. The Soviet zone of occupation in Germany was being transformed into a communist state. Simultaneously, Moscow was attempting to set up a puppet regime in northern Iran. Moscow's appetite for further conquests, however, still seemed unappeased. The land blockade of West Berlin was seen as the Soviet's attempt to force the other allies out at a time when communism was on the march in the West.
Frustrated by efforts to stop the Soviet advance through diplomatic means, the Truman administration responded in 1947 with the doctrine of containment. Its objective was twofold: On the one hand, the United States would strengthen the West through economic and political aid. And, on the other, should the USSR attempt to encroach further upon the interests of the democratic world and international stability, the United States would, in the words of George Kennan, one of the doctrine's authors, "confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce." The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the creation of NATO spelled out those twin objectives of American policy.
Containment was
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