Rise of the Superpowers

Rise of the Superpowers

It is often wondered how the superpowers achieved their position of

dominance. It seems that the maturing of the two superpowers, Russia

and the United States, can be traced to World War II. To be a

superpower, a nation needs to have a strong economy, an overpowering

military, immense international political power and, related to this, a

strong national ideology. It was this war, and its results, that caused

each of these superpowers to experience such a preponderance of power.

Before the war, both nations were fit to be described as great powers,

but it would be erroneous to say that they were superpowers at that

point.

To understand how the second World War impacted these nations so

greatly, we must examine the causes of the war. The United States

gained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economic

power. In the years before the war, America was the world’s largest

producer. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his

‘five year plans’ to modernise the Soviet economy. From these

situations, similar foreign policies resulted from widely divergent

origins.

Roosevelt’s isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic

desire to remain neutral in any international conflicts. It commonly

widely believed that Americans entered the first World War simply in

order to save industry’s capitalist investments in Europe. Whether this

is the case or not, Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherently

isolationist Congress, only expanding its horizons after the bombing of

Pearl Harbour. He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935, making it illegal

for the United States to ship arms to the belligerents of any conflict.

The act also stated that belligerents could buy only non-armaments from

the US, and even these were only to be bought with cash.

In contrast, Stalin was by necessity interested in European affairs, but

only to the point of concern to the USSR. Russian foreign policy was

fundamentally Leninist in its concern to keep the USSR out of war.

Stalin wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernise the country's

industry. The Soviet Union was committed to collective action for

peace, as long as that commitment did not mean that the Soviet Union

would take a brunt of a Nazi attack as a result. Examples of this can

be seen in the Soviet Unions’ attempts to achieve a mutual assistance

treaty with Britain and France. These treaties, however, were designed

more to create security for the West, as opposed to keeping all three

signatories from harm. At the same time, Stalin was attempting to