The Rise of the United States and the Soviet Union to Superpower Status - Coursework Example

Examine the rise of the United s and the Soviet Union from the 1900s to 1980s. What are some of the similarities and differences in the ways thetwo countries became superpowers by the 1980s? The rise of the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status seemingly came at very different circumstances and followed divergent paths. This is mainly because it is generally accepted that the former built its power on the foundation of sheer wealth while the latter through its formidable nuclear and conventional capabilities. However, while there are indeed stark differences, there are largely significant similarities in elements in each of their respective circumstances. These are the issues that this paper will explore. World War I With the exception of Britain, the US and the USSR emerged as superpowers in the wake of world wars. Prior to this, these two countries were mere players that did not have the power to influence international events – not enough to satisfy William Fox’s criteria of a superpower being one with ‘great power plus great mobility of power’. They were eclipsed by the prestige and power and their extensions of the British Empire and other European powers. This situation, however, will begin to change during the First World War. This period marked the decline of the colonial system – the basis of the British hegemony – and the emergence of new global power players. Prior to the war, the US lagged behind the European countries in regard to military organization but the war became instrumental in infusing military interest in its foreign policy.1 It is also during this time that the Russians start building their ascendancy. Hoffman and Fleron (1981) wrote that the decline of capitalist economies and societies after World War I; the successful Bolshevik revolution of 1917; the repulsion of Western and Japanese intervention in the Russian civil war of 1917 to 1920; and, the creation of the first socialist state; paved the way for a new Russian claim to power. (290) World War II The significance of World War II to the US as a world power was seen in its aftermath. The postwar period saw a reduction of US power and influence reminiscent to that after World War II. As David Reynolds put it: The armed forces were cut from 12.1 million to 1.6 million in two years. In the same period America’s ‘international expenditure’ (defense, foreign military aid, foreign economic aid) dropped from 88% of the federal budget to 51 percent and from 39 percent of GNP to 8.43 percent of the federal budget. (306) However, World War II produced for the US a permanent naval and air power establishment as well as a coherent and systematic foreign economic policy. It will be the Cold War that would further strengthen the US position as a superpower years later. The threat of the Soviet Union took many forms in the American perspective. This threat gave a new focus to America in its new pursuit of containment of Russian power and the encroachment of communism across the world. During this process, institutions changed as diplomacy and aid gave place to military power, with the development of large land forces from 1950 onwards.2 Hence, World War II and the Cold War consisted the context for America’s emergence as a superpower. World War II would have an almost identical effect on the USSR’s status as a world power as that of the US’ case. It declined in power during the war but emerged a superpower after. World War II immensely enhanced the international significance and prestige of the USSR as the country was the leading force and the guiding spirit in the military defeat of Germany and Japan. Progressive countries rallied behind the USSR and a number of national liberation movements later on took refuge under its wing, propagating the communist ideology in the process.3 USSR became the global stronghold of anti-imperialist and anti-fascist policies. After World War II, when Leonid Brezhnev came to power, the USSR embarked upon a broadly based program to expand and diversify the country’s nuclear capabilities. This and the US response to the Soviet military expansionism triggered the Cold War. The expansion of the Russian power and its emergence as a superpower came as a direct consequence of this conflict. The results were remarkable, especially in the area of long-range, land-based missile development. As Coit Blacker put it, in 1964 the Soviets started deploying ICBMs, predominantly second generations SS-7 and those five years later they would maintain well over 1,000 operational ICBMs, including some 700 SS-11s which made it the largest missile system ever produced.4 By the second half of the Cold War, the USSR would eclipse the US in atomic stockpile and rivaled the best of the US weapons technology. International Reaction The emergence of a bipolar world order and the conflicts that have arisen from it have affected all parts of the world and in different ways. For instance, China, aware of the Soviet expansionist ambitions, broke irrevocably with the Soviet Union and engaged in clear rivalry with its former mentor. The Chinese leaders’ willingness to cooperate with the US as highlighted by Henry Kissinger’s “secret visit” to Beijing in July 1971 was a watershed in postwar international relations because it introduced elements of balance-of-power politics into the bipolar world of the cold war.5 In addition, we have the case of Vietnam as a classic case of a Third World country that became battleground of the US-Soviet military showdown and eventually torn into two warring independent states with differing ideologies. Ideologies espoused by the two superpowers will also erect the Berlin Wall in Germany. This represented states torn by the bipolar conflicts such as the case of Korea. Perhaps, the most significant action that had some semblance of coping on the bipolarity of the world order during the Cold War was the organization of the Non Aligned Movement advocated by newly independent states and powers that were not directly allied with either the US or the USSR. This group represented a third force, which had limited military or economic power but, in the context of the Cold War, represented a major arena for competition between the two superpowers.6 This movement became important in the global political scene because it emphasized and espoused the diversification of power. Bibliography Blacker, Coit. Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985-1991. Council on Foreign Relations, 1993. Daniels, Robert. Documentary History of Communism. I.B. Tauris, 1986. Hoffman, Erik and Fleron, Frederic. The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy. Aldine Transaction, 1981. Knutsen, Torbjorn. The Rise and Fall of World Orders. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Reynolds, David. From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt and the International History of the 1940s.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Stoler, Mark. Allies and Adversaries. UNC Press, 2000. Stearns, Peter and Langer, William. The Encyclopedia of World History. Houghton Mifflin Books, 2001. Read More