9781422282823

Following the dropping of the bombs on Japan, the two sides, under a UN um- brella, explored possibilities for the international control of atomic energy for several months, but suspicions on both sides ran too deep for this ever to succeed. At the first report of the damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin ordered an all-out effort to build a Soviet nuclear weapon to break the United States’ atomic monopoly, and it was highly unlikely that the United States would voluntarily yield its lead in the arms race. With regard to the future of Germany, jointly occupied at the end of the war, the standoff continued. East and West agreed to disagree, thereby laying the foundation for the founding, in 1949, of two separate German states, one allied with the West and the other with the Soviet Union. Containment and the Two-Camps Theory The year 1946 saw crises over Iran and Turkey, both instances where Stalin appeared to be probing weak areas on the Soviet Union’s periphery. In both cases, the United States led the international opposition. Publicly, Stalin warned the Soviet people that capital- ismwould continue to produce new wars, and former British prime minister Churchill spoke of an “Iron Curtain” having been lowered through the center of Europe. Writing from the embassy in Moscow, the American diplomat and Russian expert George F. Kennan warned his government that, given Soviet ideology, it was an illusion to think that genuine cooperation was possible with Moscow. Instead, the United States had to accept that for Stalin, the Soviet Union could only be secure if the West was weak, its influence undermined all around the world, and that the Soviet Union would try to make it so. Instead of one new world order, the postwar world was in the process of being divided in two. Formal “declarations of Cold War” followed in 1947. On March 12, President Truman told a joint session of Congress, “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by out- side pressure.” These words were at the core of what became known as the “Truman Doctrine”: a foreign policy aiming to “contain” the further advance of communism and Soviet power. Truman’s government was reacting to the British withdrawal from a civil war in Greece, where leftist, communist-supported forces appeared to be winning. While the Greek Civil War ultimately resolved in Washington’s favor, the United States also worried about slow economic recovery in Western Europe. Lack of economic progress there might enhance the influence of local communist parties, especially in France and Italy, taking orders from Moscow. If the United States did not step into the breach, Stalin’s influence in Europe, as well as the Middle East, might increase. It might grow so much that the balance of power in these areas, so vital to U.S. national interests, would shift decisively in Moscow’s favor.

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CHAPTER 1