Berrettini: history of international relations - entire year, Appunti di Storia Delle Relazioni Internazionali

Scarica Berrettini: history of international relations - entire year e più Appunti in PDF di Storia Delle Relazioni Internazionali solo su Docsity! From the “great divergence” to the “great convergence” The 20th century is a turning point in history, but didn ’t start in 1900. It started earlier, in the 19 th century, with the great divergence. It is an expression related to the different paths taken by the western societies (Europe and the US) and Asia (China). Until the great divergence the different civilizations were almost at the same level in terms of technologies, economic development, military power. After this period, the west became the center of the international relations system. It is the beginning of the western domination. Now we are at the end of this cycle, and historians are talking about the great convergence: east Asia is becoming more important compared to the west. The two sides are destined to face a future conflict. The great divergence and the great convergence are the “borders” of the 20th century. The 20th century is peculiar: the world system took the shape that we know today, and culture was influenced by important men, turning points in their field, such as Einstein (time and space were relative, two sides of the same coin), Marconi (discovered the invisible radio waves), Freud (the unconscious), Schonberg (write music using 12 notes) and Ford (chain of production). The 20 th century was the century of the crisis of the enlightenment and the rise of the idea of progress, the realization of the danger of technology, and the participatio n of the masses. The French historian Pierre Renouvin spoke about the deep forces (in French forces profondes) of the system that changed the nature of international relations. Examples are -secularization (=decline of traditional religions), the rise of ideologies and political religions (nationalism, Fascism, Nazism…) -the rise of collective actors (political parties) and the mass society (especially after WW1) -the use of violence by the state and private actors, sometimes to take power (the so -called brutalization of politics) -the internationalization of politics (creating of a global society). Therefore, the forces profondes in action during the 20 th century were technology and industrialization, economic transformations, communications, and different culture and mentalities. Key points: 1) the state system: states were created in 1648 with the peace of Westphalia. The state is the most important thing, but today it isn ’t enough. The international arena is occupied by many other players, so the state is in crisis today. Other players may be non-governmental organizations (Emergency), international organizations (EU), transnational forces (religion, public opinion), cities (especially the big ones will become more important in the future) 2) balance of power: 1914-1945-> multipolar balance of power, based on European countries that fought against each other 1945-1991-> bipolar balance of power between the Soviet Union and the US 1991-2008-> unipolar balance of power, based on the US 2008-20?? -> multipolar balance of power, based on many more powers all over the world A golden rule of international relations is the balance of power, an anti -hegemonic dialectic against one dominator. All small powers will create a coalition to face the big power. This concept was created in Italy, during the period of the city states in the 15th century, when all city states came together to fight Venice. After the peace of Westphalia this rule became more “European” (ad conservando in Europa equilibrium), with the treaty of Utrecht. Today this rule applies to the whole world, and is stil l very important, despite all the existing international organizations. This is the traditional realist approach. There are 4 types of balance of power according to Hans Morgenthau: -divide et impera: player who tried to make or keep their competitors wea k by dividing them. It was followed by the Roman empire or the French against Germany. France, indeed, was the most important European country at the expense of Germany. Later, the opposite happened. -compensation: player gives some territories to balance power. Typical of imperialism, today not common (like what is happening with Crimea) -armaments: player starts an armed race to compensate unbalances. Typical of WW1 and today against Russia -alliance: finding partners to compensate the rise of a threat 3) globalization: globalization deeply transformed the world 1870-1914: imperialism (commonly considered bad, however a possible good side is the creation of a network and a common law among all the players) 1945-1971: the golden age of globalization and capitalism. The western countries became richer. 1989-2008: from the fall of the Soviet Union to the economic crisis of 2008 The creation of new means of communication and transportation deeply influenced the process of globalization (telegraph, railways, internet). Not all historians agree on the division of the waves of globalization. 4) European hegemony and beyond: between the 19 th century and the 21st century we see the golden age of Europe and its demise. If in the 19 th century European countries were the most important ones, today it isn’t so. There has been the rise of the global south after the process of decolonization, that started since the end of WW2. Many players of the global south are main characters of the international relations arena (India…) WW1 and WW2 are the suicide of European culture. The historian Niall Ferguson stated that the metropoles of the western world accounted for 7% of the world ’s land surface and 18% of its population. Their possessions, however, amounted to 37% of global ter ritory. Today European countries aren’t central. After WW2 the US, the USSR and China rose. At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe was at the core of the system, Asia was at the semi -periphery and Africa was at the periphery. Today Asia is the core, Europe is the semi-periphery and Africa is still at the periphery. For the great part of history, the center of internat ional relations was Asia, and especially the territories between China and India. European countries became much richer with industrialization, and beat those countries during the Opium Wars. Europe has always been the number 1 since the Roman empire, but it declined. Asian powers have always been powerful but were neglected by western powers. TURNING POINTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY 1) WW1 (18 July 1914 - 11 November 1918) 2) Great Depression (24 October 1929) and the age of empires (1931 -1945) 3) WW2 (1 September 1939 - 2 September 1945) 4) Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions (6 & 9 August 1945) and the beginning of nuclear age 5) Foundation of the People’s Republic of China (1 October 1949) 6) Collapse of the Soviet Union (26 December 1991) WW1: It was the crisis of the old Westphalian European system of States and the crisis of European centrality. It started as a European conflict and ended (also) thanks to the intervention of the United States of America . The war didn’t only take place in Europe, but also… European & Middle Eastern theatres • 1914 — 1917 Triple Entente (UK + France + Russia) + Italy vs. Central Empires (Germany + Austria -Hungary + Ottoman Empire) • 1917 — 1918 (UK + France + Italy + United States) vs. Central Empires (Germany + Austria -Hungary + Ottoman Empire) Asia-Pacific theatre • August 1914 — November 1914 Triple Entente (UK + France + Russia) + Japan + China vs. Germany • November 1914 — November 1918 Japan vs. USA (Diplomatic confrontation on China) WW2: It was the end of the old Westphali an European system of States and the end of the European centrality. It apparently started as a European conflict and ended (also) thanks to the intervention of the United States of America. It signed the superiority of the productive and economic system o ver strategy and tactics. No reasonable comparison between the productive system of Axis Powers and the Allied Powers . If you ask to a Chinese friend: «When did the Second World War start?» He/She would probably answer: «In 1931, with the Japanese Empire i nvasion of Chinese Manchuria» The war began as a conflict among the Nazi Germany + Slovakia vs Poland World War geographically and politically there were two great wars (different but united) : • Asia-Pacific: Japanese Empire vs. Western European Great Powers and China (later USA) • Europe-Mediterranean: German Reich (plus Italy) vs. Western European Great Powers (later USA & USSR) Until the last days of the war there were no clashes between Japan and the Soviet Union Hiroshima and Nagasaki : Main idea was nuclear bombing would not only end the war, but also put the US in a prominent position within the Grand Alliance , giving US the possibility to shape and realize its Grand Design (postwar project for world reconstruction) . With the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the world has entered a new phase, totally different from the others. The human being can annihilate life on planet Earth . The explosion was around 3000-4000°C. In Hiroshima around 80.000 people were killed instantly (vaporized) . In Nagasaki around 40.000 people were killed instantly. Some deaths were instantaneous, but for a lot of others, it was a much more protracted ‘process’. The word holocaust (ο ̔λο ́καυστος) was used after the war as a synonym for nuclear explosions. The explosions of the nuclear bombs established the beginning of a New Era in Mankind: 6 August 1945 Little Boy (US A-Bomb) + 29 August 1949 First Lightning (Soviet A -Bomb) Countries reached the point of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) , but had some positive consequences as it worked as deterrence. It is considered a tool to prevent any direct full -scale conflict between the two Nuclear Superpowers (US and USSR). There was a US Massive retaliation. 1950s, Eisenhower Administration. Employ the maximum degree of response to any kind of threat or attack. Later, there was a US Flexible retaliation. In the 1960s, the Kennedy Administration employed, according to the degree of the threat, both conventional weapons and strategic-nuclear weapons, and to measure the power of the response and the type of forces committed to the attack suffered. Transnational anti -nuclear movements were created in many countries. Foundation of China: the classical interpretation about IR in the XX century follow s a Western-Centric perspective. Indeed, the cold War was ‘just a game’ played among the Global Northern Great Powers. In the so- 5. Merchants and craftsmen constituted a numerically weak and politically marginalized group in Japanese society 6. Farmers 80% of the population. Considerable discomfort due to the strong fiscal pressure exerted by the daimyo, which was due among a third of the rice harvest . There were no diplomatic or cultural relations between Japan and the West Foreign trade was forbidden and only the port of Nagasaki was open to foreign merchants . Modernization destroyed this structure. The main power that influenced Japan was the US, who, in the 19 th century, broke the isolationist policies of Japan. On 8 July 1853 , US Commodore Matthew C. Perry “opened” Japan through the use of Gunboat Diplomacy (pursuing foreign policy objective through demonstrations of naval force ), a typical imperialist move. On 31 March 1854 Shōgun Tokugawa Iesada signed the Treaty of Kanagawa , and was forced to sign a series of unequal treaties with other European great powers: -17 October 1854 UK and Japan (Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty) -7 February 1855 Russian Empire and Japan (Treaty of Shimoda) -9 October 1858 France and Japan (Treaty of Amity and Commerce) These treaties aroused a wave of nationalistic resentment throughout the country, and revolts were led by the great feudal lords and by some of the Samurai and were directed against the Shōgun. In 1868, the combined forces of the six major Daimyō s and a number of previous Samurai led to the abolishment the Shōgun, and the birth to a government that was based in Tokyo under the high authority of the Emperor, a 15-year-old recently risen to the throne, Mutsuhito, who was intended to acquire the name of Meiji Ten no (Enlightened Emperor). Intellectuals, soldiers and officials, all coming from the Samurai class, obtained key places in the new administration. They were more ambitious and understood the connection between the inferiority of Japan with respect to Western powers and the backwardness of its economic-social structures. The Japanese revolution is peculiar because it was organized by the political class, without the participation of lower classes (usually it ’s the opposite). The revolution was not followed by a development of liberal institutions and political democracy. The process of modernization influenced Japan so much that arts, clothing and fashion followed the examples of the west. A new era begun, the Meiji Era (1868-1912). The modernization following the Western powers modelled to the abolishment of Shōgunate, new political é lite (Armed Forces) , led to the call for British, French, German, and US military experts in order to build up a new modern, Western-style, army and fleet. Traditional mentality clashed with the new ruling elite and modernity , and in 1877 there was the Satsuma rebell ion , which was suppressed. Takamori Saigo (close to the emperor) became the leader. In the ‘new’ Japan military elites played a leading role : they had direct access to the emperor , budgets separated from the rest by the State administration , had much influence on the decisions of the government and they were not subject to the control of political power . It was the traditional ruling classes that guided the transformation and managed it, spontaneously stripping off their ancients rights without losing their privileged position in society . They invested their revenues in the land, in the banks or in the protected industry, transforming themselves fro m feudal oligarchy into industrial and financial oligarchy . Rapid modernization at the level of economic and political structures was amazing as it accompanied the preservation of traditional cultural and religious values . The Japanese society transformed itself but kept its traditional values . Japan became a relevant actor in Asia-Pacific IR system with the first Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 — 17 April 1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 — 5 September 1905). It pursued the creation of a new Asian Empire at Korean and Chinese expense , which brough to the final crisis of the Chinese Empire (1912 New Republic). The first Sino-Japanese war showed the failure of the Chinese reforms and attempts to modernize its military, while at the same time Japan success. Japan started to have equal status with the West powers . The war ended on 17 April 1895 , with the Treaty of Shimonoseki . It proclaimed the birth of the Korean Empire and the secession of the Pescadores Islands , Formosa (Taiwan), and Eastern portion of the bay of Liaodong Peninsula (Dalian) by China in favor of Japan. Between 1895 and 1904 Japan tried to negotiate with Russia about Manchuria & Korea , but it was a failure due to the Russian intransigent behavior . On 8 February 1904 Japan attacked Port Arthur , then 10 February 1904 declared war . Two main battles are the Battle of Mukden (20 February - 10 March 1905) and the Naval Battle of Tsushima (27 May 1905). On 5 September 1905 , thanks to the mediation by US President Theodore Roosevelt , the Russo-Japanese war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth , which declared Korea a protectorate of Japan. The other hemisphere: the rise of the US Exceptionalism= the idea that a person, country or political system can be allowed to be different from, and perhaps better than, others. 3 pillars of the US foreign policy: 1) Monroe doctrine (2 December 1823), presented by president James Monroe. With this policy, the United States was now the official protector and defender of the Western hemisphere, and European colonies were no longer welcome. Monroe warned Europeans against the expansion of territories in the New World, essentially closing it to European colonization . The US refused to participate in the European State System because it was too concerned with its own expansion across the North American continent (then with the Civil War) to enforce the Monroe Doctrine or take much of an interest in foreign affairs . A turning point was the 1898 Spanish- American War. In 1904, Roosevelt added a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: US international ‘police’ in the Western Hemisphere even against European colonial Powers . 2) Manifest destiny (1845), which has always been ill-defined. The term was used to describe the ‘inevitability’ of US domination of the North American continent. Therefore, US expansion was not ‘conquest’ or occupation but ‘civilization’. Roots of this doctrine were present in the Northwest Ordinance 1787 (13 July 1787) , which established the territories west Ohio river (first example of westward expansionism). The Manifest Destiny was used for the first time during the Louisiana Purchase (1803–1804)-> the US bought it from France. The United States share borders only with 2 other actors (Canada and Mexico) : Washington has avoided the presence of another relevant actor in the northern area of the continent by leaving the logic of the Balance of Power. It influenced the shattering of the Mexican Empire (1823-1834) by supporting the centrifugal and independence forces , and at the same time it created good relations with Canada. The Civil War , or War of Secession , took place from 12 April 1861 to 23 June 1865. The presence of another relevant continental actor would have forced Washington to maintain a conventional army and to submit to the logic of the BOP , and history wouldn’t have been the same. There are two kinds of manifest destiny: - religious. US believed they were a part of the Aryan race and as such they were God’s chosen people. He ordained to rule over other races and to expand their demography in America. The US expansion is considered civilization - the American Anglo-Saxon ideology was used internally to bolster the power and protect the status of the existing population and externally to justify American territorial and economic expansion DO NOT WRITE “AMERICAN” WHEN REFERRING TO THE US 3) Open door policy (September 1899), by secretary of State John Hay Open Door Note about China. It means promotion of the free market. Penetration of new markets was essential to the health of a US capitalism that depended on an ever-expanding economy to preserve social system. The Open Door Policy combined pursuing an expansionist economic policy and avoiding the taint of political domination and the burdens of territorial administration. 4 traditions of (foreign) politics of the United States 1. Thomas Jefferson: promotion of democracy abroad but weak central power in the US for the protection of citizens 2. Alexander Hamilton: strong central power and protection of US economic interests in the world 3. Andrew Jackson: (first populist President) isolationism 4. Thomas Woodrow Wilson: idealism and defense of democracy Major events in USA foreign policy and power projection in world IR system during the “progressive era” (1897- 1913): 1. Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)-> control of the US economy 2. Cuban Rebellion 3. Annexation of Hawaii 4. Spanish-American War (21 April 1898-13 August 1898). Forcing the Europeans out of America and becoming the military and economic senior partner of the Western Hemisphere States Reconcentración de Weyler also fueled US opposition to the Spanish intervention (especially thanks to the Yellow Press «New York Journal») . The US invested 50 million dollars in Cuba and the government (with an excuse) sent battleship USS Maine to protect US citizen in Cuba (internationalization of the crisis). 1868: Cuban revolution against Spanish Government 1895: violence erupted again. José Marti ́ launched rebellion for independence. Spain sent as Governor General of Cuba Valeriano Weyler, Duke of Rub i ́(strong man) with the idea of crushing the rebell ion 16 February 1896: ‘Reconcentración de Weyler ’ and separation between citizenship and guerrilla fighters, concentrate the former in urban area It was a resouding failure and generated severe anti-Spanish feeling. 5. «Open Door Note» by US Secretary of State John Hay (6 September 1899), related to the «Scramble for China» 6. Boxer Rebellion (2 November 1899 — 7 September 1901) 7. US-Japan relations in Meiji Era. Mediation Treaty of Portsmouth (5 September 1905) & Taf t–Katsura agreement (29 July 1905) 8. Algeciras Conference (16 January 1906 — 7 April 1906). First US intervention in European issues 9. Federal Reserve-> control of the US economy 10. Panama Canal 11: WW1 and social change The euroatlantic global hegemony (1871-1914) 2 approaches: contingency and randomness (proposed by Christopher Clark and Thomas Otte) and a systemic approach (proposed by René Girault) Belle Époque: Imperialism, War & Diplomacy End of the XIX century — beginning of the XX century the European State system underwent a transformation that draw the lines of (our present) global international society . There was -Economic growth & international trade -New technological resources -Mass dimension of nationalism It is the beginning of the so-called age of Imperialism (or New-Imperialism). Crises moved 1. From the core (Europe) to the peripheries (Asia & Africa) e.g. from the Egyptian crisis (1882) to the Russo-Japanese war (1904) 2. From the peripheries (Asia & Africa) to the Semi-Peripheries (Mediterranean Sea) e.g. from the Moroccan crisis (1905–1906 & 1911) to the Italo-Turkish war (1911–1912) 3. Then crises became combination between imperial and national problems e.g. Balkans wars (1912–1913) and Great War (1914–1915) 9 February 1898: De Lôme Letter. Don Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, wrote to Don José Canalejas, the Foreign Minister of Spain, bad opinions about US President William McKinley 15 February 1898: sinking of the battleship USS Maine in front of La Habana harbor (falsely attributed to the Spanish army) 11 April 1898: President William McKinley asked the Congress authorization « to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to ensure in the island the establishment of a stable Government» 20 April 1898: Senator Henry Teller Amendment (avoiding imperialist aims) «disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for pacification thereof». The war Declaration was a mix of imperialism and morality. The war quickly took on an expansionist thrust: Cuba had to go through a three-year military occupation followed by a theoretically sovereign independence in 1902, under the terms of the Senator Orville Platt Amendment (2 March 1901). Puerto Rico occupied as war reparation . 10 December 1898: Treaty of Paris , thanks to which the US gained Guam & Philippine Islands (clear imperialist turn). In 1899 Philipinos revolted against US rule and the started the three-year Filipino- American War. -renewed after the Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905), fueled by the no-other-option than the Balkans, after the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, and radicalized after Bosnian Crisis (1908) and Balkans Wars 1913 Russo-Turkish rivalry -Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits Russo-German resentment -increasing German support to Austrian Balkanpolitik Italo-Austrian resentment (even though Austria and Italy were allied, the former didn ’t follow the interests of Italy) -«Terre irredente» and Vienna’s Balkanpolitik (Article 7 Triple Alliance) After the killing of archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 th 1914, all the great powers made mistakes: 5 July 1914-> Austria-Hungary obtained full support of Germany. They followed the brinkmanship policy as ‘calculated risk’: localize the war facing the risk of a general conflict 23 July 1914-> Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia without informing Italy due to the previous anti - Italian feelings. Serbia was okay with the ultimatum, but wanted to make changes. Austria rejected these observations, and on July 28, 1914 declared war. At this point it is just a war between Austria and Serbia. The decision was a reckless leap into the dark since no one in Vienna could have overlooked that war with Serbia was war with Russia. The decision originated from desperation in the face of irreversible decline, but, in retrospect, there is every reason to conclude that Vienna would not have been so reckless had Berlin not issued the so-called ‘blank cheque’ in suppor t of Austria’s Balkan war (A limited war in the Balkans would crush Serbia, humiliate Russia and perhaps even break up the Entente). 31 July 1914-> Russia partially mobilized the army. They also followed the brinkmanship policy because they had a huge army and thought that Austria would immediately stop attacks. The Russian military planner since 1905 believe it would be good for Russia to generalize a crisis to overcome its structural deficiencies (military and economic). However, the mobilization of army is already an offensive more. 1 August 1914-> Germany declared war on Russia . It was a reaction the Russian mobilization seen an act of war against Austria-Hungary. The Austrian and Russian Brinkmanship as ‘calculated risk’ failed. 4 August 1914-> Germany invaded neutral Belgium as a response to the French war declaration of 3 August 1914. France was supporting Russia in its decision to mobilize the army 4 August 1914-> UK declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was obligated to defend Belgium by the terms of a 75-year-old treaty. London didn’t declare its reaction in case of German invasion of France . This led the Germans to attack France, as they didn ’t know about the intensions of the British. The British war declaration spread the war in every continent, as it mobilized the British empire. 23 August 1914-> Japan declared war on Germany , as it was linked to Britain. It was another step in the war globalization. Countries didn’t want a general war, but their calculations failed. World War 1 was a global war long before the US joined. The war started due to i nternal causes, contradiction among postfeudal society and values (honor, prestige…) , modernity and modern economic system (created by capitalist economies during imperialism). It is the triumph of the irrational forces. The two sides were: • 4 September 1914 Triple Entente, made by the UK + France + Russia + Japan. The alliance changed its name in 1915, with the entrance of Italy, and became the Allied powers. With the entrance of the United States (6 April 1917) it became the Allied and Associated Powers. All the powers apart from the US signed a treaty of alliance to fight the war together, while the US was only associated to the other powers. • 29 October 1914 Central Empires/Powers, with Germany + Austria-Hungary , linked since 1879. Then the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined, becoming the Quadruple All iance. Italy was linked to Germany and Austria-Hungary with the Triple Alliance. However, in 1914 Italy declared its neutrality by citing a clause allowing it to renege on Triple Alliance’s obligations . No legal obligations linked Italy to the Central Empires : 1. War had not begun due to French aggression , but a German aggression 2. Germany and Austria-Hungary didn’t inform Italy 3. Austria-Hungary did’t respect the Article 7 of the Triple Alliance (any territorial expansion of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans corresponded in territories given to Italy in northern Italy) Therefore, in 1915 Italy signed London Pact. However, Italy declared war only on Austria-Hungary, and not Germany at first. It was almost considered a fourth war of independence. It was a v iolation of article 2 «to use all its resources to conduct war in common with France, Great Britain and Russia against all their ene mies». This is why after the war ended, the winning powers considered Italy as a second -class player. Italy declared war on Germany in August 1916. Italy had a big army and navy, so it was important to have it on their side. Basically, Italy chose according to the criterion of the greatest advantage: Phase 1->pro central empires, and Germany made sure Italy would have remained neutral by sending ambassadors Phase 2->pro triple entente, when the Italian foreign minister Sonnin o started negotiations with the UK Phase 3->pro central empires, when the Italians were still hoping to receive the northern territories Phase 4->pro triple entente, when Italy signed the London Pact Italian politicians debated a lot whether to join or no t. The main groups were the Catholics, liberals and socialists, who supported the idea to remain neutral. They believed Italy was too weak to bear the consequences of such a war. On the other side the democrats supported intervention, hoping the war would have given the chance to rebuild a new Italian democracy. Nationalists also supported the idea of intervention, hoping to receive the territories of northern Italy. Lastly, Mussolini also supported the interventionist side joining the war against Germany, as he believed the war was his great occasion to take the power. Meanwhile the strategic situation was transformed 7 August 1914-> Germany implemented the Schlieffen Plan (provided for a Blietzkrieg= very fast war) and invaded the neutral Belgium, penetrating into France thanks to the surprise effect. Germany arrived closer to Paris reaching the Marne, where the attack stopped (5 – 12 September 1914) by a Franco-British counteroffensive. The front stopped there for years 9 September 1914-> the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann draft ed the «September Program» to push Russia’s borders as far to the East as possible and annex land from Belgium and France . This was possible thanks to the treaty of Brest Litovsk November 1914-> the war had been transformed into a clash of attrition: the front with the trenches was created from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Germany occupied crucial areas for mining and industrial production. Such a war required huge economic efforts. From this point on, the two m ain forces facing each other were the German submarines against the naval blockade imposed by the UK. Germany started a submarine war, which will lead to the sinking of the Lusitania (7 May 1915), a British ship carrying 128 American passengers, which aroused the indignation of the USA. Germany temporarily suspended the submarine war fearing that the US could intervene in the conflict. From the military point of view the only ‘movements’ were : 1. 25 April 1915 – 9 January 1916 in the Balkan front, with the Gallipoli Campaign-> Allies land on the Gallipoli peninsula, in Turkey, in an attempt to neutralize the Dardanelles (and Middle Eastern) Ottoman defenses. The plan had been designed by Winston Churchill. He wanted to destroy the connections between Turkey and Germany. The operation failed. 2. 17 August – 14 September 1915 in the eastern front->the Russian Great Retreat and the advance of the Central Empires towards the east. This destroyed the authority of the tzar and will fuel the 1917 revolution. 3. 15 May – 27 June 1916 in the eastern front-> Austria-Hungary broke the Italian front with a punitive offensive as a revenge of the Italian decision to sign the London Pact (Strafexpedition) A long war of attrition brings a huge space for diplomacy. Main diplomatic efforts of the belligerents were directed toward three intertwined issues : • Planning the postwar organization (so-called Imperialist Treaties) • Searching new allies (a tipica dynamic of war enlargement) • Searching for a separated peace with pecul iar enemy , destroying the other coalitions Planning the Postwar Settlements: The Imperialist Treaties Constantinople Agreement (1915). The UK and France promised to give Constantinople and the Straits to the Russian Empire . It was the greatest concession given to Russia, as the tzar deeply desired it. The UK decided to do it because Russia was weak at the time, so they wanted to keep Russia in the conflict. It was also a reward given to Russia after the influence they performed on Italy when it was signing the London Pact. Moreover, the UK wanted to avoid the possibility of a separate peace among Russia the Central Empires (due the bad Russian military performances). London Pact (1915). It regulated the terms of Italian declaration of war to the Central E mpires, and promised to give back the «Terre Irredente» and «Fourth Shore» (Balkans): Trentino, Tirolo Brenner, Gorizia, Istria (not Fiume) and Dalmatia (and Middle East, vague) Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916). It discussed the possible partition of the Ottom an Empire between the UK and France, especially about Arabs territories . The most important of the 3 treaties in the long run, due to its consequences in the Middle East. It was decided that a part of the Arab territories would have gone to France, the other part to Britain. However, the British and the French followed contradictory policies: they promised to the Arabs the creation of a huge Arab state in the middle east (the McMahon-Hussein correspondence), and at the same time they promised the Jews the creation of a Jewish state (the Balfour declaration). Therefore, the impossibility of a creation of an Arab state is the Arabs ’ fault as well as the Europeans’ fault. In 1918, after the end of the war, the Clemenceau-Lloyd George Agreement repeated the clauses of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Thanks to these agreements, the middle east was “invented” and created modern middle eastern nation states. Searching new allies: the focus was on the Balkans, looking for the support of Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. This dynamic was won by the central empires: Bulgaria joined on the side of Germany, and when Romania joined the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, they quickly invaded the country. This tactic shows how the war slowly became global. Searching for separated “peaces”: Since 1915, Germany and Austria-Hungary have tried to negotiate a peace with Russia, but these negotiations failed as the two central powers asked too much. In 1916, Germany tries once again to end the war with the UK, respecting the clauses of the September Program, but once again asked too much. Lastly, in 1917, the brother-in-law of Charles 1 (emperor of Austria-Hungary) tried to sign a treaty with the UK and France (the mediation of Sisto Borbone-Parma), but asked for the guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Austria-Hungary empire. These guarantees couldn ’t be respected because the minorities living within the empire asked for independence. Since this point, the Austria -Hungary empire wasn’t only fighting a war against its enemies, but also a war from the inside. Up to 1916/1917 the central empires were winning in terms of military power, but their economies were extremely weakened by the British naval blockade. This is why Germany reacted by launching a submarine war. This (formal ly) provoked the US intervention. War became an instrument to achieve peace, peace a future condition that justified the war. From WW1 on, wars will become extremely violent. 1917 Two turning points occurred in 1917: the entrance of the US and the 2 Sovi et revolutions. The refusal in March 1917 of the Petrograd (St Petersburg) garrison to fire on strikers and food demonstrators triggered the abdication of Nicholas II. The emperor lost power and was forced to write a constitution . A ‘dual’ authority replaced the tsarist regime, shared between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. Both centres of political power remained committed to the war, but not equally so. The Provisional Government hoped to remobilize Russia’s demoralized armies in order to pursue imperial Russia’s original war aims. The Petrograd Soviet, in contrast, expressed the longing on the streets, in factories and on the front line for peace – though not peace at any price. In April 1917, when the Provisional Government reaffirmed Russia’s interest in Constantinople and the Straits, the Petrograd Soviet called for peace without annexations or indemnities, and a frontier settlement based on the principle of national self -determination. The offensives launched in June and July in the name of the new head of the Provisional Government ended in utter disaster. Russia desperately needed peace. The Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 with the slogan of ‘peace, land and bread’ initiated Russia’s exit from the war. According to Lenin, the expansionist impulses of monopoly capitalism had caused the war and these inherently self -destructive forces would lead to the ruin of capitalism itself. A great wave of workers’ revolutions, so the Bolsheviks be l ieved, would sweep away the bourgeois ruling classes, thus creating an enduring peace within a new international solidarity of workers . It was hoped that the war would soon spark more proletarian revolutions across Europe. To ignite the revolutionary spark, the Bolsheviks issued a Decree on Peace in November 1917, which called for a general three -month armistice and a final peace settlement without annexations or indemnities. At the same time, in a bid to mobilize public opinion, they exposed the annexationist war aims of the Entente by publishing secret inter -Allied agreements on war aims. The resulting Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) stripped Russia of its Great Power assets. The Bolsheviks surrendered Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Finland and the Caucasus, nominally as ‘independent’ states, but in fact as German satellites. Russia lost sovereignty over a third of the former empire’s population, a third of its agricultural land and nearly 80 per cent of its iron and coal industry. These terms represented a triumph for the German high command and the fulfilment of the dreams of German imperialists. Lenin, however, regarded the treaty as a temporary measure. Once Russia had recovered, the Treaty of Brest - Litovsk would be reversed. In the meantime, peace with the Central Pow ers caused tension with Russia’s former Allies. As war developed inside Russia between counter -revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks, the Allies dispatched forces to intervene, at first to prevent stockpiles of Entente arms falling into German hands, and later to help bring down the Bolsheviks. While Lenin pulled out of the war first to save his regime and then later to reshape world politics through workers’ revolutions from below; Wilson aimed to reform the international system through the exercise of American power at the top. Wilson’s ‘new diplomacy’ combined realism and idealism . According to the president, the war had been caused by an anarchical and lawless system of states, which had brought about a frantic search for security through the stockpiling of armaments. As the war progressed, American economic policies had steadily favoured the Entente because they were l inked in terms of culture and economy, and thought that Germany was a problem in eastern Asia (with the attritions between Russia and Japan ) as well as for the balance of power in Europe. The US deeply believed the capitalism and democracy, so it was natural to go against Germany. If Germany and its allies won, he had reasoned, the United States would be forced to transform itself into a heavily armed garrison state in which liberties would be crushed by militarization. The need to defeat Germany and the American ambition to build a better world thus drove Washington into the Entente coalition. Before 1914, there was the rise of a new American security culture, with people such as Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Mahan: they believed that the security of the US depended on the balance of power of Europe. Europe had to stay separated and most European countries had to remain friendly to the US. Th e German hegemony was a problem to the security of the US. The attacks of German submarines and the news of the Zimmerman Telegram made President Wilson ask for permission to the congress to declare war, and it accepted. Wilson prime minister insisted that pensions payable to servicemen and their dependants should be included to increase Britain’s share of reparations. Even if this blatant violation of the pre-armistice agreement had little impact on the total sum claimed by the Allies, there is no doubt that it helped to undermine the moral authority of the whole settlement. France: Before the war, France contained the German forces thanks to the help of the Russia empire, but now Russia had internal problems. Therefore, France demanded for the destruction of Germany: they asked for the Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of different states in Rhineland an d Saar (sort of buffer states). But the UK and the US refused. France asked for an alliance with the US and UK, but they refused again. France felt isolated. French security was paramount, and that could only come in one of three ways. The first was by per manently weakening Germany. The second was by seeking a lasting and mutually beneficial Franco -German accommodation. The third was by way of a security alliance with the United States and Britain. It was feared in French circles that the Treaty of Versaill es would only temporarily strengthen France and cripple Germany , therefore proposed a more permanent solution: France should hold on to the Rhineland as a strategic buffer. Lloyd George and Wilson refused. Instead of a detached Rhineland, France was offere d Anglo-American Treaties of Guarantee against unprovoked German aggression. Unfortunately, the guarantees fell through when the American Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles in November 1919 . At first France proposed very moderate sums based on civilian war damages in accordance with the pre-armistice agreement. They also considered partnership with Germany on iron and steel production as an alternative means of taming the economic might of their former enemy. Italy: Italy felt like a winner of WW1 because they defeated the Habsburg empire. However, Italy achieved little during the Paris peace conference. Italy got the northern frontier (terre irredente), but didn ’t consider the Italian aspirations in the Mediterranean, in the Balkans. A new narrative started to be spread: the mutilated victory. A similar sentiment was felt in Japan. From a juridic point of view the main documents were: ->28 June 1919: Treaty of Versailles with Germany (and covenant of the League of nations, a way to enforce peace treaties. It should have been the pillar of the new international system, and it should have created a new kind of global governance) ->10 September 1919: Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria, which prohibited the union (Anschluss) of Austria and Germany. ->27 November 1919: Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria ->4 June 1920: Treaty of Trianon with Hungary ->10 August 1920: Treaty of Sè vres with the Ottoman Empire (never came into force, and was revisioned during the Mustafa Kemal revolution) In contrast to Versailles, each of these lesser treaties included provisions for the protection of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. For example, Czechoslovakia declared its independence in October 1918. To make the Czech-dominated union with the Slovaks economically and strategically viable, the Sudetenland (the border area between the historic kingdom of Bohemia and Germany, which included three million German -speaking inhabitants) was incorporated into it. Yugoslavia emerged as a voluntary amalgamation of form er Austro- Hungarian territories around the pre-war Serbia. Romania more than doubled its territory and population . Despite reducing by half the number of people living under alien rule, self - determination, as put into practice by the Paris Peace Conference, generated yet more ethnic strife and national conflict by leaving about thirty million people on the wrong side of contestable frontiers . Rather than seeing it as a tool for peaceful national integration, the small Powers regarded minority protection ar bitrated by the League of Nations as a Great Power imposition on their newly won national sovereignty. Three articles of the covenant of the League of nations will raise problems between 1919 and 1939 : Article 8: disarmament Article 10: territorial integrity guaranteed Article 16: if a member declares war (in cases not foreseen), it declares war to all the other members . The league of nations “didn’t have teeth”, it wasn’t a system capable to enforce its decisions/punishments. To promote open diplomacy, the League, based in Geneva, would consist of a Council and an Assembly, supported by a permanent secretariat. The Covenant obliged signatories to observe the rule of law in international affairs, to reduce armaments and to preserve the territorial integrity and independence of member states. The most important bodies of the league of nations were the Council, the executive body. It was composed of 4 permanent members (the winners of WW1 but the US. Later Germany will join) + 4 non -permanent members. To prevent another 1914, international disputes would be subject to a three -month period of arbitration. This would allow time for cool-headed diplomacy and for ‘the public opinion of the world’ to mobilize for peace. The League was a workable compromise between the aspirations of liberal internationalists like Wilson and the inescapable limitations of any voluntary association of sovereign states. It was not a world government . the Covenant contained ambiguities and contradictions: the League would deter war by t hreatening covenant- breakers with universal war; all members were equal, but the Great Powers would call the shots; and, to function, the League required member states to abide by the Covenant without any binding obligation on them to do so, especially in disputes between the Great Powers. The US didn’t ratify the treaty of Versailles nor the covenant of the league of nations. European countries used the league of nations as a tool for their power projection in the middle east and in the colonies. Another body of the league of nation is the Assembly, which met once a year. The last body created was the secretariat, responsible for the agenda of the Council and the Assembly. In the league of nations, the option of veto wasn ’t envisaged. Formally , the League of Nations lasted for 26 years. There were 42 founding members (not the US, China refused the treaty of Versailles but accepted the league of nations). 16 of them left or withdrew. The Soviet Union, after the invasion of Baltic states, was expelled. From 1 934 to 1935 it had 58 members (maximum extent). It is a huge number considering the existence of colonial empires. The main issue with the Paris conference and the treaty of Versailles was Germany and the vacuum of power in central Europe. The armistice of Rethondes ended the conflict, but Germany wasn ’t defeated: only the German industrial system was destroyed, not the German state. The German political class asked for an armistice on the basis of the 14 points. They forced kaiser William 2 to abdicate, hoping to be considered as good by the Allies. However, the treaty of Versailles was decided by the winners, and Germany could only present some observations about it. Germany had no room of revision; the treaty was a Diktat. It was still accepted because the army could not resist the war and politicians feared isolation and economic embargo . Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles: Economic : every- one agreed that Germany should pay something. The real questions were: how much should Germany pay, how much could it pay , what form should payment take… The Council of Four recognized that there was an enormous gap between the entire cost of the war and Germany’s capacity to pay reparations . There were also serious technical limitations on transferring wealth from one nation to another. Borders: Germany did lose some 27,000 square miles of territory, 6.5–7 million inhabitants and 13.5 per cent of its economic potential. In the west, France gained Alsace-Lorraine, a small border district (Eupen-Malmédy) was handed over to Belgium, and Denmark took northern Schleswig. To compensate France for the sabotage of its coal mines by the retreating German troops, the Saar valley was placed under League administration for fifteen years and its mines under French ownership for at least that period. The Saar ’s fate would ultimately be decided by plebiscite. The Rhineland would also be demilitarized and occupied by the Allies, who would also control the Rhine bridges. In the east, Germany ceded Posen and much of West Prussia to Poland (the ‘Polish corridor ’), and the German port of Danzig was designated a free city under the League, though under Polish customs and foreign policy control. Political & Military: article 231. Germans recognized themselves morally and civilly responsible for the war and its devastation. This fueled the German resentment. The German navy was allowed a few obsolete ships; the army was denied heavy weapons and aircraft, and its official strength was limited to only 100,000 men. Colonial (all previous German extra-European territories were given to the winners): Africa (unimportant and only prestige) was given to France. Asia (important for economy) was given to Japan Germany never became part of the new Paris system . Few Germans were willing to accept either the territorial losses or the status of their State as a second -rate power that had been imposed at Versailles . Others were will ing to work towards its overthrow through peaceful means. Economic and foreign policymakers preferred to rely on UK and the US to restrain France and revise the treaty . The Paris peace conference was just a side of the coin, and it was not as positive as western historiography make us believe: overall in Europe there was peace, but in eastern Europe and the global south wars a nd revolutions were just starting. Instability went from Germany to China. Frequently, the lines drawn by the Allies on the map of Europe only resulted in the creation of new, unstable multi -ethnic States with uncertain borders and an explosive mixture of ethnicities. In addition to Germany and Austria, other 2 traditional and important players had been excluded by the new system, which indeed had been built partly ‘against’ them: Turkey (previous Ottoman areas were given to France & UK thanks to the League of Nations Mandates, halfway between a colony and an independent State. They followed the decisions of the Sykes -Picot agreement) and USSR. The Eurocentric approach used to define the new international system and the needs of the European balance of power wasn’t accepted by smaller players. In the Paris conference, there were winning states, losing states, and states in between, that were only revisionist powers (Italy, Japan, China). These three powers were winners but weren ’t satisfied with the outcomes of the treaty of Versailles (remember that also Germany wasn ’t satisfied and will change some provisions of the treaty of Versailles). There wasn’t a common principle of legitimacy: the idea of a nexus between democracy, international stability and the stability of the international system was refused. State from the global south (even chin and Japan) believed in the statements by Wilson and the ideas of the league of nations. They believed they had the same rights of the winners. However, decisions were taken only by the west (the mandate system is a typical example). Problems in the following years will come from the global south, when most of them will transition from democracy to authoritarian regimes. Democracy cannot be imposed over traditional socie ties; it needs to come from within. The weaknesses of the Paris conference are the absence of a common vision of the principle of legitimacy and the Eurocentric approach. Remember that new nation states should have been created based on the principle of l egitimacy and self- determination. However, creating nation states in eastern Europe revealed to be impossible. This created tensions and in the first years of the 1920s these newly created democracies all turned to authoritarian regimes (Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Spain). Democracy and freedom of nationality created the opposite outcome: you CAN’T export democracy. Tensions came from the use of Eurocentric approach in reshaping the international system: Europeans believed they were the number 1 , but after WW1 European economy and power wasn’t in the center (it was the US). However, Europe didn ’t realize this (ex. the refusal of racial equality proposal), and kept being racist and support imperial empires as a tool to project European power. Revo lts came from the global south, starting from Asia (Japanese revisionism, Chinese opposition) and the middle east (Turkish revisionism). In historiography the trend of interpretations about the Paris peace conference is considering the treaty of Versailles a terrible mess. The main problem was the abstractness of Wilson ’s idealism. However, we have to keep in mind that Wilson’s ideas were difficult to accept in Europe, especially considering the conditions of European countries in the 30s. Even though generally the Paris peace conference was a mess, important steps forward were the recognition of the principle of nationality, the idea of collective security instead of the machinery of the balance of power, the first seeds of international law and human rights. Great problems in the postwar world were the policies applied by the different states and the fact that all of them followed national interests instead of collaboration. European relations after the Paris peace conference (1925-1932) The imperfect solutions to the German problem and Europe as a whole certainly set out the battle l ines for the future. Too many important states were left dissatisfied and looked to the future for the revision rather than the defence of the status quo. the first victim of the peace was inter-Allied solidarity. America’s withdrawal from the settlement, occasioned by the Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles in November 1919 and again in March 1920, was the most tragic. American public opinion in the late 1920s and 1930s became even more averse to entanglements abroad. Of course, the Americans did not entirely retreat from the international stage; for example, in 1921–22 Washington hosted a multilateral conference on naval disarmament and East Asia. Moreover, America’s economic status as the world’s largest creditor meant that it could not entirely cut itself off from the outside world. Even the most ‘isolationist ’ Republican administrations of the 1920s did not shy away from pulling the financial levers to promote stability in Europe. The Soviet Union likewise remained isolated. Despite some sparks in Germany and Hungary, Lenin’s world revolution failed to materialize. After the Paris peace conference states have tried to search for stability by thems elves, following national policies. Later, states realized the importance of cooperation through the institution of the league of nations. General sense of insecurity was due to 3 main problems: 1. German war reparation (connected with the European economi c recovery-> without war reparations, other European countries could no longer restart their civil economies. German economy should have been rebuilt, but this meant giving Germany some power) 2. End of Allied Occupation of Rhineland (rich area) 3. German disarmament France was especially worried, but failed to shape a postwar alliance with UK and US. The UK and the US didn’t want to sign an alliance with France because signing alliance in peace times was forbidden. Before WW1 France was allied with Russia to counterbalance the German enemy, but after WW1 the USSR wasn’t a possible collaborator. France signed alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia. These two countries were weak, so France managed to use another system of alliance as a sub-system: the Little Entente (directly against Austria, indirectly against Germany). In the Little Entente there were France, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. The sense of insecurity didn’t end. The second big issue was war reparations. Germany is the center of Europe from a productive point of view. In the Conference of Boulogne (1920) it was decided that reparations would amount at 269 billion gold marks payable in 42 years (TOO MUCH). Then during the Spa Conference (1920) it was decided that half of war reparations would have been given to France. Finally, in the Conference of Paris (1921) the amount of reparations was halved. Some months later Germany made the first cash payment of one billion gold marks. Walther Rathenau (German Foreign Minister) tried to demonstra te that the reparations were beyond Germany’s economic potential. It was a political strategy, but it was also the truth. This won the sympathy of the public opinion in the UK, and with France they organized conference of Cannes in 1922: a moment in which they destruction of the balance between state and market. New ideologies were born: nationalism, racism, protectionism, state-controlled economy, autarchism. Italian domestic and foreign policy (1922-1932) In history of international relations, historians don ’t consider the rise of fascism a turning point in terms of Italian foreign policy. Fascism was violent and illegal, but in the begin ning (until 1934-35) Mussolini and his team followed the lines of projection of liberal Italy. 2 great problems in Italy: -the debate about whether it was a great power or not. Italy was important during the Mussolini age because there were 4 vacuums of power in Europe at that time, so playing an important role was easy as there were no counterweights. Italians felt proud of destroying the Habsburg empire in the treaty of Versailles, and started to project its power in center Europe. Italy had the illusion of being a great power. Italy is defined as a power “by curtesy” of other declining powers. Italy was a power thanks to the historical context. -Italy was unified after three wars against an important player of the international system. Italians are very nationalist people with a strong sense of identity. In the liberal age Italians wanted to unify the peninsula, and in the 1920s it wanted to be recognized as a great power with the creation of an empire. Mussolini tried to maximize the interests of Italian diplomacy by intertwining friendship with both sides (Allies and Germany). The roots of fascism lay in the Paris peace conference (Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Sydney Sonnino). Italy was considered as a second-class winner because the focus wasn’t on WW1, but Italy fought a war within the war (a sort of a fourth war of independence). From the Italian point of view this was great, but from the point of view of the French and the British it was a bad strategy. In the treaty of Versail les, Italy asked for the terre irrendente (Brennero, Istria, Dalmazia) with the addition of Fiume, following the principle of nationality. However, it didn’t make any sense because following the principle of nationality the terre irredente shouldn ’t have gone to Italy. Wilson didn’t recognize the London pact and redesigned a new border between Italy and Yugoslavia, which didn’t satisfy Italy. Wilson gave a speech communicated directly to Italian people, openly stating that he would not accept the Italian requests, but hoping that the Italian people would understand his point of view (first time ever). Orlando and Sonnino left the Paris peace conference as a protest, therefore the UK, France and the US decided everything: defined the peace with Germany, created mandates in the middle east, received the biggest share of war reparations and even occupy Smyrn a in Turkey, previously promised to Italy. The betrayal will be used by Mussolini and the far right to receive support from people. The question of Fiume contributed to the decline of liberal Italy, and Gabriele D ’Annunzio even organized a coup d ’état to unify Fiume to the peninsula. The new government (after Orlando and Sonnino) gave more stabilization about the issue of Fiume, with Giovanni Giolitti as prime minister and Carlo Sforza as foreign minister. They signed a treaty with Yugoslavia (the treaty of Rapallo of 1920-> important only to Italy, so remember the one between Germany and USSR). Fiume was created as a free city under the control of the league of nations. This was good in theory, but portrayed the Italian government as weak. After WW1, from 1919 to 1921, Italy was on the verge of a civil war: the socialist forces confronted against the far right. Mussolini was a socialist before WW1, but changed his mind during the war, believing in revolutions. At first his ideas were related with the far left, but we should remember that the far right and the far left were blurred, and people often changed political preference. The roots of fascism were due to medium and long term factors: Medium term factors-> WW1, brutalization of politics and violence, the idea of mutilated victory, economic crisis (2 millions unemployed) Long term factors-> the shadows of all the issues left unsolved since the era of Risorgimento (differences between bourgeoisie and lower classes, north vs south…) and the spread of the mass society, instability due to the universal suffrage and proportional representation (1919 elections) • Liberals, bad performances, divided over the role of Giolitti • Partito Popolare Italiano (new Catholic Party) did well under the new electoral syste m • Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) gained 156 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, making it the largest political party in Italy. However from the diplomatic point of view, the 1922 was not a turning point . Domestic policy: 1922-1929: continuity and prestige policy. Primacy of internal politics on foreign policy, for consolidating the Regime, for the immobility of the international situation • Prevalence of power politics on ideology in international relations (good relations with UK and frictions with France). Retake Italian freedom of action and protection of national interests • Imperialist & Revisionist verborrea • Progressive adaptation to the Paris order Fascist Italy remained at the League for more than 15 years. The Country, which ranked as the thi rd-largest power within the League, was an active member of the organization, with many Italians holding key positions, and was fully involved in the League's work. Italy was part of the international system but asked for a moderate revision of it. The turning point was the Lateran Treaty. Holy See , the Catholic Church, and Fascist Italy agreements. The so-called Conciliation (1929) started the “years of consensus” : fueled the regime and most Italians supported it. After the 1929 crisis Italy changed its policy (foreign politics became more important than domestic politics). After the transition period 1920-1932 (with Dino Grandi as Foreign Minister), Mussolini took over. Fascism was the ideological answer to the crisis of 1929. The idea of shaping a real empire became possible (a compensation for all the troubles of the previous 15 years). Italy wanted to gain Ethiopia, the last independent country of Africa. In Germany, the Nazi party started to talk about the “vital space”, the British empire started to apply the “imperial preferential system”, and Italy wanted to do something similar. After 1933 there was the rebirth of the German danger , that scared France and the UK. This offered room for maneuver to Italy: being a satisfied little empire while having relations with Germany. Foreign policy: fascism wasn’t very violent until 1922, with the March on Rome. On 16 and 27 November 1922 Benito Mussolini said “obligation to respect peace treaties, good or bad, once they have been signed and ratified”, while insisting on the need for a review. Italy was unsatisfied and asked for a revision (ex. the same levels of the other winners). Italy supported a claim for revisionism a nd at the same time some continuity. This was due to the fact that the permanent secretary of foreign affairs was Salvatore Contarini, a liberal. In August 1923 the Italian general Enrico Tellini, and the entire Italian delegation, was killed during a miss ion for the definition of the borders among Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia . The response was the bombing of Corfù, forced Greece to recognize Italian interests in the Mediterranean. It was a very violent move because Mussolini just wanted to underline the discontinuity with the previous political class. Despite the diplomatic class was mostly composed of liberals, he wanted to make a difference with the past. It was a media success, but it created frictions with the UK (keep away Italy from the Balkans) and with France (was facing internal instability with the Ruhr so didn’t care about foreign affairs-> didn’t oppose Mussolini. Mussolini supported the French invasion of the Ruhr). In September 1923 countries found a solution: Greece was forced to pay a compensation to Italy. After Corfù Italy come back to its traditional double policy . In 1924 Italy signed the Treaty of Rome with Yugoslavia , thanks to which Fiume became Italian. In 1925 Italy joined the Locarno Pact as guarantor . In 1928 Italy signed the Briand-Kellogg Pact. Italy as part of the most important treaties of that time. Italy searched for a general normalization , while claiming for moderate revisionism (reform the system , not a revolution) thanks to the swinging policy (politica del peso determinante). The strategy Was based on Italy moving like a pendulum between the UK and France on one side and Germany and USSR on the other. It was almost a creation of an axis among the losers of the Great War . Examples of the cooperation with the other revisionist powers were the offer to Gustav Stresemann of a military alliance and the recognition of the USSR. At the same time, facing a possibile German destabilization, Italy leaned to France and the UK. Italy aimed at exploiting their contrasts but avoiding a war that would have involved an international choice . In theory, there was a positive possibile outcome: to get the reintegration of the defeated in 1918 in the European community. As it was in the middle between the parties, Italy was like an arbiter of the European system . It hoped to increase the prestige of Italy in the Balkans and the Middle East and search power projection in Africa . The objective of Mussolini was to gain Ethiopia, to be on the same level of other European players. Until 1934 Ethiopia Italy had good relations with the UK: Italian foreign policy was likely anti -French as the revisions of the treaty of Versailles asked by Mussolini would have harmed France. It was a possible counterbalance to a possible new French hegemony in Europe. In 1934 Mussolini occupied Ethiopia, which is in a very dangerous position for the British communication lines. The relations with France were more difficult, especially because France was antifascist and because of the common interest in the M editerranean and Africa (Tangier, Ethiopia & Tunisia) . Italian foreign policy was directly Anti-French. Examples are the Treaty Italy- Albania (established Albania to be a sort of protectorate) , the support to Hungarian revisionism , and the creation of an axis with Turkey and Balkans, to weaken the French Balkans politics and the encirclement of Yugoslavia. However, if only France would have given a moderate revision of the treaty of Versailles, Italy would have turned against Germany. In theory, in French perspective, Italian revisionism could be useful to contain the more radical and dangerous German one. In practice, it failed also due to the French rigidity about the Versailles order and the many requests presented by Mussolini . It is surely exaggerated to consider Italy as a stabil izer of the Paris settlements . However, it seems also exaggerated to consider the Fascist regime to be brutal in foreign policy. Italy wasn’t a great power, but Mussolini behaved as it was. This experience highlighted that the system created at the Paris peace conference wasn’t flexible, and lasted only 20 years. Japan foreign policy and the Asia-pacific balance of power (1919-1937) Japan was the first power to attack the system of the treaty of Versailles in Asia. Remember th at in 1918 in Europe there was chaos: Germany, Russia, Persia, the Ottoman empire were all seeing revolutions within them. The only countries that were considered “stable” were France, the UK, Spain, Italy and Japan. Even the winning countries had weak governments, so the situation couldn’t be really defined as stable. The Paris peace conference tried to stabilize the situation: they followed a very Eurocentric approach and invented new nation states that were supposed to be democratic. In eastern Asia the scenario was even more unstable: WW1 had been a diplomatic confrontation between Japan and the US about the destiny of China. There was a huge vacuum of power in China and huge question mark over its territorial and administrative integrity. There was no central authority and there was competition among the different war lords (war lord age). Moreover, the communist party was getting more popular. Japan forced China to sign the Twenty -One Demands treaty in 1915. It would have made China a protectorate of Japan. However, the UK and the US reacted and forced Japan to drop some demands. Therefore, Japan accepted to write the new Thirteen Demands treaty and the Chinese President/Dictator Yuan Shikai forced to sign. Informally, China was included in the sphere of influence of Japan. China gave Japan some territories, especially the Shandon region (the previous German colony of China). However, the US were also interested in influencing China. Japan wanted some islands between Hawaii and the Philippines, which at that time were under the influence of the US. This created US -Japanese antagonism. In 1917 the US Secretary of State and the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs signed the Lansing -Ishi Agreement. The US recognized that Japan had special rights over China, especially the region of Manchuria, and at the same time Japan recognized the policy of open door in China (a contradiction). This should have avoided conflict between Washington and Tokyo. Another issue occurring in east Asia was the US -British resentment. Tokyo was a British ally, which could have been dangerous for the pacific area. The destiny of China was a great problem, as it wasn’t invited in the Paris peace conference. Its destiny was in the hand of 3 men: Wellington Koo, Lu Zhengxiang and Makino Nobuaki. During WW1 China provided huge help in terms of manpower so they asked for the recognition of their demands. China asked to redesign the architecture created by the Unequal treaties (the treaties written after the opium wars): it wanted to be cons idered as a great power like the others. China wanted the return of Shandong (formerly German possession), which is the only way to defend a possible attack on Beijing. However, during WW1 the Chinese government signed the Thirteen Demands treaty, which pr omised the city of Shandong to Japan. China tried to prove that it had been forced to sign the Thirteen Demands treaty, and in that case the promise wouldn’t count. Japan also had some demands: the recognition of the its fruits of victory and internationa l agreements (unfair, but legal) signed during WW1-> Treaty Thirteen Demands and Lansing - Ishii Agreement. Japan obtained a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations and also some economic rights in previous German Pacific Island and Chinese territories (Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius -> very important for Chinese culture). However, it did not obtained the Racial Equality Proposal. Japan was considered more than China, but still wasn’t at the same level of western powers. Article 156 and 157 of the treaty of Versailles gave all the previous German possessions in China and the pacific to Japan. This triggered a reaction in China, what we know as May Fourth Movement (the first example of nationalist movement, a strong anti-western identity. In this period China started to believe that international law was unfair). Moreover, China didn't sign the Treaty of Versailles and in 1921 it signed a private agreement with Germany, the Agreement Regarding the Restoration of the State of Peace. it was the reaction of the betrayal performed by the west. Japan was preferred over China because it was easier to manage and easier to understand (the Japanese modernization process was similar to the European one) and most of all Japan was one o f the major contributors in the special operation in the Soviet Union during the civil war. Japan, France, the US and the UK supported the white army during the 1917 revolution. The west believed that Japan was an important pillar for the stability in eastern Asia. Due to the instability of the area, in November 1921 a conference of the Powers with interests in the western Pacific convened in Washington to discuss international co-operation in the region, particularly in regard to China, and how to establish a framework for naval arms limitation: the Washington conference. The US, France, the UK, Italy and Japan participated. why at Washington did Japan abandon its former policy of single -minded expansion and accept the need for a new international order i n East Asia? One could, of course, rely on a purely realpolitik explanation, and state that the end of the First World War and the apparent formation of an Anglo - American bloc forced Japan to accept its relative powerlessness. It is also possible to see it s acceptance of the Washington treaties as symbolic of a new spirit in the country, reflecting the worldwide trend towards greater idealism. In addition, Japan was at this time shifting from oligarchical rule towards government by party politicians: the so-called period of Taisho democracy. This shift towards a new mass politics was aided by the relatively high rate of literacy in Japan, which meant that the new ideas emanating from the West about issues such as morality in international affairs, unionization and women’s rights received a wide audience. Indeed, by 1925 Japan would introduce universal male suffrage and in 1928 socialist parties would stand in a general election. This change in the nature of Japanese politics had implications for foreign polic y, for the rise of the parties saw a growth of anti -militarist sentiment. It is considered the counter part of the Paris conference for east Asia, almost a sub -system of the Paris system. 3 final documents came out: -Four Power Treaty: the recognition of the status quo of the Pacific Ocean and declared the end of the Anglo - Japanese Alliance of 1902 of northern China. Jiang reluctantly acquiesced to the Japanese army’s demands, but this was to be the last act of his ‘non-resistance’ policy, which had only ever been designed to appease the Japanese for as long as his domestic position remained weak and there was no chance of foreign support. In 1935 –36 conditions began to change and make resistance possible. One key development was the strengthening of the Nanjing government. The Nanjing government began to grow financially stronger, particularly after the successful introduction of a new currency. In addition, international powers slowly comm itted to the Chinese aim, for example the Soviet Union promised its support if the Nanjing government found itself at war with Japan. At the same time, Britain and the United States also appeared to be taking a greater interest in China, seeing its market as a valuable spur to their own economic recovery. The US issued the Stimson doctrine: no recognition of international territorial changes in China, as it would have been a contradiction to the Washington treaty. The US still supported the Open Door policy. All the other western powers (except Italy), though, didn’t recognize the state of Manchukuo. Manchukuo was geographically close to the Mongolia and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union became the main enemy, worse than the United States. Japan and Germany shared the same competitor: the USSR. Therefore, Germany and Japan started getting closer. In 1936 Germany and Japan signed the Anti -Comintern Pact. This agreement provided for an exchange of information on Comintern activities as well as a guarantee that if Russia attacked either signatory, the other would not assist the Soviets in any way. It was used to “keep” the Soviet Union under the threat of a double front war (remember that France and the Soviet Union were already allied so Germany was in danger). They had in common racist ideologies, presented by Alfred Rosenberg in Germany and Shumei Okawa in Japan, who was considered an Honorary Aryan. Germany recognized the greatness of Japan, and admitted that, as they were so advanced, they were not considere d Asians but white. The two powers welcomed the accession of Italy to the Anti -Comintern Pact in 1937, and in late 1938 the 3 countries engaged in military all iance talks. Japan, however, found that it could not go as far as the Axis Powers desired and the latter concluded the Pact of Steel in May 1939 without Japanese involvement. After the February Incident of 1936, in a final military coup d'État in Tokyo, Korekiyo Takahashi (Finance Minister), Makoto Saito (Interior Minister) and Jotaro Watanabe (Education Minister) were killed. The Army leaders first approved this action but later disowned them, because Emperor Showa told the military to put down the rebellion. After this incident the civil Government was marginalized and the military controlled Japanese politics. As Japan became authoritarian, it got closer to other authoritarian regimes: Germany and Italy. Despite the superior Chinese -German relationship, Hitler concluded that Japan would be a more reliable geostrategic partner than China. Jiang ’s tougher stance first manifested itself in the autumn of 1936 when, after a number of incidents involving attacks on Japanese nationals and property, he rejected the usual list of demands that issued from Tokyo. However, he sti ll wished for the eradication of the Chinese Communist Party before engaging upon a policy of full resistance, and in early December 1936 flew to Xi’an to convince Zhang Xueliang, now the commander in Shaanxi, to pursue the campaign against the still weak CCP. Zhang, however, believed that full resistance against Japan was long over-due. He therefore responded to these exhortations by taking Jiang prisoner and, with Soviet and CCP backing, refused to release him until he had undertaken to resist Japan and end the civil war in China. Jiang had no choice but to comply. The Xi’an incident marked the point of no return for Jiang, for now he was publicly committed to resist Japan. The Sino-Japanese war: the fact that the USSR had to divide its forces on two fronts pushed Japan to attack China. On 7 July 1937 an incident took place at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing. There is no evidence in this case to suggest that the incident was staged or deliberately provoked by the local Japanese forces. In addition, it is clear that, at least initial ly, the authorities in Tokyo did not desire any escalation of the fighting. The Japanese government decided to punish Jiang ’s intransigence by launching a full -scale offensive in north China. The war soon spread to central China, for Jiang ’s reaction to th e hostilities in the north was to open a new front in Shanghai. The Japanese believed that they could inflict a rapid defeat upon China, which would pave the way for a negotiated solution of the problems in Sino -Japanese relations and a return to the construction of a defence state at home. Although the Chinese suffered a series of setbacks, such as the fall of Shanghai in November and of Nanjing in December, they refused to make peace on Japan’s terms. Jiang was not in a mood or position to compromise: he signed a Sino-Soviet non-aggression pact, which led the Russians to start a policy of large-scale military aid and assistance to China in the hope that its resistance would prevent any Japanese offensive against Siberia. Both China and the USSR were intere sted in limiting Japanese imperialism. In addition, moves within the Western democracies encouraged Jiang ’s resistance. The revival of Japanese aggression led to a wave of sympathy for China in the West, particularly after newspapers and newsreels carried stories of the Japanese bombing of civilians in Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou. The result was that in both government and public circles there was talk of unleashing economic sanctions against Japan. On 5 October Roosevelt made his ‘quarantine of the aggressor nations’ speech, in which he hinted at the need for a naval blockade of Japan as an aggressive power , and a day later the League of Nations called for a conference of the signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty to be convened in Brussels. Japan had a key weakness: it still needed to trade with the democracies. In particular, Japan depended for most of its raw materials, such as oil, rubber, wool and tin, on the United States and the British Empire. The precariousness of its position was underlined in July 1939, when the Roosevelt administration, in the light of domestic pressures and the recent Japanese confrontation with Britain over Tianjin, announced the abrogation of its commercial treaty with Japan. Japan’s difficulties became even greater with the start of the European war, for the British and French empires now became war economies which limited Japan’s ability to acquire raw materials from these sources. In the short term, this anti -Japanese sentiment led to nothing substantial, for Britain was too preoccupied by events in Europe to send its fleet to East Asia, while Roosevelt remained hemmed in by isolationist opinion. Even Japanese attacks on both American and British gun-boats on the Yangtze in December 1937 only led to a brief call for united action before the moment passed. Frustrated by Jiang ’s recalcitrance in January 1938 the Japanese called off the peace talks. Even after a year of war, however, Japan found itself as far from victory as ever. To a considerable extent it blamed this on Western support for China. From the autumn of 1938 it therefore sought to isolate China from the West. One of the major planks of Japanese policy was to appeal to China by emphasizing that it sought no more than to bring about co -operation between and prosperity for the peoples of East Asia. Japan called for a union between Japan, Manchukuo and China. These pan -Asian sentiments were, however, too far from the reality of Japanese practice to persuade many Chinese. By this stage in the war Japan had engaged in a number of atrocities against Chinese civilians, such as the Nanjing massacre in December 1937. In addition, Japan sought to apply pressure on the Western Powers. Within China it began a policy of harassment towards their territorial concessions, particularl y at Tianjin in north China, in order to try to force them to become more strictly neutral. In addition to this, in the autumn/winter of 1938 –39 it expanded its influence over south China and the South China Sea, thus beginning to encroach on the European possessions in South-East Asia. With the Marco Polo Bridge incident, the nine powers of the Nine Power Treaty recognized that Japan had broken Nine-Power Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but no initiative was taken, and China was left on its own. The invasion of China was extremely violent, and thousands of civilians were killed. Even today, Japan doesn’t recognize this invasion as the beginning of the second Sino -Japanese war, but defines it as Nanking incident. 1937 is considered the beginning of WW2 in China. The Pacific war: In May and June 1940 Germany seized control of Holland, forced France to surrender, and threatened to extinguish British resistance. The weakening of these European Powers suddenly meant that the colonies of South-East Asia, such as French Indochina, the D utch East Indies, and British Malaya, Borneo and Burma, were very susceptible to Japanese pressure. Germany’s new ascendancy in Europe thus provided a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity. Konoe, the new Japanese prime minister, had the task of forming a ‘new order ’ at home and increasing Japan’s influence abroad. Konoe chose as his foreign minister the controversial figure of Yosuke Matsuoka. Matsuoka acted quickly to increase Japan’s influence in South -East Asia. On 1 August 1940 he announced that Japan intended to construct a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. This was rapidly followed by the sending of an economic mission to the Dutch East Indies and an agreement with the Vichy French regime in Indochina to allow the stationing of Japanese troops there. In addition, in autumn 1940 and into early 1941 he attempted to increase Japan’s influence in South -East Asia by mediating in a border dispute between Thailand and French Indochina. On the global scale he signed a Tripartite Pact with the Axis Powers on 27 September, which was designed to keep America from intervening either in Europe or in Asia by threatening it with the possibility of having to fight a two -front war. The foreign mister Matsuoka’s hope was that this would force Washington, and by inference London, to agree to Japanese penetration into South-East Asia. The US and Britain began to take retaliatory action. The cause was not only the provocative nature of Japanese actions, but also the fact that South-East Asia’s raw materials were vital for the British war effort against Germany and for American rearmament, and thus had to be protected. In September Washington announcing a ban on the export of scrap metal and petroleum capable of conversion into aviation fuel. Japan had limits in its ability to trade with not only the British Empire and the United States, but also Latin America and the Middle East. The situation by the spring of 1941 was therefore that, although Japan had managed to strengthen its position, it had not removed the obstacles to its expansion. It tried to find a solution to American–Japanese differences and signed a Neutrality Pact with the Soviet Union, which in theory freed Japan to concentrate upon southern expansion. However, Hitler upset Japan’s calculations by declaring war upon the Soviet Union. Japan was now torn between taking advantage of the USSR’s predicament and launching an assault on Siberia or taking further moves in the south. Roosevelt decided that the occupation of South Indochina should be used as a justificatio n for the introduction of restrictions on oil exports to Japan. Washington’s hope was that, while the negotiations were in progress, the United States and Britain could use their economic and military power to tip the balance of power in the Pacific against Japan and thus deter it from going to war. Japan became increasingly desperate to reach a settlement. The western powers were convinced that, while Japan might threaten to take dire action, it was believed that, in all likelihood, this was bluff. Con- sequently it was held that the current Anglo-American military presence in the region, along with the promise of gradual reinforcements in the shape of American bombers and British capital ships, was a sufficient deterrent to Japanese aggression. The West fe lt that it had little reason to compromise because of its misreading of the military balance, while Japan was not prepared to make satisfactory con- cessions to the United States, particularly in regard to the conclusion of the war in China. The Arab-Israeli conflict 1900-1948 At the turn of the century, the majority of Arabs in Palestine did not define themselves in national terms, but rather by family, tribe, village or religious affiliation. Among intellectuals, however, the process of national ist self-definition can be traced back to the Ottoman reforms of 1872, which established the independent sanjak (sub-province) of Jerusalem as well as giving rise to the local urban notables. However, it took another five decades for this to develop into a more cohesive discourse. This delay can be explained by a number of factors: Arabs generally considered Palestine as the southern part of Greater Syria; the local political culture was highly fragmented; territorial nationalism was generally less develope d in the Arab Middle East; and last, but not least, any emerging ideas of Palestinian nationalism were in direct competition with the more encompassing ideas of Arab nationalism. Only when the European Powers carved up the Middle East following the First World War, drawing artificial boundaries, did local territorial nationalisms, including Palestinian nationalism, start to assert themselves against the ideological pull of pan-Arabism. While Arab and Palestinian nationalisms emerged irrespective of Zionism, their development was profoundly affected by the emerging conflict in Palestine just as it had been by Arab resistance to Turkish rule and the region’s encounter with the colonial Powers. The First World War had a profound impact on Palestine. Economical ly, it almost destroyed the agricultural sector through the Ottoman army’s confiscation of food, the conscription of the fellaheen (peasants), and a European blockade on the ports, which prohibited the import of grain. Politically, Palestine’s competing nationalist movements were both harshly suppressed through sweeping arrests, the expulsions of foreign Jews and the execution of some Arab nationalists. The Ottomans’ entry into the war in November 1914 on the side of Germany resulted in two independent yet inextricably linked developments : -it provided an opportunity for both Arabs throughout the Middle East and the Zionists in Palestine to shake off Ottoman control -it pitted Britain against the Ottomans in the Middle East, initiating a British search for a llies. This search culminated in a number of secret agreements with the Russians, Italians and French on the future of the Ottoman territories in the event of an Entente victory. The most important such agreement was the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement which mapped out British and French zones of control. It also resulted in agreements with the Arabs and with the Zionists, known as the Hussein– McMahon correspondence and the Balfour Declaration. The Hussein–McMahon correspondence consisted of a set of letters in 1915 and 1916 between the British high commissioner in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon, and Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemites (descendants of prophet Muhammad) and the guardian of the holy places in Mecca and Medina on the Arabian peninsula. Britain’s interests in Hussein’s plans, however, changed once it declared war on Turkey. The British now believed that Hussein might be able to inspire an Arab revolt which would undermine the Turks, stretch their resources and divert them from threatening Britain’s li nk to the rest of its empire, the Suez Canal. This change of interest laid the foundation for the Hussein –McMahon correspondence, which ultimately contained the British promise of Arab independence in return for their support against the Ottomans. The Huss ein– McMahon correspondence was not a formal treaty in any sense. Its lack of formality, however, was not the main problem. Rather, it was the territorial ambiguity and its implicit definition of ‘Arabness’. It made no reference to either Palestine or Jerusalem. Thus it is not surprising that the Arabs believed Palestine would be part of their national territory. Consequently, when the British after the end of the war claimed that Palestine had been excluded, the Arabs felt bitterly betrayed. This was especi ally so as Hussein’s campaign had contributed significantly to the British war effort – f irst, through the seizure of the Red Sea port of Aqaba, which opened the way for attacking Ottoman forces in Palestine from the south east, and, second, through encouraging the Arab uprising in the northern provinces towards the end of the war. Hussein thus believed he had upheld his end of the deal honourably, while the British had not only failed to uphold theirs, but had also promised Palestine as a home to the Jews. WW1 also provided the opportunity for the Zionists to obtain international recognition of their aspirations in Palestine. In 1917 the war in Europe started to go badly for the Entente and once again the British began to explore alliances to shift the balance of power in their favour. The Zionist movement had already been involved in the war through the Zion Mule Corps attached to the British forces at Gallipoli and several Jewish battalions attached to General Allenby’s forces in Palestine, but up to this point it was considered a marginal player. This situation, however, was soon to change, for the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, and the foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, came to see support for the Zionist movement as a means of preventing Russia from exiting the war after the February Revolution, of undermining Germany from within and of galvanizing the American war effort. The key Zionist player in the formation of this alliance was Chaim Weizmann , a Russian-born British subject and an eloquent Zionist spokesman . The notion of a Jewish state pushed by Weizmann gained prominence among British politicians owing to his importance as a scientist involved in the synthesizing of acetone, which was essential for making explosives. Weizmann, thr ough his diplomatic skills and his personal contacts, was able to obtain from the British what had eluded Herzl in all his years of futile diplomacy with the Ottomans: an international, in this case British, guarantee for a Jewish home in Palestine. This guarantee was embodied in a letter from Balfour to the prominent British Zionist Lord Rothschild and is commonly known as the Balfour Declaration. As in the Arab case, the land promised to the Jews had no specified territorial boundaries and the notion of a ‘national home’ was also vague. Even more of the conflict and to recommend solutions. It came to the conclusion that both Jewish and Arab claims to the land were of equal validity but their national aspirations were irreconcilable. The majority opinion in the commission was that only partition of the territory would recognize these claims, allow both peoples self - determination and thus resolve the conflict. The minority considered partition unworkable and suggested a federal union of an Arab state and a Jewish state with a common foreign and defence policy under a central power-sharing government. The Zionists rejected the minority proposal but accepted partition. The Arabs rejected both proposals. The combination of Arab non -cooperation, general sympathy for the Jews following the Holocaust and immense lobbying efforts by the Jewish Agency resulted in a vote in favour of partition . The partition plan divided Palestine in accordance with existing settlement patterns, and meant that the proposed Arab state was to consist of the coastal strip of Gaza, Galilee in the north, and the area around Nablus, Hebron and Beersheba, while the proposed Jewish state would consist of the coastal area around Tel Aviv and Haifa, the Negev in the south, and the Jezreel and Huleh valleys. Jerusalem was to come under international control. However, the lack of territorial contiguity for either state and the problem that small populations of either side were ‘trapped’ in the state of the other did not augur well. Added that the Palestinian Arabs held on to their rejectionist position and that neighbouring Arab countries vowed to destroy any Jewish state, this unsatisfactory compromise ensured that the partition resolution was not the end of the Palestine conflict but rather the beginning of years of Arab–Israeli war. The 1948 war On 14 May 1948 the British mandate came to an end and the state of Israel was proclaimed in the territory allocated to the Jews by the UN partition plan. The following day the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq started their attack on the newly established state of Israel. An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 Arab volunteers constituting the Arab Liberation Army crossed the border to l iberate Palestine and to destroy Israel. During the early period of the war Israel was on the defensive, literally fighting for its survival. By far the biggest problem for Israel was the arms embargo imposed after the partition resolution, which made it difficult to procure sufficient weapons. This military weakness was further compounded by its numerical inferiority and the difficulties of streamlining a fighting force composed of well -trained local Jews and untrained, physically weak European Holocaust survivors, who often had no knowledge of Hebrew. Israel’s weaknesses and the high morale of the Arab fighters, who had been promised a quick and easy war, explain the Arab successes during the first phase of the war, in which Palestinian irregulars or fedayeen (=guerrillas)effectively laid siege to the Jewish part of Jerusalem, while the Arab Liberation Army isolated a number of Jewish settlements in Galilee. The turning point in the war came with the UN-decreed cease-fire on 11 June 1948. While the UN explored the possibilities of a compromise solution, the Israelis and Arabs rearmed . It was at this point that Israel began to gain the upper hand, for while the Arab forces started to suffer from low morale, lack of coordination and logistical support, and, above all, a lack of unity caused by mutual suspicion of each other ’s political and territ orial aims. During the truce Israel imported a significant number of rifles, machine -guns, armoured cars, field-guns, tanks and ammunition, despite the UN embargo. Consequently when fighting resumed, Israel started to make its first territorial gains, including seizing the town of Nazareth. By December Israel controlled most of Galilee, and its forces had crossed into Lebanon in the north and broken the Egyptian blockade in the Negev in the south. In January 1949, when it became clear that the Arabs would not win the war, armistice negotiations began on the island of Rhodes under UN auspices. First Egypt, then Lebanon, Jordan and Syria concluded agreements with Israel. On the territorial side both Israel and the Arab states gained. Israel increased its terri tory by 21% and gained a contiguous and defensible border. Egypt gained the Gaza Strip and Transjordan the West Bank. The Palestinians, in contrast, lost the territory that they had been allotted under the UN partition plan. While the territorial gains were perceived as a clear benefit, the armistice agreements left the political situation unsettled in many ways. The Arabs had lost the war and with it a considerable amount of prestige. This blow to their legitimacy had a destabilizing effect, leading to mil itary coups, social ferment and revolution. Israel failed to gain what it needed most: recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of its neighbours. Thus it was only a matter of time before what was referred to as ‘no -war no-peace’ turned once again into war. If at first the Israeli victory seemed like a miracle, since the 1980s historians have found many explanations on how and why Israel won: 1) The role of the United Kingdom. Traditional historians have argued that the British were anti -Zionist and pro-Arab as evidenced by their handover of many of their military installations in Palestine to the Arab Legion. Revisionist historians assert that British policy was neither anti -Zionist nor pro-Palestinian but determined by their support for the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. 2) According to the new historians it was not a miracle but the result of a favourable military balance. With the exception of the first phase of the war, Israel ’s forces were better trained, better equipped, better motivated, better organized and better armed. 3) The Palestinian refugee problem. Israeli traditionalists claim that the Palestinians left of their own accord and thus Israel bears no responsibility for the refugee problem, while Arab historians have traditionally asserted that the Palestinians were expelled and consequently have the right to return. Israeli revisionists have added a further dimension to this politically charged debate, stating that there is no evidence of Arab broadcasts that encouraged the Palestinians to leave or of blanket expulsion orders. Instead, the refugee problem was the result of the war, of the protracted bitter fighting, and fear. 4) Israeli–Jordanian relations. These became the subject of controversy when ‘new’ historians maintained that the Zionists had colluded with King Abdullah between 1947 and 1949 by agreeing to divide Palestine between Israel and Jordan, thus depriving the Palestinians of a state. Such collusion, of course, challenges the image of Israel as a nation without allies and with only hostil e Arab neighbors. It also shows that Abdullah had few qualms about betraying his fellow Arabs, in general, and the Palestinians, in particular, when he could expand Jordanian territory and influence. 5) Arab war aims. The traditional account of the Arab figh ting against Israel has focused on the claim that the goal was to destroy the fledgling Jewish state totally. While this is supported by the rhetoric coming from the Arab camp, new research has shown that the Arabs were far less united than has been assumed. In fact, each of the Arab states was far more concerned with increasing its own influence and gaining control over the territory allotted to the Palestinians under the partition plan, so much so that the result was a general ‘land grab’ rather than the liberation of Palestine. 6) The search for peace. It has often been asserted that the lack of peace following the 1948 war was the result of Arab intransigence. Revisionists, however, have shown that Israel was equally intransigent when it came to making the com- promises necessary for peace. One of the questions often asked is: why, following the partition of Palestine in November 1947, did only the Zionists end up with a state in 1948 while the Palestinians remained stateless? This can be partially explaine d by the differences in the Zionist and Palestinian institution-building processes over the preceding five decades and partially by the outcome of the 1948 war, Arab disunity and the Palestinian refugee problem. While the Palestinian nation-building process benefited from the revolt, the Palestinian state -building process did not. In contrast to the Jewish case, the proliferation of Arab guerrilla bands did not lead to the establishment of a united paramilitary organization or indeed a Palestinian army. Instead the rise in violence, which influenced British policy so effectively, also led to a forceful clamp-down on the emerging national movement, resulting in the suspension of Arab institutions and the exile of Arab leaders. Finally, the revolt caused sever e damage to the Palestinian economy, ultimately speeding up the unravelling of a highly factionalized and increasingly leaderless Palestinian society. This overview of the Arab institutions reveals a number of weaknesses, the first of which was that not o nly were they competing with Zionist institutions, but they were in themselves divided between those focusing on Palestine and those advocating a greater Arab or Syrian agenda. Another problem concerning, in particular, the early Palestinian institutions was that many of them emerged outside the existing structure of elite politics. On the one hand, this meant the politicization of new segments of society, but, on the other, it threatened the interests of the current leadership, which wanted to preserve the existing political and economic patterns. While being sincere Arab and Palestinian nationalists, their nationalism remained conservative and fearful of any move that could spark social changes which would undermine the existing political order. The leader ship’s indifference, and indeed hostility, to new nationalist institutions assured that many of these movements were weak and short lived. While the disunity within the Palestinian leadership prevented the creation of strong institutions from above, the general erosion of the socio-economic foundation since the late Ottoman period undermined them from below. The combination of oppressive tax and land -tenure systems with the practices of the urban landowners led to the dispossession of the fellaheen (=peasants), to rural–urban migration, and to unemployment, all of which were aggravated by Zionist land purchases, the exclusion of Arabs from the labour market and the Arab Revolt. The United States and the Americas 1900-1945 The Monroe Doctrine is undoubtedly the most longest lasting of America’s foreign policy doctrines. Pronounced initially by President James Monroe in a speech to Congress in 1823, the doctrine had three key parts : - Monroe stated that the various parts of the Western Hemisphe re were no longer ‘to be considered as subjects for further colonization by any European Powers’. - it tressed the differences that existed between the political systems of Europe (monarchies) and the Western Hemisphere (democratic republics). - in return for the non-intervention of European Powers in the Western Hemisphere, the United States would not interfere in European affairs. Given the context of 1823 it was a bold statement; after all the United States, although it had recently acquired Florida from Spain, was militarily no match for the major Powers of Europe. The Monroe doctrine emerged as a justification for growing American involvement in the affairs of its neighbours to the south. At the same time, it lost much of its original ‘democratic’ me ssage and became, in the eyes of many South and Central Americans, a smokescreen for a new kind of colonialism directed from Washington. As the United States acquired bases in Hawaii, and as influential Americans pushed for Congress to support the financin g of the Panama Canal, it became clear that the anti-imperialist and isolationist tradition was facing a growing challenge from those arguing for an expansionist foreign policy. By the 1890s disagreements between the so -called imperialists and anti-imperialists dominated the domestic debate about foreign policy. Justifications presented by imperialists were: - the notion of social Darwinism by simply declaring that among nations, as among animals and plants, the principle of ‘the survival of the fittest ’ applied. Hence if the United States did not continue its expansion in the new century, it would enter a period of decline. - the Americans need of future frontiers to conquer to set them apart from the rest of the world. - economic arguments, in particular increasing exports. Two problems stood in the way. First, in Europe protectionism reigned and threatened to cut the United States off from lucrative continental markets. Second, at the height of imperialism in the 1880s and 1890s, the Europeans transferre d their protectionism to cover much of the rest of the world. Of particular interest to Americans was China . - the United States had to look at the world’s seas as being vital to America’s prosperity and security; hence he advocated the building of a strong navy, additional investment in a vast merchant marine and, perhaps most significantly, the acquisition of overseas bases that could be used to protect American interests which, he argued, had become global. The event that most clearly thrust the Unite d States into its new role as a Great Power was the Spanish– American War of 1898, which was fought mainly over the issue of who controlled the Phil ippines and Cuba, both long-standing Spanish colonies. By the late nineteenth century the ability of Spain to hold on to these possessions had become increasingly stretched as independence move- ments challenged its authority. In Cuba, an island whose close proximity to the United States made it a constant source of interest to Washington throughout the twentieth century, the Spanish had been able to put down a decade -long revolt in 1878. However, starting in 1895 the Cuban independence fighters, led by Jos é Marti ’s Cuban Revolutionary Party , mounted a serious challenge. After a period of official neu - trality, the United States eventually declared war on Spain in April 1898 following the explosion of an American battleship (Maine) in Havana harbour two months earlier. The Spanish–American War lasted only four months. It clearly exposed the weakness of the Spanish Empire and resulted in the American acquisition of the Philippines , Puerto Rico and Guam. As a result, the United States became a major Pacific Power and acquired bases that satisfied both the navalists and those calling for it to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. In addition, the United States naturally strengthened its hold over the Caribbean region by effectively controlling the now nominally independent Cuba. The Filipinos, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, rejected the transfer of their country from Spain to the United States, and a prolonged guerrilla war erupted in February 1899. Over the next three years, American forces fought in a far more ferocious campaign than the one they had just concluded against the Spaniards. Atrocities became commonplace in a conflict that cost the lives of 4,200 Americans and th ousands of Filipinos. Eventually American forces were successful . The anti-imperialists protested against the acquisition of overseas territories as a betrayal of the nation’s traditions. However, the 1900 presidential election of an imperialist president made the world realize the turn the United States was taking. American imperialism in the twentieth century was to be very different from that of the Europeans. In fact, already in 1901 a special Congressional Commission recommended that the Philippines should be not formally absorbed into the United States, but granted independence after an undetermined period of American rule. 1900-1920 If any one man symbolized the new American imperial experiment it was Theodore Roosevelt. In late 1903 he engineered the independence of Panama from Colombia, which was followed by a treaty granting the United States the right to a perpetually renewable lease to build and operate the Panama Canal (officially opened in 1914). As a result, the United States acquired a prepo nderant strategic and commercial position in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean. In Cuba, where troops remained until 1902, the Roosevelt administra- tion made sure that American interests were guaranteed. In particular, the Cubans were compelled to include in their new constitution the so-called Platt Amendment, which gave Washington the right to intervene in Cuban affairs should its ‘independence’ be threatened from outside or its internal order be jeopardized. In addition, to facilitate potential intervention, the Americans established a permanent base in Guantanamo Bay. Until Fidel Castro’s successful revolution in the late 1950s Cuba effectively remained an American protectorate, despite its nominal independence. The so -called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine stipulated that the United States would act as a ‘policeman’ in the Caribbean. American forces would intervene in cases where Caribbean states were threatened by internal or external dangers. The following year the United States put the Roosevelt Corollary into practice by taking over the finances of the Dominican Republic. Roosevelt and his successors used two key arguments to justify the extension of direct American control over the Caribbean. First, Roosevelt in particular believed that the threat of German intervention in the Western Hemisphere was real and would jeopardize America’s national interests . Equally important, however, American intervention in the Caribbean was tied to its increasing investment in the regio n. The United States also had strong economic and strategic interests in the Pacific. However, in contrast to the position in the Caribbean, the United States found that its efforts to project its naval power into the west Pacific and China provoked opposition from a number of rivals, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan and Russia. In particular, the United States faced firm opposition to its attempt to secure a stake in the Chinese market. At the end of the Collapse of the Weimar republic After the Paris peace conference the main problems were : 1. How to constructively include in the new order the losers of the war and those excluded from the system? 2.How to revise the distortions of the system without increasing the level of dissatisfaction of the winners? These were two sides of the same coins. It is the classical dynamic between a rising power and an established power. The winners perceived the requests of the losers as a threat, even when these requests were rational (like Hitler’s). In theory, Germany was stable with the Paris system, but in practice it was not. Many Germans felt like the Weimar republic betrayed the German soul by accepting the provisions of the treaty of Versailles. The German propaganda used the metaphor of the “stab in the back”. After WW1, Germany was reorganized in the Weimar republic, a democratic country (even too democratic for the German so ciety of that time), but never became part of the new Paris system . Few Germans were willing to accept either the territorial losses or the status of their state as a second-rate power that had been imposed at Versailles . German politicians divided between those committed to unmaking the system by force (coalition with USSR the other revisionist powers) and those willing to work towards its overthrow through peaceful means (rely on UK and the US to restrain France and revise the treaty of Versailles). In the early 1930s, Weimar Germany has already revised some point of the treaty of Versailles: o It re-entered in the community of Nations (Locarno Pact, joined the League of nations) o Evacuation of the Rhineland (Hague Conferen ce, 1929) o Cancellation of all economic reparations (Lausanne Conference , 1932) o Germany military «theoretical equality» (rearm beyond the limits set by Versailles , set by the World Disarmament Conference, Geneva 1932) However, using the distortion of Paris system to explain the rise of Nazism is not enough. The German political elite changed the Paris system step by step. The main problems arrived with the 1929 great depression: as the German economy was tied with the US economy thanks to the Dawes Plan and Young Plan, it collapsed in 1 929. In 1931 Germany was in serious economic crisis which soon spread through central Europe . Germany was acutely vulnerable to the financial storms. Half of the deposits in German banks were foreign, mostly American and British. In Europe, German industry was the worst hit by the fall in demand. Moreover, the legiti macy of the Weimar Republic and its founding centre-left Reichstag coalition arose from a commitment to social reform and welfare . Even France granted the impossibility of further German payments and agreed to make an end of reparations in return for a final German transfer of 3,000,000,000 marks (which was never made) . Lengthening unemployment lines and declining tax revenue added up to a budget deficit. Bitter debates in the Reichstag over how to spend the shrinking budget shook the confidence of foreign investors and the domestic electorate. In Germany, where democracy was associated with defeat and humiliation, voters disavowed parliamentary politics in huge numbers. For salvation, they looked to the anti-democratic parties of the Left and Right. On the Right, a propaganda campaign waged against the Young Plan played on what many already believed: that Allied reparations and other sinister forces (Bolsheviks, Jews, etc.) were responsible for G ermany’s suffering. In March 1930, unable to break the financial deadlock, Weimar ’s last social democratic coalition government resigned. From then on, until Hitler suspended the Reichstag altogether in March 1933, German chancellors no longer governed on the basis of a parliamentary majority, but instead enacted legislation through emergency powers of decree made available to them by the Reich president, Paul von Hindenburg. Nazi Germany foreign policy 1933-1939 In Germany, due to power imbalances and economic crises there were: Brutalization of politics and violence + Ultranationalism + Racism + Antisemitism Hitler was born and grew up in Vienna, where he absorbed the social Darwinism, radical nationalism and anti - Semitism that were later fundamental to Nazism. The defining experience in the young Hitler ’s life was the trench. He thrived on what he and many others held to be combat’s purifying qualities. The Kaiser ’s army awarded him an Iron Cross for bravery. After recovering from the shock of Germany’s defeat and blindness induced by poison gas, Hitler was recruited by the post -war German army as a political agitator. Then he became an early member of a small nationalist German Workers Party . The two main causes of the rise of Nazism therefore, were: the Paris peace conference and the consequences of the great depression. Two concepts were fundamental to his world view. One was race, the other space. They are presented in his two books -Mein Kampf (=my struggle) written in prison in 1924. Human history, according to Hitler, was a struggle between races. Superior races either flourished or perished. To grow, they had to preserve their biological purity and conquer ever more living space (Lebensraum). He intended to erase the disastrous 1919 settlement and to wage pitiless war against the most dangerous racial enemy, the Jews. In the eyes of Nazis, the Jews were a parasitic race that plotted to enslave some races with Bolshevism, such as the Slavs, and to destroy others, especially the Germanic (or Aryan) master race. To expand abroad, Germany needed a pure and vigorous racial core at home. The possibil ity of another ‘stab in the back’ by internal enemies had to be removed. Race laws to isolate Jews, Gypsies and other ‘alien’ peoples were brutally enforced, while social measures were introduced to promote the birth rate of ‘healthy’ Germans and to sterilize, abort and later murder those who were deemed to be racially inferior or defective. Hitler ’s race revolution inside Germany, however, could not be consummated without a policy of ferocious and ceaseless expansion abroad. War would not only provide the Lebensraum essential for Germany’s growth, but it would also permit the Nazis to sweep away the last remnants of the old conservative order. -unpublished second book in 1928 in which Hitler declared that US world dominance will reduce all European states to the level of Switzerland. In the future of Germany there would have been a clash between the real winner of WW1 (the US) and Germany. In Hitler ’s opinion the US society was declining because many races were part of it. In 1923, during the Ruhr occupation, the Nazi party started to become popular. In November 1923 Hitler earned national notoriety after a Bürgerbräukeller Putsch (=coup d’état) in Munich, organized by the heart of the Nazi party, hoping to spark a revolution against France, Belgium and the Versailles system, but was suffocated. The great depression created the conditions for the Nazi seizure of power. During the 1930 German Reic hstag election, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP - Nazi) became the second largest party. In 1932 the NSDAP became the first largest party. Hitler wished to be a ‘presidential’ chancellor, with full emergency powers, but Hindenburg was only ever willing to appoint Hitler as a ‘parliamentary’ one. Some top -ranking Nazis criticized Hitler for refusing to take power in stages by entering into a political alliance with the conservatives. Hitler held out for all or nothing. He was fighting elect ions to destroy democracy, not to form a cabinet based on a right-wing coalition in the Reichstag. Few months later, the NSDAP saw electoral decline because they refused to be part of a coalition Government. German conservatives thought they could “cage” t he NSDAP and Hitler by inviting him to run power. Hitler promised to create a right -wing coalition government with Papen, but on 30 January 1933, once Hitler had been sworn in, the promised Reichstag coalition failed to materialize and Hindenburg had little choice but to offer the new chancellor use of his emergency powers. Hitler became Chancellor (Machtergreifung = rise to power). His objectives w ere -the destruction of the Paris System -the revision of the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany, espec ially change part 5 of the treaty of Versailles and recreate an army (normal condition for a great power) -redrawing the German borders with the inclusion of all German speakers in a sigle country. After the Great War there were Germans living in many European Countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland). He wanted to create the Grossdeutschland. Continue with e astward expansion (Poland, Russia) to gain land for Germany (Lebensraum). The propaganda made people believe that Germany was too small for all the Germans. It was ultimately the lack of judgement of German politicians, among which Hindenburg, that create d Hitler ’s opportunity to seize power and to consolidate Nazi rule afterwards. By no means was this the only potential outcome of the first thirty days of 1933. Had Hitler been denied the chancellorship, his all -or-nothing quest for power might have backfired. His popularity among German voters was already on the decline. As frustration within the Nazi movement grew, the party might have fragmented. The most plausible alternative to the Hitler chancellorship was a military dictatorship under General Schleic her. After all , the small but disciplined German army would have had little trouble controlling the streets. Unlike Stresemann, who sought to rebuild German power through diplomacy, Schleicher would have put force before diplomacy in the revision of the ha ted territorial settlement of 1919. Even so, Germany’s top -ranking army officers were men of prudence. In all likelihood they would have fought rapid, localized conflicts against minor states such as Poland, but not risked another world war. The German ruling elites were not the last people to misjudge Hitler and his ideology. Many foreigners saw Nazism as just a more vulgar and brutal form of Prussian militarism. The Nazi message resonated with the anti-communism, anti -capitalism and anti -liberalism sweeping across Europe. In Germany, conservatives took comfort in Hitler ’s talk of national revival and anti -Bolshevism; radicals looked forward to the implementation of the socialism in National Socialism. Hitler played on public anxieties and used violence to secure Nazi rule. Political opponents were locked up and all other political parties were disbanded. Labour unions, the professions, churches and other public associations were co -ordinated with Nazi practices. Hitler as the leader Germany’s initial mili tary weakness dictated that Hitler ’s programme had to unfold in roughly defined stages. The first stage was Germany’s return as a Great Power through large -scale rearmament and territorial expansion in Central and Eastern Europe. Stage two was the conquest of European Russia and the con- solidation and ruthless economic exploitation of Lebensraum in the east. The final stage – one that Hitler was unsure he would live to see – would be the final battle for global supremacy against the United States. Achievin g this long-term goal called for arms, autarky and allies. Hitler hoped to strike a bargain on naval strength and spheres of influence with the British, and form a close alliance with Italy, thereby isolating Germany’s arch -enemy, France. The precondition to world domination was, of course, military supremacy. Hitler well knew that war preparations did not entail simply the buildup of large standing forces to fight the first battles , but also the acquisition of huge arms industries and self -sufficiency in raw materials. From the very start of his chancellorship, Hitler turned over the whole German economy to military preparations. In September 1936, the Führer appointed Field Marshal G öring to head the Four Year Plan to accelerate the drive for a total war economy. Nonetheless, it would take until the mid-1940s for Germany to be ready to fight and win the wars of ‘great proportions’ that Hitler desired. Concrete moves occurred in 1934, after the death of old President Paul von Hindenburg . Immediately after, Hitler created the figure of the Führer: he was he Chancellor and the President of Germany. He obtained supreme power in home politics, direction of foreign policy and oath of the armed forces to the Führer . Germany's first foreign moves were characterized by both aggressiveness and normalization . Zara Stainer argued that his arguments were rational and well developed. Hitler had the ability to respond flexibly to changes in the European situation without losing sight of his ultimate goal s. Aggressiveness: Germany pulled out of disarmament talks and left the League of nations in 1933. However, he offered disarmament if other powers disarmed. In 1934 there was a first attempt of Anschluss (annexation of Austria). A year later there was a huge German rearmament. Normalization : ratified the Protocol of Berlin of 1931 (renovation of German -Soviet non-aggression Pact of treaty of Rapallo) and German-Polish non-aggression Pact (10 years). The two men representing the first years of the Nazi rise were Konstantin von Neurath and Joachim von Ribbentrop. The former was more moderate, while the latter was the star of the German foreign policy. The first goal of Hitler was avoiding the Kaunitz coalition (Russia + France + Poland + Italy). The collaboration of Poland was key in this sense. Following Bismarck's lesson (look at east and south so secure borders) , Hitler renewed the Protocol of Berlin and signed the German-Polish non-aggression Pact, which recognized Poland's borders and end of custom war and met Mussolini in Stra (Venice) . For Hitler, Mussolini was a master, the first politician who created a totalitarian state. The meeting was a success, but failed soon after failed due to…  the Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der langen Messer) in 1934. The revolutionaries Sturmabteilung (SA) were killed. At this point the dark side of Nazism became clear  First attempt of Anschluss (failure). The Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, a personal friend of Mussolini was murdered but the attempted coup d’état failed because the Austrian military intervened to back up the Government. Mussolini moved Italian troops to the Austrian border to deter Hitler from invading Vienna, because in Italy there are German speaking people, and Mussolini feared a possible invasion by Berlin  In 1935, using the pretext that the other powers had not disarmed, Hitler announced that Germany was going to reintroduce conscription and create an army of 36 divisions and that Germany was going to build up an air force (Luftwaffe) and expand its navy. All of these actions were against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles but were very popular in Germany . Italy, Britain and France issued a protest in response. These 3 moves scared Italy , France and the UK. The 1935 Stresa conference brought the western powers closer, and promised to fight the rise of Nazism. Therefore, a rection to Nazism by the other powers arrived only in 1935. The Stresa front resisted only for a few months, as all the players moved individua lly, without a cohesive view. Italy changed its position: if at first it was one of the revisionist powers, now it became the police of the system. This deceptive display of unity between France and the Locarno guarantors was short lived. In June, Britain signed a bilateral naval agreement with Germany. In October, the Italians, who had only just signed up to military agreements which set out how they would assist France in a war against Germany, attacked Abyssinia. France: from 1933 to 1938 France accommodated the Nazis. In 1935 there was the Franco-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance (but the USSR signed an alliance with Czechoslovak ia at the same time). This alliance revealed to be useless due to the remilitarization of the Rhineland and France wished to have an alliance with Poland, but at that time Poland was friendly with Germany. France was trying to persuade Germany to join in its own containment. Security talks were designed to convince Berlin that Franco -German détente was the only way to alter the peace settlement. As we know, Hitler responded to this security -building effort by occupying the Rhineland and thereafter ignoring French overtures. Domestic politics in France complicated its foreign policy : the French witnessed a 30 per cent fall in national income and growing budget deficits, which polarized the electorate between the Right and the Left. Alignment with Fascist Italy was impossible for the Left, while a rapprochement with Soviet Russia infuriated the Right. Governments also changed frequently. In April 1936, the election of a centre-left coalition known as the Popular Front exacerbated the ideological rift. Industrial unrest and social turmoil erupted. The presence of the French Communist Party in the coalition disgusted the right - wing group. Investors became jittery. The flight of capital from the Paris financial markets drove down the value of the franc. Once Franco started his rebellion in Spain, the perception of imminent civil war in France became widespread. The Popular Front therefore championed non- intervention and worked with the British to put it into effect. Britain: from 1933 to 1938 Britain accommodated the Nazis. In 1935 there was the Anglo-German naval agreement. Germany received the green light to build submarines and navy. Britain was scared of the French foreign policy, because the alliance with Russia already occurred in the 19 th century. Germany was considered useful to contain the French power projection and the Soviet threat. The British were illusioned that if they kept giving to Germany what they requested, at some point they will be satisfied and no longer make requests. The UK was scared of Germany and the USSR (it would have been an enemy for British colonies in Asia). Therefore, it For salvation from the security crisis, some Europeans looked to either the United States or Russia. Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, for instance, hoped to enlist American support to deter the aggression in Europe and the Pacific, while Pierre Cot, the French a ir force minister, dreamed of a formidable Franco-Soviet alliance based on air power to enforce the peace. From Locarno in 1925 to Munich in 1938, the pre - ferred solution for those Europeans hoping to erect a new security structure always rested on four-power co-operation between Britain, France, Germany and Italy. USA: Before 1940, there was no prospect that the United States would be willing to save Europe anyway. The slump reinforced the American desire for home-grown solutions to their problems. Abhorrence of war was expressed through investigation and legislation. Through the Senate Inquiry into the Munitions Industry of 1934–36, Americans tried to expose the sinister forces of militarization creeping into their economy. Through the three Neutrality Acts (1935–37) and the Johnson Act (1934), all of which restricted commerce with belligerents as well as the movement of American nationals through war zones, the United States hoped to isolate itself from any future great war. Granted, the United States navy, the world’s second largest, exercised the minds of Japanese admirals. Yet, for force projection into Europe, the American army and air force were negligible. Before 1939, Hitler took no notice of Roosevelt ’s high -sounding admonitions for peace. Stormy relations with Europe’s democracies also limited Washington’s capacity to shape events. This was particularly true of Anglo-American relations. On the naval question, both sides buried their long -standing differences over fleet parity and cruiser strength to conclude the London Naval Treaty in March 1936. However, the chief obstacle to wider co-operation was trade. Americans saw Imperial Preference as harmful to world peace and prosperity. In November 1917, Washington shied away from talk of economic sancti ons and fleet movements at a conference convened in Brussels to mediate in the Sino-Japanese War. In December, a Japanese air attack on British and American Yangtze gunboats paved the way for secret Anglo-American naval talks – but nothing out in the open. There was now only one option available to the president, the so -called Welles Plan. Sumner Welles, the under-secretary of state and a close confidant of Roosevelt, first proposed in 1936 a conference to work out the world’s political, armament, financial and economic problems and to establish worldwide unanimity on the ‘fundamental norms’ to ‘govern international conduct’. Chamberlain asked Roosevelt to wait. As war over Czechoslovakia loomed large, the prime minister sought to defuse the crisis through b ilateral talks with Hitler. Washington greeted the Munich Accords with misapplied moral outrage directed at London as well as relief that European war had been averted. In 1939, as the Munich settlement unravelled and war appeared imminent, Roosevelt and his top military and diplomatic officials began to turn the president’s concept of ‘quarantine’ into an operative policy of political and military deterrence through allies and air power. USSR: it supplied men and matériel to the left-wing Republican government. In May 1935 the Soviet Union did conclude a mutual assistance treaty with France. The Soviet approach to external security was shaped by Russia’s history and ideology, and by internal debates over policy. In the early 1920s, the Russian economy lay devastated by war, revolution and foreign military intervention. Because the wave of workers’ revolutions that Lenin had predicted would transform the world had failed to materialize, the Soviet leadership was compelled after 1919 to defend socialism with the resources of Russia alone. As the Red Army’s defeat by Poland in 1920 had underscored, this could be achieved only if Russia industrialized to wage machine -age warfare. Joseph Stalin, who had out- manoeuvred his internal rivals to become sole leader o f the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, recognized the need for an internal revolution before socialism could be exported abroad. In 1928, in order to build ‘socialism in one country’, the first Five -Year Plan of crash industrialization was launched. Industr ialization, as well as the forced collectivization of agriculture, was accompanied by the merciless suppression of alleged internal class enemies and saboteurs. By the early 1930s, conspicuous progress had been made in equipping the Red Army with advanced weapons and readying the Soviet economy for total war. The timing appeared close indeed. The onset of the Depression, the growth of fascism and Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, which menaced Russia’s vulnerable Asian territories, all appeared to portend the long-expected capitalist onslaught. Moscow’s initial response was to conclude non-aggression pacts with the Baltic States, France and Poland. In contrast to the United States, Soviet Russia appeared eager to enter the European states system. In 1934, the Soviets joined the League of Nations and, in the following year, signed mutual security guarantees with France and Czechoslovakia. These treaties committed the Soviet Union to coming to the aid of the Czechs, if they fell victim to aggression, so long as France did so first. In 1935, communists across Western Europe were instructed to form Popular Front coalitions with democratic parties to bolster resistance to fascism. Despite Moscow’s search for a way out of isolation, this arm’s-length treatment of Russia by everyone else rendered the Soviet Union until 1939 in effect a non-Power. The commissar for foreign affairs Litvinov’s dilemma was painfully exposed by the coming of the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet leadership could not afford to watch while their chief potential ally in Western Europe, France, was threatened by a fascist victory in Spain. Yet Soviet military intervention on the side of the Spanish Republic and its Popular Front government was greeted in Paris and London with great hostility, and lent substance to Hitler ’s claim that his fight was a European one against the forces of international communism. Despite Hitler ’s brutal suppression of the German communists, the Soviets likewise hoped to co-exist peacefully with the Nazis. However, the Führer rebuffed Soviet feelers and trumpeted himself as Europe’s saviour from Bolshevism. One German delegate to the World Economic Conference openly called for the dismemberment of Russia for the benefit of ‘people without Lebensraum ’. It was under these foreboding circumstances, not to mention a lack of alternatives, that the Soviets turned to collective security. In Western eyes, the terror confirmed Russia’s status as an uncertain ally. The situation did not change until war appeared imminent in the summer of 1939, when suddenly Germany, France and Britain courted the Soviet Union. In May, to signal that all bids woul d be welcome, Stalin replaced Litvinov with the latter ’s most vocal internal critic, Vyacheslav M. Molotov. As the diplomacy reached a climax in August, the choice for Stalin was between a deal with Hitler, which promised to isolate Russia from the impendi ng inter-capitalist conflict, or a triple alliance with Paris and London, which would ensure Russia’s early entry into the ‘second imperialist war ’. Accordingly, on 23 August, Molotov and Hitler ’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, concluded a non - aggression treaty. Two consequences 1) Germany as new European diplomatic center. All the players turned to Germany because until 1936 Germany was the least violent revisionist power: -1936 Austro-German Agreement. Austria recognized to be a German State. Austria went under the indirect influence of Berlin (Italy didn't reacted because was focused on Ethiopia) -1936 Belgium mains libres policy (free hands). Revision of Bruxelles foreign policy: c ame out from the alliance with France and went back to neutrality -1937 Italy joined the Anticomintern Pact 2) Radicalization in German foreign policy In 1937 Hitler published the Hossbach memorandum (=plans for the future. Written by the Friedrich Hossbach). The document recorded a meeting with army, navy and air force chiefs about a new aggressive strategy against Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler wished to create a huge Germany containing all the people in Europe who spoke German. It was the second attempt at Anschluss, thanks to which Hitler obtained the fus ion of the Weimar republic and Austria. It had never happened before, and obtained huge internal consensus. Italy wasn ’t informed, but it accepted this move because after the mistake of the invasion of Ethiopia it couldn ’t do otherwise. Between September 1938 and 1939 there was a decisive change in European diplomacy. In 1938, British and French statesmen permitted the Reich to annex Austria and the German -speaking parts of Czechoslovakia; in 1939, London and Paris signalled their determination to stop Nazi expansion by extending security guarantees to Poland, Romania and Greece. This shift from a policy of accommodation to one of resistance placed Britain and France on a path to war. Before 1937, to achieve his goals, Hitler exploited opportunities as the y appeared. Afterwards, Hitler accelerated the pace by initiating crises. The first indication of this change in posture came at a meeting of Hitler ’s top officials on 5 November 1937 : the Fü hrer remarked that what he was about to say constituted his ‘last will and testament’. The aim of long -range policy, he declared, was to obtain Lebensraum for the growth of the ‘German racial core’, and this could ‘only’ be executed with force of arms. To sustain the breakneck pace of German preparations for war and to move closer to autarky, the resources of Austria and Czechoslovakia had to be seized before 1943–45. By that stage, the military advantage that the Reich had obtained by arming early would begin to waste away as the other Powers caught up. Hitler speculated that Austria and Czechoslovakia might be taken earlier than anticipated if France was im mobilized by civil war or if a war broke out between Britain, France and Italy. Although the senior army commanders present at the meeting objected to any action that might embroil the Reich prematurely in a European war, the F ührer was convinced that Paris and London had already ‘tacitly written off the Czechs’. In February 1938, the army generals who at the November conference had voiced anxiety about the risks of a general European war were ousted from their posts. Hitler assumed supreme command of a Wehrmacht which had grown from a few under-armed units to one of Europe ’s most operationally capable armed forces. His hold on the economy and diplo - macy was also tightened. Göring, who headed the Luftwaffe and the Four-Year Plan, extended his authority over the economy, while Ribbentrop, a pompous sycophant who said only what his master wanted to hear, became foreign minister. On 9 March 1938, Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austria’s chancellor, took a bold step to counter German economic and political penetration into his country. He announced a plebiscite to determine whether his fellow Austrians wished to remain independent of the Reich. The tactic caught Berlin by surprise. To pre -empt an Austrian vote for sovereignty, the Nazis quickly improvised preparation for an armed intervention. A torrent of threats from Berlin persuaded Schuschnigg to cave in. On 11 March, Germany occupied Austria and Hitler proclaimed the Anschluss. Britain and France did not oppose him. Attention now turned to Czechoslovakia. To keep th e issue on the boil, Hitler ordered Konrad Henlein, the the three million Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, to demand minority rights that the government in Prague would find impossible to grant. War planning against Czechoslovakia (Operation Green) was stepped up to take into account the fact that German forces could now attack from Austria as well as Germany. Yet, for much of April –May 1938, Hitler was in no hurry to deal with the Czechs. Then, unexpectedly, on the weekend of 19 –21 May, Hitler moved on with the conquer of the Sudetenland, close to Czechoslovakia (the famous Munich crisis). The origins of the crisis remain obscure. What we do know is that Czech intelligence received a false warning that the Wehrmacht was amassing to strike. Unnerved by the Anschluss , the Czech army prudently called up reservists and manned its frontier fortifications. Paris and London issued diplomatic warnings. Hitler was forced to deny that he planned to attack. In the world press, his denials were portrayed as a humiliat ing climb-down. Hitler was enraged. Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia were ordered to intensify internal agitation, while German newspapers began a propaganda campaign accusing the Czechs of heinous crimes against the Sudetenlanders. Many were the long-term causes of the crisis: - most of the new states distrusted Hungary. Indeed, the ‘Little Entente’, which had been formed in the 1920s between Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, was designed solely to deter Hungarian revanchism - the bitter rivalry between the Czechs and the Poles guaranteed that no one leader would emerge - the slump had led the largely agricultural and raw material -exporting economies of the Eastern European states to come under German dominance. Economic dislocation also led to righ t-wing dictatorships as well as the shameful persecution of Jews and other minorities - France swung between seeing its Eastern allies as assets and as liabilities. While they might help to contain Germany, they might also be the cause of the next Franco-German war. Also French influence was not always welcomed by the fiercely independent Eastern Europeans - the British never regarded Eastern Europe’s frontiers as sacrosanct. Many sympathized with the principle of national self-determination . This is why the British did not attempt to reverse the Anschluss. The policy of appeasement rested on the mistaken belief that Hitler could be satisfied through orderly revision negotiated between Britain and Germany. Chamberlain believed that Germany co uld be pacified, if only Hitler could be brought to the bargaining table. Chamberlain’s answer was to open a direct channel to Berlin. In November 1937, his friend Lord Halifax (who will become foreign secretary) was sent to the Reich on an unofficial visit to explain Britain’s position. Halifax told Hitler that Britain wanted a frank exchange of views on economic, colonial and territorial issues. If London and Berlin could arrive at reasonable solutions to these problems, then peaceful relations could be established between the European Great Powers. In reply, Hitler confessed that he too desired peace and only demanded a redress of Germany’s legitimate grievances. France was even more worried. The Czechs had a fine army, which would put up a brave fight be fore certain defeat, but French officials were unsure about whether France itself could withstand even a brief fight. The air force possessed only fifty modern planes. Aircraft production had slowed to a trickle. Since 1936, the franc had been devalued three times. Gold reserves dwindled and revenue declined. France faced bankruptcy. External politics did not augur well either. Poland (and Hungary) l ined up with Germany to demand Czech territory, and the French were unwilling to count on the Soviets. Chamberlain and Halifax, though acutely aware that they could never forsake France, attempted to ‘restrain’ their French counterparts by refusing to state plainly whether they would assist France in a war against Germany. The British instead pressed French minis ters to persuade their Czech allies to offer the Germans concessions. E ́douard Daladier, the French premier, concluded that France could not uphold its treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia without inviting national disaster. He did not share Chamberlain’s optimism that there could be lasting peace with Germany, yet one thing was certain. It was Chamberlain who had the initiative. He pursued the course he had laid out after Halifax’s visit to Germany. In August 1938, he sent an emissary to mediate between the Sudetenlanders and Czechs. Twice Chamberlain flew to Germany for bilateral talks with Hitler. On 15 September, at the first meeting, Chamberlain said ‘yes’ in principle to a German annexation of the Sudetenland, though Paris and Prague would also have to agree. Three days later, Daladier also agreed. Under pressure from London and Paris, the Czech president, Edvard Benes, had little choice. On 22 September, the prime minister flew to inform Hitler that he would now get what he wanted. In reply, Hitler screamed for more, including the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland by German forces. The UK made a mistake: it declared that, in case of German invasion, the UK would have helped Czechoslovakia (but it didn’t mention a possible invasion of Poland). This is an example of the policy of appeasement. Germany was still considered a good player, useful to contain the threat of the USSR, from the point of view of the UK. Europe was on the brick of the war after the Munich conference, when the Sudetenland would have been separated from Czechoslovakia and given to Hitler (created even more internal consensus). At Munich, the transfer of the Sudetenland was settled and the Four Powers guaranteed the frontiers of what was left of the Czech state. In reality, the whole area of Czechoslovakia was invaded because they rebelled during the conquest of Sudetenland. Hitler wasn ’t totally happy about this occupation because the Czechs are Slavic people, who, according to Hitler, are considered like slaves. The western powe rs considered this as a contradiction of the Munich agreement. Chamberlain thought that Munich would be the start of a general appeasement that would see Germany rejoin the League and progress towards world disarmament, and an end to autarky. Chamberlain had even persuaded him to sign the notorious Anglo-German declaration, which committed Hitler to ‘consultation’ as the normal method of settling disputes. All Hitler ever wanted from the British was to be left alone. Now he would rid Europe of Britain. Over the winter of 1938–39, Hitler raised the production targets for the expansion of the Luftwaffe and the German navy – both forces directed against the British. Ties with Tokyo and Rome were to be strengthened to paralyse the British Empire. The prerequisit e to Lebensraum was now the subjugation of France. But the Czechs and Poles would have to be dealt with first to safeguard the eastern front. On 14–15 March 1939, under the threat of air bombardment, the Prague government was given no choice but to allow Germany to occupy what was left of the Czech state. Poland was a more complex problem. What Hitler wanted was extra - territorial rights in the Polish corridor, the annexation of the Free City of Danzig – both of which had been granted in 1919 to Poland to p rovide access to the sea – as well as Polish adherence to the Anti-Comintern Pact. In exchange, Hitler and Ribbentrop promised Warsaw 4) Change of the Soviet position and the broken trust of the western powers. The Soviet Union changed its position towards foreign policy by changing the foreign mini ster: Vyacheslav Molotov came. In 1939 Joachim von Ribbentrop (German Foreign Minister) and Vyacheslav Molotov (Soviet People's Commissioner for Foreign Affairs) signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: a ten-year non-aggression pact (do not join coalitions opp osed to the counterpart). This would mean a delay of a German attack and a renewed Japanese attack, to better prepare the Soviet armed forces. Thanks to the agreement, Stalin wanted to gain territories lost in the interwar period and possibly additional territories. Moreover, Stalin wanted to keep the Ukrainian population under control (suffered millions of deaths in the forced collectivization and artificially created famine of 1932 and 1933) . The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a secret protocol : the two powers secretly divided the sphere of influence in eastern Europe (Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Republics) . However, this plan didn’t take place because already in 1939 Germany invaded Poland , and the same was done by the Soviets some days later because they expected Warsaw to collapse soon. WW2 is the last hegemonic war we have seen so far. The hegemon at that time was the US, who signed the importance of the productive system over military power. The US became a superpower dur ing the war, and after the war the USSR joined. The GDP of the allies was 6 times higher than the GDP of the axis powers. The US was especially strong on this point. The military power wasn ’t as important as countries like Germany thought it was. Germany and the Japanese Empire were regional hegemons , but not worldwide Superpowers. They weren’t really a threat for the global balance of power. The two countries dominated over their region. They were both revisionist, expansionist and racist . Some data: 65 million people died (and the winning countries saw more deaths due to the holocaust and the conflicts between China and the Soviet Union). We can say that there were two wars at the same time (different but united):  Asia-Pacific: Japanese Empire vs. Western European Great Powers and China (later USA) . The Japanese Empire started colonial and ethnic annihilation in China, which doesn’t “respect the war rules”  Europe-Mediterranean: German Reich (plus Italy) vs. Western European Great Powers (later USA) . A traditional ius in bello “respect of the war rules” with prisoners, doctors… War rules weren’t respected in the German Reich ’s colonial and ethnic annihilation. There were great political differences among allies , which may be referred to as the origins of post-war frictions and Cold War. These differences were seen among Germany, Italy and Japan (Italy tried to fight a «Parallel War» while Japan didn't attack USSR , which enraged Germany). Moreover, the UK, USA, USSR and China (so-called Big Four) were divided by many political and strategic rivalries (one of the most important was the European second front problem-> eastern Europe or southern Europe?). The beginning (1939-1940) Hitler ’s war began on 1 September 1939. At 4.45 a.m., the old German cruiser Schleswig-Holstein shelled a small Polish army installation at Danzig known as the Westerplatte. At the same time, the bulk of the German army, well over fifty divisions, including five tank formations as well as eight other lightly armoured and motorized units, began to cross the Polish frontier. The campaign was brief. The Wehrmacht , with a superior war-fighting doctrine that stressed aggressive movement and encirclement, exploited its numerical advantages in numbers of men, tanks and aircraft to break through the Polish defences. The invasion of Poland is the so-called Blitzkrieg. On September 3rd, 1939, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany . Despite the Pact of Steel with Germany, Italy did not stand beside its northern partner in September 1939. On 17 September the Soviet Union joined in by occupying eastern Poland and some days later it invaded Finland. This wasn ’t the beginning of WW2, as at this point the conflict was limited to eastern Europe. It was just one of the multiple conflicts occurring at that time in eastern Europe. It was the first real example of international violence of Nazi Germany: previous examples were performed by Japan and Italy. Some of the other conflicts were the Polish-Czechoslovak border war, the Italian occupation of Albania, the Slovak Hungarian War, the Slovak Polish War, the Soviet- Finnish War (the so-called Winter War)… Why did the war become as spread as we know? The principal driving force behind this step-by-step process of escalating violence was relentless Nazi aggression. Between September 1939 and December 1941, Hitler wilfully added to the number of Great Powers arrayed against the Third Reich, but despite stunn ing successes on the battlefield in the early years of the conflict, he and his generals could not bring the European war to a victorious conclusion. Part of the explanation for this failure lies in the fact that Hitler ’s opponents resolved to fight on even after suffering the severest of military setbacks. This determination did not stem simply from a fear of Germany’s growing power, but more significantly from a widespread belief that Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism stood for a new form of global barbarism that had to be stamped out before it was too late. However, when did the UK and France declare war on the Soviet Union? They never did! They didn’t want to link all totalitarian states, and hoped to reach an agreement with Nazi Germany ( Sitzkrieg). The UK realized that some of Hitler ’s request were rational and could have used German revisionism against the USSR. In case of an axis between Germany, the USSR and Japan, no one could have ever hoped to win. For the UK, the USSR was the worst enemy of all , even more than Germany. For this reason, the UK supported Finland during the Soviet- Finnish War. The UK and France declared war on Germany, but didn ’t move troops to Germany, only to Finland. All the other wars in eastern Europe weren ’t even considered important. Countries searched for a compromise to avoid a big conflict (but they couldn ’t imagine that WW2 was about to start). In a speech to the Reichstag on 6 October 1939, Hitler made a vague peace overture to the Allies, Britain and France, by offering the restoration of a rump Polish state in exchange for peace. A few days later, the Allies rejected any talk of a compromise peace that legitimized Nazi conquests. However, despite their rejection of Hitler ’s offer, the Allies appeared to have little appetite for waging war. French troops did move forward of the Maginot Line, but only to boost Polish morale and improve France’s defensive position. The Allies were equally reluctant to bomb German military and industrial targets for fear of provoking re taliatory raids against their own civilian populations. Only at sea was the war fought with intensity. The Allies disrupted German shipping and the Germans launched submarine attacks on Allied shipping. Prime Minister Chamberlain and Premier E ́douard Dalad ier never truly intended to fight the war with vigour because the ‘appeasers’ stil l held out some hope of a last-minute deal with Hitler. Stalin appeared to be supporting Hitler : Germany could count on Russia as a secure source of raw materials to circumvent the Allied naval blockade. The French proposed bombing Russia’s oilfields in the Caucasus to block part of the Reich’s fuel supply . By May 1940, the Western forces, including those of neutral Holland and Belgium, could muster 152 divisions to oppose Ger many’s 135. The Allies had twice as many field guns as the Germans. France alone fielded one thousand tanks more than Germany. Only in the air did the Germans have a numerical edge, but even this steadily diminished as French and British aircraft productio n outpaced that of Germany, and contracts for modern American fighter planes were fulfilled. English and French decision-makers looked to intervention in Scandinavia for decisive results. The key was Germany’s dependence on Swedish iron ore. If ore shipments could be stopped, so experts believed, then Hitler ’s resource -starved war industries would soon grind to a halt. Since Sweden’s ports were locked in ice most of the year, the iron ore had to be transported north by railway first to the Norwegian all -weather port of Narvik, and then shipped southward along the Norwegian coast to Germany. For the Western Powers, the complicating factor was that they could not openly flout Norway’s neutrality. The Anglo -French Supreme War Council agreed on a plan to mine Norway’s territorial waters to force German shipping out to the open seas, where the Royal Navy could intercept it. The hope was that the mining operation would force the Germans to invade Scandinavia. In turn, the German invasion would trigger the swift dispatch of an Anglo-French land force to secure Narvik, thus denying the German war economy a reliable supply of minerals. The snag in this scheme was that the Führer had also become concerned about the security of Germany’s prime source of iron ore and, un beknown to Allied intelligence, had ordered his own invasion plan into motion days before the British could lay their naval mines. On 9 April, the first day of the German attack, Denmark fell. Norway proved a much harder nut to crack. Norwegian fortress gunners sank the Blücher in the Oslo fjord before the German cruiser could land troops tasked to detain King Haakon VII. The Allies rushed troops across the North Sea and tried to assist the Norwegian defence, but German air power and numbers prevailed by e arly June. The Reich’s northern flank was secured, and the Norwegian coast provided excellent bases for German air and sea forces to attack British shipping in the North Sea and the North Atlantic. As a consequence, Chamberlain decided to resign. On May 10th, Winston Churchill , replaced him . On the same day, the German western offensive began with air, airborne and armoured attacks into Holland, Belgium and France. Six weeks later France sued for peace. The German high command expected a long war in the west, and set industrial priorities for defensive weapons and entrenching equipment which reflected this expectation. The first German war plan called for a thrust into neutral Belgium and Luxembourg to outflank the Maginot Line and to lay siege to France. Th e plan changed from this rerun of the Schlieffen Plan to the now famous ‘sickle cut’ through the Ardennes Forest because of good intelligence and a large dose of desperation. Over the winter of 1939–40, Hitler repeatedly demanded an immediate attack in the west. His generals, convinced that an attack would fail unless they had time to accumulate greater strength, were equally certain that time was working against them, as Allied armaments and resources were growing faster than those of the Reich. Although few thought the ‘sickle cut’ would succeed, the gamble appealed to both Hitler and his top commanders because German intelligence officials confidently predicted that the bulk of the Allied armoured divisions would race into the Low Countries as soon as the German offensive opened. The French supreme Allied commander planned to reinforce Belgium and Holland and thus block what he expected to be the German army’s principal line of advance. Tragically, therefore, when the Wehrmacht struck on 10–11 May, the finest French and British divisions rushed headlong into a German trap. At the same time, the Italian army launched a poorly executed offensive into the French Alps. In his sudden bid for spazio vitale. As the French realized that metropolitan France was lost , Reynaud proposed fighting from abroad with the forces of the empire and navy, but Marshal Philippe P étain argued that the war was lost. France had to adapt to the German reshaping of Europe. Pétain turned defeat into a witch-hunt against socialists, communists and Jews. He soon became the head of government, signed the armistice with Hitler six days later in Compiègne. Hitler and Mussolini had different needs: while Germany needed coal and wanted a good peace treaty, Italy posed harsh conditions. The armistice ended French involvement on the British side and established a German zone of occupation in northern and western France . In the south of France, the collaborative government of the Vichy republic was created. Hitler set limitations on the size of the French army, imposed astronomical reparations and forced Vichy to agree to the German occupation of northern France and its coast. Hope that the Vichy regime might restore some French sovereignty through adherence to the Nazi New Order faded rapidly. The French defeat confronted Churchill with two problems. One was the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force, the other was whether to sue for a compromise peace. From 26 May to 3 June, under heavy Luftwaffe attack, the Royal Navy and a fleet of small c ivilian boats launched an improvised evacuation from Dunkirk. The rescue of troops was a great success, but the British army had lost most of its heavy equipment. In July 1940, Germany offered a negotiation to the UK . Both countries knew that the UK was isolated, and Japan attacked France in Indochina. Hitler promised not to attack or destroy the British empire if they recognized his new position in Europe (the head of a non-democratic system). It was an attractive offer because it was perfectly rational . The UK refused and fought WW2 (and fueled the support by the US), however, it lost its empire. Therefore, the outcomes for the winner weren’t good. Churchill believed that the British people were determined to fight, come what may. Most shared his belief that everything depended on American intervention. Many in the political elite, who had always despised the French alliance, were almost jubilant at the prospect of replacing France with the United States. In the meantime, Britain would have to repulse Germa n air and sea attacks alone. On 3 July 1940, to prevent the Germans from seizing French warships, the Royal Navy attacked the French fleet anchored at its Algerian base of Mers el -Kebir. Italy: the sudden shift in the European military situation opened an opportunity for Mussolini. ‘Non- belligerence’ was a bitter pill for the Duce to swallow, for his policy programme and the authority of his regime were premised on military expansion and the warrior ethic. The Italian intervention extended the war in the Mediterranean and Africa. At this point the war became a transcontinental conflict. Italy started the so-called “Parallel War” invading Egypt and Greece , but was a failure. Ethiopia was invaded by the British because they had much better military equipment than the Italians. Hitler was forced to support the Italian operations, which diverted the problem of the USSR to less important theaters (it could be one of the reasons why Germany lost the war). At the end of 1940 Italy occupied the Balkans only thanks t o the support of Germany. USA: Hitler ’s triumph and Mussolini’s intervention shattered Roosevelt ’s post -Munich policy. The Czech crisis had convinced the president and his advisers that they needed to contain the European dictators by supplying the Allies with arms and promoting the buildup of American air power. American public opinion began in 1939 to shift against Nazi Germany. In this new political climate, Congress passed an amended Neutrality Act which permitted sales of American-made arms to belligerents on a ‘cash and carry’ basis. Since the British and French navies controlled the Atlantic, this policy favoured the Allies. While all of this was good news for London and Paris, in no way did it signal an American intention to enter the war. However, the French catastrophe, the British decision to fight alone and what appeared to be well co -ordinated Axis aggression in 1940–41 confronted the Americans with a stark choice: they could either convert the Americas into a fortress of isolation or take up arms and lead the anti-Axis coalition. President Roosevelt authorized a gigantic American arms programme and searched for ways to keep the British fighting. In September 1940 the British agreed to lease bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland to the Americans for hemispheric security. That same month, Japan, Italy and Germany signed the Tripartite Pact in an effort to deter Washington from entering the European war or interfering in Japan’s southward advance, but this move quickly backfired. The Tripartite Pact was a 10 year pact that would shape the future of world order: it recognized the right of Germany and Italy to establish a new order in Europe ; Japan did so in east Asia. This would have put pressure on the USSR and the US, avoiding the risk of a double front war. The United States refused to be deterred, and saw the Tripartite Pact as symbolic of the moral distinction between the two emerging coalitions: one dedicated to peace and liberty, the other to war and slavery. By March 1941, under Lend-Lease, the United States had saved Britain from bankruptcy and capitulation, while the US navy’s Atlantic fleet began to engage in an undeclared war against German U -boats. USSR: for Russia, May–June 1940 was a disaster. The ineffectual performance of the Red Army in the Finnish War underscored the urgent need for thorough military reform. Once France caved in, though, the Soviets faced the all-conquering Wehrmacht alone on the European continent. In response, Stalin turned to economic appeasement combined with unflinc h- ing territorial expansion. Convinced that Hitler would not move eastwards while Britain remained dangerous, and while Russia provided the resources Germany needed to finish Britain off, Stalin and Molotov agreed that they should display no weakness. Thi s, after all , had been the chief lesson of Soviet relations with Japan. In 1939, when the Kwantung Army provoked fighting along the Manchurian–Mongolian frontier, Stalin, well aware from espionage that Tokyo did not desire war, ordered that the Japanese be given a bloody nose. Afterwards, relations improved. The result was that in late 1940 and 1941 tensions with Berlin rose as Russia tightened its grip on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, demanded territories from Romania and Bulgaria. The Germans responded by wooing the Finns, signing up Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to the Anti-Comintern Pact, and marshalling the bulk of the Wehrmacht into Eastern Europe for a knockout blow against Moscow. The Soviet leader was convinced that ‘hawks’ in Berlin were trying to provoke him into some precipitous action, which would turn Hitler against him. Turning point (1941-1942) Although Russian intelligence and the Soviet ambassador in Berlin repeatedly warned of what was coming, the German attack on 22 June 1941 came as a surprise to Stalin. In 1940–41, Hitler ’s choices had a far-reaching impact. His attack on Russia hardened American attitudes, especially towards Japan. It also initiated in Tokyo the debate that ended with Japan’s decision to fight. Ribbentrop suggested an alliance with Russia as another way to crush Britain and counteract American interference. It was not a preposterous idea. Japan was courting inability to crush the Red Army, and the failure of the German war economy to exploit its full potential. In the USSR, iron, steel and engineering plants were dismantled and relocated to the Urals –Volga– Siberian heartland, well beyond Hitler ’s reach. Despite this disruptive exodus, Russia out -produced Germany on a much slimmer resource base because the Soviet people sacrificed e verything for military output. The rapid decline in production for civilian consumption did not result in a breakdown in popular morale. Coercive measures were enforced to keep workers working . Ultimately, it would have all been in vain had Soviet managers not displayed a remarkable capacity for planning and organization. Unlike the Germans, the Soviets dedicated resources to mass - producing a few proven designs. In July 1943, at the Battle of Kursk, where Hitler and his generals tried one last great pincer movement to blunt the Red Army advance, General Zhukov’s armies ground down the Germans in the largest tank battle ever, and then counter-attacked. 3) The miscalculations of the size of the American economy. Before Hitler declared war on the United States, he predicted that the Americans would take five years to organize full -scale war production. He was wrong. By 1944, Americans were cranking out 40 per cent of all the weapons produced globally, and two- thirds of the arms fielded by the anti -Axis forces. This industrial miracle was facilitated by the American political culture. The state did not need to conscript industry or labour; they volunteered. Americans embraced mass production, civilian ingenuity, healthy competition and profit. Washington issued targets, and private industry worked out clever ways to meet ever more ambitious goals. Not only did the Allies win the arms race, but they pooled resources, co -ordinated strategy and maintained a unity of purpose better than their adversaries. Lend -Lease was the principal means for the redistribution of surplus matériel and resources within the alliance. Precise values are difficult to calculate, but about $45–50 billion worth of food aid, military hardware, oil and industrial goods and services was sent overseas. The aid from the United States permitted Britain and Russia to focus their war industries on what they could do for themselves best. Washington exploited Lend -Lease in order to compel London to agree to abandon imperial preference after the war, and Soviet officials always viewed any interruption to the flow of goods with a sceptical eye. Strategy was the principal source of inter -Allied tension. US: The structural power of the US was enormous, and its hegemonic power really came out thanks to th e global war. It controlled a huge military complex, it had the only atomic bomb, it contained 6% of the world population, it produced 66% of gold, and produced 50% of war goods. The new post -war system had to be based on the US. Although America’s war had begun in the Pacific, Roosevelt prioritized the war against Germany, the most dangerous foe, and his staff devoted the bulk of American strength to a campaign on the European continent. Successful landings in France, however, depended on the Red Army’s co ntinued resistance in the east. There were too many demands on scarce shipping to prepare for an early invasion. The US’ project for the world system reconstruction, the so-called Grand Design, was made by the New Dealers (Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his political elite). It was made by three “dimensions”: -Geo-strategic: «Four Policemen», the 4 winners (US, UK, USSR, China) would have managed the governance of the world system. This idea was presented during the first Cairo conference (1943) and Yalta conference (1945) -Geo-economic: «One World» & «Global Open Door» , the long term project. Globalization of economy because with free trade the possibility of war decreases, and countries become interdependent. This idea was presented during the Bretton Woods conference (1944) -Institutional: «One World» & «United Nations» with the creation of the UN. This idea was presented during the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944) and San Francisco Conference (1945). Britain: they wanted to keep its Empire alive against the threat of Germany and Italy. Churchill participated in the war to make the world a safe space for the British democracy, but the British ideals of democracy were different from the US. Democracy wasn’t a global value and Churchill rejected the fact that the Atlantic Charter should have been universal, but it was only acceptable for the western world. The British followed the traditional British policy of the balance of powers principle. The UK feared a possible Soviet hegemony in Europe, possible by taking advantage of the weakness of Germany. However, the UK knew it was too weak to counterbalance the USSR, that ’s why it wanted the US’ political and military help. American forces, with all of their heavy kit and supplies, had to be shipped to British ports, and Britain still required large imports of food, fuel and arms to fight. The British, moreover, who had developed a healthy respect for the German army, feared that a premature invasion would fail and thus prolong the war. Time was needed to gain more experience of landing operations and to develop amphibious craft. In the meantime, Churchill and his advisers preferred a peripheral strategy of blockade, bombing and subversion against the N azis, while the Anglo-American forces were used in North Africa and the Mediterranean against Italy. USSR: wanted to create a security cordon sanitaire following traditional Russian policy and the balance of powers principle. The USSR wanted to get back all the territories lost with the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The USSR was scared of a possible new invasion by the westerners, so Stalin aimed at consolidating his internal political power to gain internal consensus. For Moscow, the priority was an early ‘second front’ to ease the burden on the Red Army. At the end of WW2, the USSR had good relationships with the US, but had troubles with London. However, the USSR did not share the enthusiasm of the United States with regard to c ollective security projects and the United Nations. Roosevelt was scared that the USSR could have gotten closer to Germany, and that the two countries would have signed a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so the American president was extremely friendly with Stalin. Roosevelt needed Stalin to sight the war against the third Reich and redesign the post -war system. Towards the end of the war (1943-1944-1945) After the landing in Vichy-controlled North Africa in November 1942, and the final surrender of Italian a nd German troops in Tunisia in May 1943, the Americans, who never thought that decisive results could be achieved this way, found themselves drawn deeper into the Mediterranean. After Italy’s defection from the Axis, the British spoke alluringly of strategic possibilities for landings in the Balkans, but the Americans refused to be diverted. In January 1943, the Allies organized the Casablanca Conference. Even more frictions between the UK and US became evident, but they could find an agreement with the Casablanca Declaration: the Axis would have asked for unconditional surrender. Roosevelt obtained the British recognition of China as the fourth great player, but also obtained the British support for the Pacific War. Churchill obtained the invasion of southern Italy and the move towards the north. While the UK believed it was better to invade Italy and attack the Nazis from the south, the US believed it was better to invade France and attack the Nazis from the east. However, real moves arrived only in 1943 and 1944, so until then the weight of the European war was bore by Soviet shoulders. The combined Anglo-American bomber offensive was launched by Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943. The British, who sought to shatter German civilian mor ale, bombed cities at night, while the Americans, who believed that ‘precision’ was possible, struck industrial targets by day. The air war constituted a ‘second front’, but losses as high as 11 per cent per mission meant that the bomber offensive could no t be sustained. The battle turned in late 1943, however, when the Allies focused their air power on the destruction of the Luftwaffe. Not only did the long-range escorts offer constant protection, and thereby quickly reduced loss rates, but they also shot down attacking fighters, which began to appear in ever smaller numbers. Another very important conference took place in 1943: the Teheran Conference. It is considered a prosecution of the Cairo Conference between the US, UK and China. In the Teheran Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed on 5 main issues: 1. Poland and its future borders, settled on the Curzon line in the east and the Oder Eastern Neisse line in the west. This decision was not ratified until the Potsdam Conference of 1945 . Roosevelt had asked to be excused from any discussion due to the upcoming 1944 election 2. the future of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Roosevelt secured the reincorporation of these Republics into the Soviet Union 3. Germany would be occupied by the winners after the war (didn’t establish the division yet) 4. open the Continental Front in Asia after the collapse of Germany. The US needed Soviet support in the Pacific, so the USSR would have entered the Pacific War after the defeat of Germany 5. open the second front in Europe with the invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord) in combination with attack against southern France (Operation Dragoon) and Soviet counteroffensive in the East (Operation Bagration) would be launched during May 1944. By June 1944, therefore, when American, British and Canadian soldiers stormed the Normandy beaches, the Luftwaffe had been eliminated as a serious menace, while Allied aircraft pounded German troops at will. Besides strategic bombing, Britain and the United States also secured a tremendous lead in the collection, analysis and exploitation of most forms of intelligence, especially in the interception and breaking of coded Axis radio transmissions. Thanks to reliable information, the British and the Americans were able to concentrate forces where they were most needed, to seal most of their own security leaks, and to gain a day -by-day insight into the intentions and capabilities of their foes. As Anglo-American forces closed on the Reich from France and the Red Army marche d from Eastern Europe, Hitler ’s soldiers fought on and on 16 December 1944 launched a surprise attack into the Ardennes to break through the American lines. While the weather grounded Allied aircraft, the German tanks made headway towards recapturing the vital port city of Antwerp. Once the skies cleared and the Americans recovered, the Germans were beaten back. Only three things could have altered Germany’s fate in 1944 –45. One was a coup. On 20 July 1944 Hitler narrowly escaped a bomb planted in his head - quarters under the map table. The conservative German army officers and other high officials who had planted the bomb out of fear for Germany’s future paid with their lives for this attempt on Hitler ’s life. The second, one Hitler had great faith in, was some secret ‘wonder ’ weapon. New weapons, namely rockets, flying bombs, jet aircraft and advanced submarines, were already in use or nearly so with little effect. Fortunately, the Germans failed to build the one device that might have made a difference, the atomic bomb. Third, the F ü hrer might have prolonged the war or perhaps stopped it by negotiating a separate peace with one of his foes. The Allies, however, held firm. From 4 to 11 February 1945 Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in Crimea. In the Yalta conference countries issued the declaration of liberated Europe, a continuation of the Atlantic Charter. It was based on 3 main pillars: 1. the winners established Germany’s unconditional surrender. At the end of the war Germany and Berlin would have been split into four occupation zones (UK+US+USSR+France. France would have a fourth occupation zone formed out of the American and British zones). 2. Poland was redesigned, and the eastern border would follow the Curzon Line , at the expense of Germany. This was a problem, because Poland now contained a German minority (against the principle pf self -determination) 3. the USSR joined the United Nations. The final act of Europe’s long tragedy was staged in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery. As the Red Army advanced towards the bombed-out suburbs of Berlin, Hitler ordered the demolition of what was left of German industry and infrastructure. On 30 April 1945 Hi tler committed suicide. It is tempting to try to pinpoint the moment when the Grand Alliance began to fall apart between Hitler ’s suicide and Germany’s final surrender on 5 May 1945. However, there are many explanations of why collaboration between the US, USSR and UK didn’t continue after WW2. In particular, the three powers were seeking peace and security in their own way: - for Washington, peace would be secured through the active participation of the United States in a number of new multilateral institutions. In July 1944 the Americans thus hosted delegates from forty -four nations at Bretton Woods in order to fashion a post-war economic order. The conference buzzed with Anglo-American ideals of liberal economics and free trade. Two institutions were established: the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development . Similarly, from August to October 1944, Washington played host to diplomats on the formation of the United Nations Organization. Roosevelt ’s vision of the new UN thus included a General Assembly of all states and a select executive (the Security Council) of Great Powers, principally the United States, the USSR, China and Britain, which would act together as the world’s ‘four policemen’. Roosevelt ’s idea of the ‘four policemen’ indicated his willingness to work with Moscow. The president and his advisers knew that Stalin was a suspicious tyrant. What they hoped was that the war had taught the Soviet leader and his officials that mutually beneficial rela tions with the capitalist world were possible. They were equally alert to Moscow’s deep sense of insecurity. Eastern Europe, they agreed, could no longer be a hotbed for anti-communism and a launch pad for anti -communist crusades. The Americans did not object to Stalin shaping the foreign and defence policies of the Eastern European states. What the Americans rejected was the formation of an exclusive sphere of control. In other words, so long as the Soviets permitted the Eastern Europeans to exercise self-determination and democracy at home, and to participate in multilateral institutions and commerce abroad, then there would be little scope for future conflicts. - like the Americans, Churchill did not object to a Soviet sphere of influence, so long as the principles in the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration on Liberated Europe were adhered to. S outh-eastern Europe was divided between them in what came to be called the ‘percentages agreement’. To protect their imperial interests in the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt, the British attained predominance in Greece, while the Soviet Union attained the dominant position in Romania and Bulgaria. Churchill also implied to Stalin that he would not oppose Soviet claims in Eastern Europe if Stalin would help him sa feguard Britain’s Asian empire against American pressure for rapid decolonization. Despite Churchill ’s stormy relations with General de Gaulle, who had been recognized as head of the provisional government in Paris, the British turned to France as a potent ial ally to help counteract Soviet influence in Western Europe. It was thus the British who persuaded Washington and Moscow that France should be responsible for a zone of occupation in Germany and that it should be given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. - evidence from the Soviet archives confirms that Stalin and his top advisers had no ‘master plan’ for Eastern Europe leading to the full communist take -over in 1947–48. Nonetheless , the Soviets would not allow Eastern Europe once again to become the springboard for war against Russia. In November 1943, Stalin had insisted that the Soviet Union retain the territorial gains it had made under the Nazi –Soviet pact and from Finland and Romania, the absorption of the Baltic States, and the movement o f Poland’s frontier with Russia further westward. For Stalin and his security planners, territory equalled security. This did not necessarily mean the imposition of communist dictatorships across Eastern Europe , however according to Stalin “whoever occupies a territory imposes his own social systems. The Soviets were primarily concerned with reconstruction, recovery and freedom from aggression in this period, but their willingness to deal with the United States and Britain only reflected what they expected to be a long truce with the leading proponents of global capitalism and imperialism. After Yalta, there were signs that the truce would not hold for long. A change of American presidents accelerated the downturn in relations. On 12 April 1945, Roosevelt d ied and his vice-president, Harry S. Truman, assumed the presidency. The new man in the White House had not been a member of Roosevelt ’s inner circle during the war and was less inclined to give Stalin the benefit of the doubt. Truman’s fears that the Sovi ets might emerge as the next totalitarian threat to the American way of life, as well as the liberty, prosperity and security of Western Europe and Japan, also arose from a steady hardening of attitudes. The atomic bomb played an important, though alone not decisive, role in the magnification of hostilities. Before becoming president, Truman had been kept in the dark about the Manhattan Project , but Soviet intelligence had had some know- ledge of the project as early as 1941. After the successful detonation of the first bomb on 16 July 1945, Truman hoped that the weapon would provide him with the lever he needed to keep the Soviets loyal to the Yalta Accords, but Stalin and Molotov were equally determined not to be intimidated by the atomic bomb . grand design (creation of UN, open door policy, 4 policemen to preserve peace), while the UK (keep the empire alive to hold a strong position in Europe, having a special relat ionship with the US) and USSR (balance the German power by conquering more land) were focusing on a transregional design. After the collapse of the Japanese empire, the Us and the UK were having troubles due to globalization: if the British wanted to keep the empire, the Us was strongly against it. However, there was also collaboration within the grand alliance, which can be seen in the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunal, with the signing of peace treaties with the countries of the axis, the universal declaration of human rights. At first, the USSR even accepted the creation of the UN and the Bretton Woods system. Main frictions were caused by: o Different ideologies: the westerners issued the Atlantic charter in 1941 in which they strongly pushed for democracy (the US had to defend democracy all over the world); Stalin was focused on the economic side and didn’t believe in democracy and liberal institutions o Economic organization: the westerners believed in capitalism and the centrality of the dollar; Stalin, if at first accepted the Bretton Woods system, after the Lend-Lease act the soviets felt isolated and felt resentment towards the US o Geopolitics: the westerners occupied western Europe and imposed their way of life (Italy was the first country), Stalin occupied eastern Europe and imposed socialism Stalin started to slowly impose his vision on eastern Europe (the process of sovietization), but for the west it was unlawful because in international law occupying countries shall not impose their vision on occupied countries. Stapes were taken since 1943 until the end of WW2. Europe was suddenly divided between the part controlled by the USSR and the free part. In the British perception, Stalin ’s moves were totally admissible as he didn’t have total control of those countries. However, the US were already seeing the failure of their grand design and didn’t want to propose a plan B because the Soviet Union “wasn’t collaborating”. Stalin’s moves were perceived as offensive even though his intention was not to create an e mpire (yet). Stalin wanted to create puppet states without entirely controlling them. In Stalin ’s eyes, the west wanted to strengthen Germany to attack Moscow at any time. For the Soviet Union, the creation of a cordon sanitarie , a defensive belt, surrounding the Soviet Union was central because it had already been attacked three times in the past and Moscow had to be defended at any cost. Both Churchill and George Kennan believed that the only way to counterbalance the USSR was to contain it. Europe was su ddenly divided in two areas by the Iron Curtain. In the US, the political elite was divided between those who followed Kennan and those who wanted to tie an agreement with the soviets. However, after the defeat of Henry Wallace in the presidential election s of 1948 these political circles lost the possibility to have a friendship with the Soviet Union (as Roosevelt hoped). Main politicians who wanted to be close to the USSR were Cloyce Huston, Henry Stimson and Hamilton Armstrong. The power projection of the Soviet Union didn’t stop in eastern Europe but also went to Asia: -Iran: with the tripartite treaty signed during WW2, the UK, USSR and Iran in which they promised to support each other. The USSR would have controlled the northern part of Iran and would have withdrawn its troops after 6 months. Indeed, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops but only after signing an economic agreement which created an oil company owned by the USSR 51% and Iran 49%. It was seen as a problem because Iran was central from the geopolitical point of view. The US pushed the Iranian government not to ratify the Iranian -Soviet agreement, and instead sign a new one with the US. Iran accepted and the westerners could counterbalance the soviet presence in Asia. In the US’ view the action of the USSR was offensive so it responded firmly (but in reality, the Iranian-soviet agreement was legit). -Greece and Turkey, central for the defense of eastern Mediterranean. Following the percentage agreement, the UK occupied 90% of Greece in 1944 and 10% went to the USSR. When a civil war broke out the communist went against the English monarchy. The UK asked for the support of the US and applied the Truman doctrine in those countries. In the US’ view the action of the USSR was offensive so it resp onded firmly (but in reality, these communists were autonomous and didn ’t follow Stalin). -China: after the Japanese surrender, the USSR occupied Manchuria, which went against the agreement previously carried out in Cairo and Yalta. In the US ’ view the action of the USSR was offensive so it responded firmly (but in reality, Stalin wanted to take lots of territories and later give them back because his aims were others). The USSR withdrew from Manchuria, but started to give arms to the Chinese communists. During the Potsdam conference the winning powers decided on the future of Germany: the 4 winners would have occupied parts of Germany and the city of Berlin. The soviets were allowed to move German factories from Germany to the Soviet Union due to its weak economy. During the Paris Council of foreign ministers of 1946, the US proposed a 25-year peace treaty between the winners and Germany and 40 years of demilitarization. This proposal failed because France asked for the destruction of German unity, the annexation of Saar and detachment of Rhineland. If before 1946 the US searched for an accommodation with the Soviet Union over the division of Germany, after the end of the Paris Council of foreign ministers it started to support Germany against the Soviet Union. The secretary of state J. Byrnes talked about the necessity of a German unification, a creation of new borders but not on the Oder-Neisse (a river). This statement created problems to the USSR. Conference by conference the situation was deteriorating. The general perception of th e westerners was an offensive behavior by the Soviet Union and Stalin ’s search for a pretext not to reach an agreement. The western world reached a new position towards the USSR in 1947 shaped by: -Truman doctrine-> the US sent the navy in the Mediterranean as a reaction to the soviet pressure in Greece and Turkey. President Truman was forced to use strong words and raise the level of tension because he needed the support of isolationist congressmen. He stated that the destiny of democracy was in danger. -Marshall plan-> the US sent money to economically support western Europe against a possible communist revolution in central Europe due to the many economic crises. The most important step. The US gave money to rebuild the industrial system of European countries, especially Germany. The US knew that if western Europe got richer, it could buy American products, and the loan would have been paid back. The American influence over western Europe was greater than ever, and Europe imported the American technocrat ic view of politics (even the politicians that started the European integration process followed the teachings of the new dealers). To show their commitment, some countries such as France and Italy excluded communists from their governments. Moreover, western European countries started the talks to sign the Atlantic alliance. The Marshall divided Europe in two areas from the economic point of view: the US offered support to all European countries (even the USSR). Some of them rejected and the Iron Curtain became even more evident. As a response to the US, the USSR organized the Szkalarska Poreba conference in 1947, in which it established the economic organization of the soviet area. The year 1947 is considered the standard beginning of the Cold War. The situation was even more confusing due to all the revolutions in eastern Europe: in Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia the monarchy was abolished, and all parties were dissolved. Czechoslovakia was the last democracy in eastern Europe, but after a coup d’état in 1948 organized by communists it changed regime. The western perception of Stalin ’s moves was as aggressive as ever. Indeed, he was aggressive, but for defensive purposes. In November 1947, during the Conference of London, the Soviet Union moved its attitude and stated that Germany should have been included in the Marshall plan. Some asked whether Germany as a whole should have gone under the Marshall plan or only the parts occupied by the westerners. They decided that the German territories occupied by the soviets would have not gone under the Marshall plan, but they still believed that the industrial apparatus should have been rebuilt to create a strong Germany. The solution was found after the so - called first Berlin crisis: in all the 4 areas of Germany the Reichsmark was used immediately after WW2. Later, in 1948, the British and American territories were merged and the Bizonia was created, an area that was included in the Marshall plan. In Bizonia a new currency was created to keep the European recovery program working: the Deutsche Mark, while in the soviet area the currency was still the Reichsmark. As a reaction, the soviets declared the Berlin blockade (=close the gates that divided the western part of Berlin and the eastern part). This was a very offensive and violent decision, and it was a conformation of the aggressiveness of the USSR (in reality, Stalin hoped to go back to the situation before the European recovery program). The reaction of the west arrived soon: they launched operation Berlin Airlift-> they built 3 airports and 2.3 million tons of cargo fed west Berlin. It was destroying for Stalin ’s mediatic image. In May 1949 Stalin l ifted the blockade. However, after only one year the differences were already visible between the area occupied by the west and the area occupied by the east. Soon, the two areas became actual states in 1949: west Germany became the German Federal Republic and east Germany became the German Democratic Republic. At this point the Cold war existed also in practice. We can say that the responsibility for the division of Europe is both on soviet and American shoulders, depending on the point of view we analyze. The US was practicing containment: no longer a passive attitude but an active position to avoid soviet revolutions. In the interpretation of the west, the Cold War was like a continuation of the war against totalitarianism (first against Hitler and then Stalin). In fact, the two totalitarian systems were ver y similar apart from the fact that for Hitler race was essential, while for Stalin the key was social class. However, the division was not so definite: Spain, Greece, Portugal… were still authoritarian states. The creation of the soviet imperial system (1945-1953) In Italy we had one of the most important political communist parties during the cold war and we shared the strong western vision about the genesis of the cold war. Now, after the collapse of the communist party and with the new generation of historians, we started to share the critical vision about the decision of the west and started to use the post revisionist approach. The problem was the misunderstanding s between the Soviet Union and US/UK. Looking at the eastern perception-> when we talk about the soviet foreign policy, we consider that the Soviet Union had to balance different dimensions: o The USSR is a revolutionist communist superpower. Its first goal was the general soviet revolution in the world. Ideology played an important role in shaping the foreign policy. o The USSR was a great superpower with Eurasian or global interest. There is a huge balance of power between the worldwide soviet state and the US. In terms of economy the Soviet Union was weaker than the US but stronger than the western European states combined. o Obsession about national security due to the three invasions moved from Europe toward Russia and hence when we consider the soviet foreign policy, we need to consider the interaction between ideology and realism. Interaction between doctrine and geopolitical thinking By looking at the geopolitical thinking of all the most important soviet leaders, all of them shaped a general vision of the world system. Lenin problem of the dual task or double track: revolution and accommodation of the border. Stalinsocialism in one country. Khrushchev  peaceful coexistence. Brezhnev  détente and Brezhnev doctrine. Gorbachev  the new political thinking. They all contain strategical and tactical flexibility and combine geopolitical thinking, realism and a strong vision of ideology. They also combine a securitization of soviet interests and intent for a global revolution. After the civil war there were 5 main phases in soviet foreign policy: 1917-1924: Revolution, civil war and consolidation. In this moment there is one of the most important steps taken by the soviet union’s policy which is the Rapallo treaty. In 1929 there was a strong reaction in western Europe with the rise of Hitler and fascism in Italy and problem s in Spain and Portugal. That is why the Soviet Union looked at Asia: consolidated its position in China and faced the rise of Japanese militarism in eastern Asia. 1930-1934: transition phase with the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin. He changed the policy of the USSR. He talked about socialism and isolation, ideologically justified by the great depression. Socialism tried to connect the identity of the Soviet Union as a revolutionary power and to secure geopolitical interests of the only socialist country in the world. In this moment, there are frictions between the social democrats in Europe. The idea was to weaken the moderate social democrats of Europe (called social fascist) which were the communist’s rivals for working class support. During these four years, the USSR renewed the collaboration with Germany and tried to create a détente with Poland. Stalin was pessimistic about the possibility of a semi revolution in Europe. 1934-37/38: Japanese expansionism in Asia (Manchuria) and Nazi revisionism in Europe. In this moment the USSR changed its political position and searched for collective security, collaboration with UK and France and the proof is the joining of the league of nations. The Soviet Union immediately faced problems with these players because of the British Tories (conservatives), French bourgeois right wing and the Chinese Kuomintang. 1938-1949: change in policy of the Soviet Union as a reaction of the Munich conference in September 1938. The soviet interpretation of this conference was an agreement between the western powers to divert German revisionism against Moscow. 1939 Molotov Ribbentrop pact  because of the aforementioned reason , Moscow changed again its foreign policy, and this signals the beginning of WWII. One of the most important politicians was Georgy Chicherin who was the people ’s commissar for foreign affairs (1918-1930). He was a communist and Bolshevik but was also linked to the high bourgeoise in western Europe and aristocracy. He managed to include the USSR in the western community. The Paris system was created against Germany directly but indirectly was created to exclude the Soviet Union, which was already isolated and was contained by the barbed iron sanitary cordon (all the states surrounding the western Russian border). Chicherin succeeded in making some steps to be accepted by the other great powers , and an example is the 1922 treaty of Rapallo. Moscow wanted to revise the Brest-Litovsk treaty (the conclusion of the war against Germany) and the Paris peace system, while Berlin wanted to revise the treaty of Versailles. Hence, they share d some visions and ideas but had different perspectives. Shared ideas were the opposition to Poland; economic relations; Reichswehr was given to soviet territory for training purposes (contravening Versailles); red army benefited from German military expertise. The axis between Berlin and Moscow was central for the soviet foreign policy and was more vital for the Soviet Union rather than Germany, because this last one has alternatives while Moscow doesn ’t. There is a list of all the steps taken by the soviet and German diplomacy to stabilize this agreement. Treaty of Rapallo 1922 Treaty of Berlin in 1926  they renewed this axis and promised neutrality which makes it a sort of Molotov Ribbentrop pact 1.0. Protocol of Berlin 1931  extension without limit , the most important pact. Until the rise of Stalin, the USSR had a double identity: on one side, Moscow searched for the inclusion in the international system; on the other side, it was a revolutionary power. Before Stalin, the USSR used the communist power to create instabil ity, and had a sort of double tool for the foreign policy (normal diplomatic corps and on the other side the communist party). Stalin changed everything because he wanted to consolidate his power but also saw a new wave of war arriving. In his vision, a war between capitalist powers was possible in the end and that ’s why he shaped the identity of the Soviet Union to escape this scenario. To consolidate the system, he looked for prestige and developed the idea of the “socialism in one country”. Hence, he changed idea about exporting the doctrine of socialism and just wanted the consolidation of the soviet system. This was a good idea in his mentality because he gave opportunity to consolidate his internal power against the left part of the communist power (Trotskyist , who wanted a permanent revolution and wanted to consolidate a worldwide revolution), and the Bukharinist s (right wing party who wanted the accommodation with the partners). His idea was to escape a conflict between the communist parties. Therefore, he consolidated the dynamic of collaboration with Germany and good relations with Japan. After the rise of Hitler and Japanese militarism, he changed his position and searched for collaboration with eastern European countries and China and that is why in 1944 he signed a military agreement of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader. He revealed many crimes committed by Stalin, and the period of de-Stalinization started. This secret report was published in the New York Times a few days later and became well-known all over the world. This will be the first crisis of the USSR. Nikita Khrushchev was defined as a revisionist (a very bad thing in a Soviet system). Many Soviet allies organized internal revolts, all of them being suppressed by the USSR. The most important crisis occurred in Hungary, with strikes. The USSR understood that it needed a more peaceful relation with the US, otherwis e it could no longer control its allies. Polycentrism= the recognition of different paths to socialism. Eastern European countries needed space for maneuver to implement socialism in their own ways. Khrushchev realized that the USSR would be safer and stronger with the absence of war. Coexistence became an official doctrine of the Soviet Union with Khrushchev. Some historians, like Hopf, agreed with Khrushchev, others, in particular Zubok and Pleshakov, didn’t agree. Why did the US started to search for a dialogue? The turning point was the election of the republican Eisenhour, a man of peace. he didn’t want the military to control American foreign relations, so he reduced the defense budget. He shaped the strategy of massive retaliation: in case of crisis the US would have dropped the atomic bomb. This kind of foreign policy is very violent, but made the USSR more responsible of its actions, as the USSR didn’t want a nuclear war. Moreover, the US feared the power of the Russian nuclear power. Especially aft er the 1956 Suez Crisis the possibility of a dialogue between the two superpowers was really possible. Remember that the biggest problem (Germany) was still present. Third period (1957-1962) The era of the most dangerous crises of the Cold War: Suez Canal , Cuban Missile Crisis, Second Berlin Crisis (regarding the Berlin wall), Taiwan… The USSR showed its military power with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The Soviet Union started to reshape its navy, posing a threat to the hegemony of the US. This is the sa me dynamic that occurred between Britain and Germany before WW1. The difference is that before WW1 Germany was a rising power, while the Soviet Union of the 1950s was declining. The Soviet Union didn’t want to be considered a declining power, but wanted to be considered as important as its opponent. The Soviet Union was a revisionist power that wanted to be recognized globally, under its own conditions. This created huge frictions. The two superpowers were on the brink of an actual nuclear war, but used all the crises to avoid it. There is a consensus about the fact that Khrushchev used the vulnerability of west Berlin as a lever over NATO and the US (the USSR didn’t want a total Soviet revolution at this point) because he wanted to feel more secure. The USS R wanted to block the militarization of west Germany, and as a reaction to the militarization of Germany the USSR signed the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact isn’t a reaction to NATO, but it’s a reaction to the inclusion of west Germany in the western security system, because the great problem for the Soviet Union was security. The Soviet Union had to avoid the use of German arms against Moscow at all costs. Moreover, Khrushchev used the vulnerability of west Germany as a tool to manage the split with China. The Second Berlin Crisis was the Soviet attempt to divert the centrality of communist China after the crisis of 1958 in the Pacific. Khrushchev provoked the crisis in Europe to divert the attention of the international arena from the Pacific to Europe, becau se the Soviet Union wanted to keep a special relation with the US (at the expense of China). Indeed, in those years, China accused the USSR of being an imperialist state and its peculiar relationship with the west. Between the USSR and China there were frictions, as both wanted to be more influential over the global south. This was almost a shadow cold war. If before the two communist countries were close, now they were slowly going apart. In November 1957 Mao Zedong gave an important speech, a direct attac k to the Russian policy of coexistence. The Soviet Union didn’t support the decision to unleash the First Taiwan Strait Crises because it considered China too dangerous. When in 1958, Mao Zedong unleashed the Second Taiwan Strait Crises without informing t he USSR, frictions increased. Moreover, as the Russians were present in Vietnam, China didn’t want to have anything to do with it. We can say that Moscow started to consider Beijing as a traitor and vice versa. George Kennan understood everything: he explained that every action taken by the Soviets was a reaction to Chinese decisions. The frictions between the USSR and China will bring to the Sino -Soviet split in 1969. In general, Moscow was extremely sacred of international isolation, and did everything to avoid it. The Suez Canal crisis and the decline of European powers The 1956 crisis is evidence of the rise of the global south. Remember that Europe was the center of the world before WW1, but after the two world wars and the Suez Crisis the importance of European countries declined. The rules of the international system were decided following the interests of the west. Most western countries owned an empire. Remember the troubling situation already existing in the middle east after WW1 (the McMahon-Hussein correspondence and Balfour declaration), mostly caused by western intervention. All the people living in northern Africa, from Morocco to Iraq, are Arabs. However, they interested differently the mandate of the League of Nations, and each state had a specific identity. All the Arab countries were affected by the Second World War, being divided between those who supported Germany and those who supported the Allies. The creation of Israel in 1948 caused many tensions. Moreover, many Arab intellectuals studied in European universities, so they had a western-like approach. If before 1950 most Arab people were Muslim, and religion was the main reason that defined identity, after 1950 the process of modernization took place: they understood that secularization was important, that a Christian could be Arab. Nationality became mor e important than religion. Egypt is something different: it is the conjunction of the western Arab world and the eastern one. Moreover, the mosque of Cairo is a lighthouse for Islamic religions. Egypt became a benchmark for the others. Everything started in 1922. In 1922 Egypt became independent with king Farouk 1, but remained under British influence until 1952, the year of the Egyptian revolution. The revolution was organized by the Free Officers Movement, composed of nationalist, socialist Arabs. This r evolution was supported by the US. This wasn’t an anti -western revolution but took the shape of an anti -western revolution. The aim was to modernize the state, moving from a feudal society to a modern one. The Egyptian political elite had the obsession of modernizing the state. If until 1952 Egypt remained close to the west, after 1952 Egypt wanted to be more neutral. The leader of the Free Officers Movement was Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, this movement happened in a very difficult international context (Vietnam, Korea, China…). The western countries knew the importance of the middle east in terms of managing the Rimland, as it’s the conjunction between Europe and Asia. The UK created the CENTO (central treaty organization), and asked Egypt if it wanted to be part of it. However, as a consequence of the revolution, Egypt refused, not because they were pro-soviet, but because they wanted to be neutral. Nasser and the Free Officers Movement wanted to create a huge Arab neutral state (pan-Arabism). Key points were modernization and self-determination. Egypt was against European powers just because the European countries were the invaders. Nasser was a neutral, peaceful man, but made some mistakes: he recognized the People’s Republic of China (previously done only by USSR), he bought weapons from Czechoslovakia, he asked for economic support to the USSR in exchange of a military base in the Mediterranean. In the eyes of the west, Egypt was not neutral, but pro-soviet. The tilting point occurred in 1956, when a Bri tish military base was evacuated from Egypt. This was a humiliation for the UK and created resentment. At this point the west believed that Nasser was a problem: Egypt was too important in terms of commercial routes to be lost to the Soviets. The threat wa s also ideological, and represented an issue for the last standing empires in north Africa, which belonged to France. Until this point the situation was stable. Real issues started when Egypt asked for economic help to Britain and France for the construction of the Aswan Dam, but they refused. This project was extremely important for Egypt, it was the central project that defined modernization, it was the project that could create the lake Nasser. When the USSR declared able to lend money to Egypt, Egypt de cided to become closer to the Soviets. Nasser nationalized the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company, giving the two countries money. It was a nationalization in perfect west-style. However, this nationalization created issues: it was the beginning of the Suez Crisis (29 October - 7 November 1956). The west believed that Khrushchev was using Egypt as a puppet against the west. The fact that oil was present in the canal made things even more tense (the European productive system was dependent on middle eastern oil ). A nationalization is a violent move, but definitely not as violent as a declaration of war. France and the UK reacted violently. They organized a secret conference with Israel in 1956, during which they signed the Sèvres Protocol : Israel would have attacked Egypt, and Britain and France would have intervened as peacemakers. Israel accepted the provisions of the Sèvres Protocol because Egypt was an important military threat for Israel, as it had the biggest Arab army. Moreover, Egypt was negotiating with Syria. With the Sèvres Protocol, Israel broke its diplomatic isolation. These moves are typically imperialist, but didn’t work. Israel attacked an occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt didn’t expect such attack, so it was successful. Then, Britain and France occupied Port Said. The USSR immediately understood the situation and threatened to use the atomic bomb over the UK and France. The US had to intervene: it condemned the Anglo-French operation and supported the Egyptians (following the ideas of self -determination). It was the chance for the US to move Egypt further from Britain and closer to the US. Indeed, only in Europe the relationship between London and Washington was strong, as in the middle east and in Asia there were small frictions between the two. Apart from Egypt, frictions were seen in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Britain and France realized that they were simple regional powers, while the US and the USSR were the superpowers. At the end of the day, the real winner of this revolution was Nasser. With the help of the US and the USSR he won against two imperialist powers, so he gained huge support throughout the Arab countries. This is an opposite outcome from the one planned by Britain and France. The Suez Crisis brought regional and transregional consequences: the equilibrium of the Mediterranean was destabilized, Egypt and Syria created the United Arab Republic and Iraq and Jordan created the Arab Federation, the equilibrium in all Arab countries was destabilized and started pan-Arab revolutions everywhere. The Cold War in the middle east took a different form: the United Arab Republics were against the Arab Federations. The most important consequence was the rise of the non-aligned movement, containing most countries of the global south. On the brink of a nuclear war During the Cold War there were many cruises between the two superpowers. They exploited these crises in order to reach agreements. The two superpowers had a relationship of co -hegemony: a global power (the US) vs a transregional power (the USSR). The reason why Khrushchev was triggering these crises was because in that moment there was a shadow confrontation between the USSR and China: he moved the attention from eastern Asia to the Atlantic. These great crises are the second berlin crisis and the Cuban crisis. When talking about the Cuban crisis, we need to take into consideration Cuba’s position. Cuba was part of the so -called third world country, it was part of the global south, and its biggest problem was starting the process of moderni zation (like Egypt). The western’s overreaction moved Fidel Castro from a neutral position to a pro -soviet position. The Caribbean area is central for the US, especially when it wants to project its power overseas. The Us started to become interested in the Caribbean in the first half of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, after the Spanish-American war, the US became an imperial power (not by conquering land, but by controlling the financial system of those countries). In 1901 the Platt Ame ndment in the Cuban constitution was approved, which gave the US the possibility to intervene in Cuba in case of regime changes. After WW2, Cuba was a poor paradise, controlled by different dictators. Immediately after WW2 the leader was Fulgencio Batista. In 1952 a guerrilla started organized by a group (los barbudos) led by Fidel and Ramon Castro. They won this peculiar civil war with no problems and established a new regime, based on nationalism and socialism. Their main ideas were the nationalization of the land and the possibility to make changes with no foreign intervention. In the beginning the US approved Castro’s ideas, but in the group of the barbudos there were Marxist politicians (Camilo Cienfuegos) so the rise of Marxism and Communism was a real possibility. When JFK became president in 1961, he authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion, in order to trigger a regime change and overthrow communism. However, Cuba still wasn’t a communist country, it was just trying to modernize. The operation was a total failure. Although Castro successfully defeated the invasion force, the Bay of Pigs experience, and growing concerns about continuing American attempts to remove him from power, made the Cuban leader receptive towards further offers of Soviet military supp ort. The end result was one of the most dangerous crises of the Cold War era when, a year after the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev offered to deploy Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Castro accepted and by the summer of 1962 Soviet ships were delivering the necess ary materials, including missiles, to their new allies. Hoping that a future public announcement about the presence of Soviet missiles stationed a mere 160 kilometres from the American heartland would be a substantial propaganda coup, the installation of these weapons was undertaken in secrecy. The westerners perceived Castro as a puppet in the hand of the Soviet Union. The possibility of a soviet nuclear attack on US cities was real. The US considered several options, including a possible military invasion of Cuba and aerial attacks against the missile bases. In the end, though, the Kennedy admini- stration chose to ‘quarantine’ Cuba by erecting a naval blockade to stop any further Soviet shipments reaching their destination. On 22 October, Kennedy went pub lic in a televised address, disclosing the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba and announcing that a blockade was in force against all ships bound for the island. He also demanded the removal of the missiles. A naval blockade is an offensive move, almost a direct attack. This was a moment of tension between the two superpowers. The two superpowers were on the brink of a nuclear war, the point of mutual assured destruction (MAD). Pope John 23 rd gave the possibility to Kennedy and Khrushchev to take a step b ack and reach an agreement: in fact, they started to negotiate. Soon, they reached an agreement: the US-Soviet agreement. The US promised to remove the blockade from Cuba, to dismantle some American missiles in Europe, and promised not to attack Castro’s regime and Cuba’s sovereignty. At this point, with this promise, the Cubans no longer had to fear US’ involvement. Castro no longer had to ask for Soviet protection. At the end of the day, the real winner of this crisis was Castro, and the great loser was the US. Eventually, the Soviets dismantled their missiles in Cuba. In order to avoid another huge crisis and the threat of a nuclear war, the two superpowers established the red telephone (direct communication between them). Like it happened in Egypt, the r eal winner was the leader of the third country: Cuba. Why did the US intervene so quickly in Cuba? The US feared a possible communist regime because they had good relations with Nasser and China, and was also a problem because Cuba could have inspired rev olutions in Latin America. Communist revolutions in Latina America would have seriously endangered the US security system: the Latin American countries in the Pacific could have merged their forces with communist China and Soviet Union in the Pacific, basi cally placing the US under the threat of a double front war (the US territory itself and American soldiers intervening in Vietnam and Korea). This is the reason why the US overreacted. The Cold War in Europe (1945-1961) In 1945 there was not much to rule in Germany. The country had been devastated by years of war, it lacked a political structure, it was under the military authority of four foreign powers, and its economy – like those in the European countries that Nazi Germany had once held under its sway – was in no condition to feed or clothe its population. This alone provides one explanation for the phenomenal rise of Soviet and American power in Europe after the Second World War: with Germany in ruins, France largely excluded from the victors’ table an d Britain in no condition to play a major role in continental Europe, there were, ultimately, only two major Powers capable of exercising predominant influence over the old continent. Still , it seems that the two needed each other and, even with the common enemy gone, they did not necessarily need to become bitter rivals, let alone mortal enemies. In fact, the Soviet Union was in almost as bad a shape as its defeated German enemy. The country had suffered catastrophic human losses (estimated at twenty milli on deaths) and much of its economic infrastructure had been destroyed by the German invasion. Already, in order to rally the Russian population behind the war effort, Stalin had felt it necessary to abandon ideological purity in his wartime internal policies. Now in the post-war period, it appeared that unless the Soviet regime created a better standard of living, it could hardly rely on its population to regard the previous years’ sacrifices as having been worthwhile. Moreover, while the Red Army was the largest standing army on the European continent, it would, sooner or later, need to be demobilized in order for the reconstruction work to begin. In addition to security soon fell under the influence of the Soviet Union: Poland, Hungar y, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia, created by Tito in 1946, was able to maintain a decent level of independency. Do not forget that the American engagement in western Europe was inevitable in 1945–46. In fact, strong domestic constituencies urged the Truman administration to disengage the United States from the old continent. For example, in the November 1946 Congressional elections the Republicans, under the influential leadership of Senator Robert Taft, defeated the Democrats for the first time in decades, and it was no secret that Taft and a large portion of the Republicans favoured a return to some form of American isolationism . Inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman relied on a number of advisers who rarely agreed on the correct response to what was viewed as increasingly aggressive Soviet behaviour. To be sure, a strong anti -Soviet consensus was being formed among a number of key policy analysts who, in the spring of 1946, began to support the line advocated by George Kennan. In his so-called ‘Long Telegram’ of February 1946 Kennan presented an analysis of Soviet behaviour which, over the year that followed, heavily influenced the Truman administration’s Cold War policies. Kennan’s argument appeared straightforward: the Soviets were al most pathologically insecure, they believed that the USSR’s future security was directly dependent on minimizing their neighbours’ security, and were convinced that only the destruction of American power would ultimately guarantee their survival. What Kennan thus implied was that the Soviets would not be satisfied even with the total domination of Eastern Europe but would use both overt and covert means to spread their influence to Western Europe. In this essay he also used the term ‘ containment ’ to describe how the United States should use its military, political and economic power to prevent further Soviet expansion. Outside the United States, the toughening of the American stance was also evident. This was clear as early as March 1946 when a crisis developed over the continued presence of Soviet troops in northern Iran (Azerbaijan). Faced with stern criticism from the United States and Britain, the Soviets withdrew their troops in the late spring of 1946. Similarly, when the Soviets made continued demands on the Turkish government for control over access routes through the Straits, the United States responded in August 1946 by sending a naval presence into the eastern Mediterranean region. The following month, the Truman administration announced that this w as to remain a permanent presence. Clearly, what was of concern to the Americans was the future of the eastern Mediterranean region and the Middle East and, as with Iran, a show of strength appeared necessary to contain further Soviet presence into the area. The Soviets appeared once again to be listening; Moscow began to back down and gradually withdrew some of the divisions that had been deployed near the Soviet –Turkish border in 1946. These two crises seemed to confirm one of the major principles of the policy of containment: if you are tough, the Soviets will eventually step back. Indeed, a year and a half after Germany’s surrender the American administration was becoming increasingly convinced that only a firm policy of containment could stop further So viet moves to expand their power beyond Eastern Europe. On another level, however, the events in Iran and Turkey in 1946 reflected not only Truman’s growing resolve to confront the Soviets, but the obvious weakness of Britain’s power and the American will ingness to take over the commitments and positions previously held by the British. This trend became even clearer in early 1947, when the central focus of the emerging Cold War shifted to the ongoing civil war in Greece. In the first part of this civil war, the nationalists were supported by the British government. When the British could no longer support the Greeks, the US unveiled the so-called Truman Doctrine: the global responsibility of the United States ‘to support f ree peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures’ and clearly stated that, if such aid was not provided, the other European countries would quickly come under threat. Indeed, the communist party in Greece was defeated. The Soviet–American rivalry over nuclear weapons was the issue that, above all others, symbolized the bipolarity of the Cold War. In the first half of the 1950s the balance stood clearly in America’s favour for, although it had lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949, the United States seemed to be consistently one step ahead of its rival. Because of this edge, the Eisenhower administration relied heavily on nuclear weapons and the notion of massive retaliation – the idea that the United States was willing to retaliate with nuclear weapons even in response to small-scale conventional Soviet attacks – as a way of deterring possible Soviet military moves. The “New Look” (as the overall policy was called) had the attraction of reducing the need to expand American and NATO conventional forces to match the level of their Soviet and Warsaw Pact counterparts. In 1955, for example, the United States had about 2.9 million men in arms compared with the Soviets’ 5.7 million. Reliance on nuclear weapons also had another adv antage: it allowed the United States to keep its military budget from skyrocketing, something the Soviet Union picked up on and effectively copied in the late 1950s. The problem was that massive retaliation could work only as long as the perception of Amer ican nuclear superiority, as well as the reality, existed. By late 1957 that was no longer the case. Between August and October of that year the Soviets stunned the world by launching their first inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) and by sending Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into space. Given that the Americans had twice failed in 1957 to launch their Atlas ICBM, it seemed that a sudden shift in rocket technology and intelligence capabilities had taken place. As a result, critics began to talk about a “missile gap” in the Soviets’ favour. In reality, the Soviets had only scored a short-term propaganda victory, for the missile capabilities of the United States far exceeded those of the USSR. But there were two problems : -no matter that the numerical balance favoured the United States, the sheer existence of Soviet ICBMs turned the long-standing fear that the USSR might one day be able to hit American territory with nuclear weapons into a frightening reality. Hence, threatening to strike the So viets with nuclear weapons if they launched a conventional military attack on Western Europe became less credible; this, in turn, undermined the whole concept of massive retaliation -although the Eisenhower administration knew of America’s continued superi ority, the means by which such intelligence was gathered made it difficult, if not impossible, to publicize it. Eisenhower had gone on record denying that the United States spied on the USSR, but in reality high -tech U-2 spy planes were regularly flying over Soviet airspace gathering intelligence on military installations. As it was unwilling to acknowledge this publicly, the American administration could thus not make a strong case against further missile development . In 1960 JFK became president. He moved rapidly towards abandoning the New Look and massive retaliation. Even though his administration was later forced to admit that the missile gap was, in fact, in America’s favour, Kennedy adopted a more expensive defence doctrine ( Flexible Response) that emphasized not only the development of nuclear weapons but additional spending on conventional and non -conventional forces. There was, however, much more behind the shift in American military doctrines than the sudden launch of Soviet satellites and ICBMs, for the Americans were also responding to a sudden explosion of new potential trouble spots around the world. The Korean War and the decision to aid the French war effort in Indochina had been but the first expressions of the expansive view American leade rs were beginning to take of their country’s national interests in the Cold War. In effect, the shifting American military doctrine was part of the American decision to globalize the Cold War in response to the instability created by the rapid decolonization process of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1961, as Khrushchev came under increasing pressure both at home and abroad to l ive up to his tough rhetoric, the new US president, John F. Kennedy, was left to deal with the climax of the Berlin crisis. With more than 100,000 East Germans fleeing via Berlin in the first half of 1961, it was clear that the issue had to be settled. However, with both sides under pressure to remain tough, the Soviet–American summit in Vienna in June 1961 accomplished little. Hence, the war of words intensified: Khrushchev set the end of 1961 as the deadline for a solution; Kennedy shot back by reaffirming America’s commitment to West Berlin and asking Congress to increase defence expenditure. As tensions mounted the Soviets and East Germans re sorted to the only solution that was unlikely to provoke an open military confrontation: on 13 August 1961 East German police forces started to construct a barbed-wire fence separating East and West Berlin. They soon followed this up by erecting a concrete wall. Access between East and West Berlin was soon restricted to a number of tightly controlled checkpoints. The building of the Berlin Wall had mixed effects. In the short term, it diffused the crisis by removing its source, for East Germans now found it virtually impossible to move to the West via Berlin. The Western Powers, including the United States, protested but they did not attempt to remove the wall, realizing that this would risk war. As a result, the Berlin question, while by no means solved, soon occupied a far less central position as a source of Cold War tension. In a sense, the Berlin Wall thus symb olized the acceptance of the status quo in Europe by both sides. To the West, Berlin was clearly not an adequate cause for going to war. To the Soviets, West Berlin’s existence was acceptable as long as it no longer drained the best and the brightest from the GDR. However, Khrushchev’s decision to build the wall was also indicative of the tightrope act that the Soviet premier was performing. On the one hand, he had been pressed by his East German allies to take action, but on the other hand, he was no more eager than Kennedy was to risk a nuclear exchange. In Berlin, at least, a stability of sorts – however bizarre a concrete wall dividing the former capital of the Third Reich was in the nuclear age – had set in. In the long run, however, the more significa nt symbolic value of the wall was not the stability it seemed to provide, but the way in which it clarified for all to see the differences between the two political systems it separated. As Cold War propaganda wars continued, the West never stopped using t o its advantage the fact that the East had had to build a wall to keep its people in. Over subsequent decades the Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War’s endurance, and the ultimate unanswerable indictment of communism. Finally, many organizations were created in the first years of the Cold War, organizations that still influence today’s world: the European Economic Community, which soon became the European Coal and Steel Community, and NATO. The beginning of the Cold War in Asia-Pacific India : in the aftermath of the Pacific War, the first clear sign that a new Asia was emerging from the ashes of that conflict came in 1947 with the most dramatic act of decolonization yet to take place – the end of British rule in India. During the inter -war period Britain had attempted to use both coercion and concession in equal measure in its efforts to remain in India. However, by the end of the Second World War this policy was no longer attractive or feasible. India was now in a state of expectation following the promises of independence that had been made during the war, and, moreover, was in danger of breaking down into inter -communal violence. In such a volatile situation it was clear that if Britain wished to reassert its control and once again drag out its withdrawal, it would have to pay a high price both financially and militarily. After all , Britain’s economic interests in India had been in decline for a number of years and t he hope existed that independence would not entirely sever the connection with the subcontinent, rather that India would accept Dominion status and become an active member of the Commonwealth. Accordingly, from 1946 Britain began actively to negotiate a transfer of power, but this did not prove to be an easy matter, for when independence was granted in August 1947 it was not to one unitary state, but to two – India and Pakistan. India gained its independence under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, the hea d of the Congress Party. Moreover, it quickly added to its territorial area by bribing or coercing the heads of the Princely States to merge their states into India (Princely States = the states in British India that remained formally under the control of local rulers rather than direct British administration). The actual partition process was a painful one, for those who found themselves on the wrong side of the religious divide were forced to flee for their lives and hundreds of thousands were killed. Tthe independence of India was an event of great importance for Asia, for it symbolized and further stimulated the desire to rid the continent of European colonialism. China : at the start of the war against Japan in 1937, the Chinese nationalists and the communists had agreed to create the Second United Front, thus putting aside their mutual hostility in order to concentrate on resisting Japanese aggression. However, the two parties remained largely independent of each other, making war in parallel rather than engaging in a joint effort. The problem for Chiang Kai-Shek (the leader of the nationalists) as the war progressed was that the communists based became increasingly strong politically and militarily. The CCP (Chinese communist party) gained strength in a number of ways. In the military sphere, it adopted the principle of ‘protracted war’, which involved using guerrilla warfare to wear down the Japanese through attrition. This strategy proved successful and over time the CCP built itself a strong base in the rural areas of north China. The CCP needed to work in the political sphere to foster good relations with the rural population, which it relied upon for food and intelligence. It did this by stressing its nationalist credentials and establishing relatively efficient local government. Moreover, in order to encourage the development of an anti -Japanese ‘united front’ of classes, it moderated the radical land reform policy it had followed in the early 1930s, so that it would not alienate rich peasants or small-scale landowners. Ideological justification of this policy was provided by Mao’s ‘New Democracy ’ movement, which argued that socialism could only be achieved through the proletariat leading a broadly based alliance of classes. Military success, popular support and a coherent ideological programme led to the CCP’s expansion from 40,000 members in 1937 to 1.2 million in 1945. In contrast to the rise in the CCP’s fortunes, the nationalists (Kuomintang) encountered many problems during the war against Japan. In order to sustain the war effort, officials resorted to increasing the money supply, but this sparked spiralling inflation, which in turn undermined support for the government. The nationalists also had positive assets: the strongest card that Chiang Kai-Shek held was that the outbreak of the Pacific War strengthened his ties with the United States. After Pearl Harbor, Washington saw China as a crucial theatre in the conflict with Japan and therefore increased its military and financial support for the nationalists. In military terms the results of this sponsorship were distinctly advantageous, as the nationalist forces were boosted by the arrival of American advisers and, from 1944, increasing amount s of Lend-Lease material. In addition, American interest in China had the effect of raising the country’s international standing. During the war , Roosevelt became interested in the idea that, when peace was restored, China should become the dominant regional power in East Asia and one of the ‘ four policemen’ of the world. In order to achieve this goal, the United States and Britain agreed in 1943 to relinquish the last of their imperial privileges in China, apart from the British possession of Hong Kong. Moreover, Roosevelt supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s demand for the return of all the territories that Japan had seized since 1895, and lobbied successfully for China to become one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. In addition, Chiang Kai-Shek was able in August 1945 to build a diplomatic bridge to the Soviet Union by signing a treaty accepting the terms laid down by the ‘Big Three’ at Yalta for Russian entry into the Pacific War. In essence, this meant that the Nationalists accepted Russia n economic and military privileges in Manchuria, but in return they received from Stalin the promise of Soviet disinterest in Chinese internal affairs, in other words a commitment not to support the CCP. The position therefore at the end of the war with Japan was that the nationalists, although they faced a formidable CCP challenge, still remained relatively more powerful . The problem for Chiang Kai-Shek, however, was how to use this advantageous position to eliminate the CCP threat. On the surface it might appear that immediate renewal of the civil war was the best option, but in late August 1945 Chiang Kai-Shek moved instead to open negotiations with the CCP. From August 1945 China thus entered into a twilight period in which negotiations, marked by grave suspicion on both sides, took place in Chongqing, while in the rest of the country the two parties competed for position. It was very difficult to reach an agreement, as both parts were reluctant to give concessions. However, in October 1945 the double tenth agreement was signed between the Chiang Kai -Shek and Mao Zedong. The fragile peace in China was undermined finally by two factors : 1) by early 1946 the United States and the USSR were increasingly at odds. This was important because it propelled Chiang Kai-Shek towards the conclusion that American support was guaranteed if he should go to war against the CCP. He therefore turned away from a political solution and looked for a suitable justification to renew hostilities. destroyed the authority and legitimacy of the traditional landowning elite in Korea which had shown a marked propensity to engage in collaboration. There was therefore no chance that a new nation could be built around the compromised monarchy or aristocracy. Furthermore, the Japanese authorities in Korea had bee n notoriously intolerant of resistance with the result that the Korean nationalist movement was atomized, its key members scattered into political exile. In August 1945 the Americans proposed to the USSR that their forces should share the responsibility for taking the Japanese surrender in the Korean peninsula. The division of their respective zones was demarcated at the 38th parallel, with the United States taking control of the south and Russia of the north. The intention was that they would then work to implement the long-term plan that had been drawn up by the Great Powers for the political future of Korea, which was that it should come under a United Nations trusteeship that would prepare the country for eventual independence. In the Soviet zone preference was given to the formation of political groups based on the Korean Communist Party, particularly the faction controlled by Kim Il-Sung. In the American zone, authority rested with General John Hodge, who came to his post with no knowledge of Korea whatsoever. He saw his task as instilling political order, and was prepared to use the former Japanese colonial apparatus to achieve this goal. In so doing he broke with relations the centre-left factions. Hodge therefore looked to conservative former exiles such as Syngman Rhee to provide leadership. The result of Soviet and American policy was the emergence of rival groups from the North and South, each vehemently opposed to trusteeship and to any form of unification which would favour the other. In desperati on the Americans in 1947 turned the problem over to the UN. The UN solution was for nationwide elections to take place under its auspices. However, the political representatives from the North rejected this idea on the grounds that the South would interfere with any free ballot. Thus the election that took place in May 1948 was restricted to the south, and as it turned out the ballot, as the north had predicted, was far from untainted. The victor was Syngman Rhee, who in July became the first president of t he Republic of Korea (ROK). The response in the north was that in September the Soviets passed control into the hands of Kim Il -Sung, who became the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In understanding the origins of the Korean War, it is useful to refer to these two new regimes by their proper names rather than as South Korea and North Korea, for both governments saw themselves as the rightful leaders of the whole country and not just the geographical area that they currently administered. Moreover, for each, the prime goal was the destruction of the other and the assumption of leadership over the whole of Korea. In 1948–49 the fighting in the Korean peninsula remained localized and inconclusive. The ROK was able to contain the insur rection against it, while the DPRK refused to be provoked into all -out war. In 1950, however, the situation changed drastically. Realizing that guerrilla warfare in the South was insufficient to topple the ROK, Kim Il -Sung appealed to Stalin in January 1950 to approve a conventional attack over the 38th parallel. Kim predicted that victory would take a matter of days rather than weeks, and would be so sudden that the Americans would have no time to intervene. Previously the Soviet leader had turned down such requests from Kim, but this time he provided a green light, the only proviso being that Mao should also concur. Stalin’s motives are far from clear, as historians lack sufficient documentation to come to any definite conclusion. Speculations are: -he desired to divert American attention away from Europe, perhaps to pave the way for an attack on Yugoslavia -the Soviet leader was stil l suspicious of Mao, and therefore keen to create a Sino-American confrontation that would draw China closer to the USSR -disturbed by American activities in Japan, Stalin desired to bring all of continental North -East Asia under communist control, thus denying Japanese militarism its traditional spring - board for expansion and bringing home to Tokyo the cost of collaboration with Washington. Having gained Mao’s approval, on 25 June 1950 the DPRK launched its assault over the 38th parallel. In Washington news of the attack was met with horror. To Truman this act of unprovoked aggression was analogous to the tactics that had been followed by Hitler, and, drawing the lesson that appeasement was a morally and politically bankrupt policy, he decided that the ROK must be assisted. American forces in Japan were ordered to Korea under the command of General MacArthur. In addition, in order to prevent any attack by China on Taiwan, the American Seventh Fleet was ordered into the Taiwan Straits. With American assistance the ROK forces were able to stem the DPRK offensive and by August had launched a counter-attack. The DPRK retreated. Countries wondered whether the UN should accept the restoration of the status quo before the war, or fulfil its mandate by advancing beyond the 38th parallel and completing the destruction of Kim’s forces . The latter was a tempting proposit ion, as Stalin had failed to come to Kim’s aid and it seemed unthinkable that the war- weary PRC would attempt to resist American might. In these circumstances Washington decided to roll back communism in Korea, and on 1 October ROK forces moved into the N orth. In retrospect, this was a foolish decision, for the crossing of the 38th parallel precipitated Chinese intervention. To Mao the American move into the DPRK, which came only three months after the US navy had started patrolling in the Taiwan Straits, was part of a broader plan to bring about a counter -revolution in China. From Mao’s perspective it appeared as though the Americans were readying themselves for a future three -front assault on China, attacking from Indochina, Taiwan and Korea. Therefore in October 1950 detailed preparations were made for intervention and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began to infiltrate its forces over the North Korean border. In late November, with American intelligence having failed to pick up warning of the impendin g attack, the PLA launched a massive attack on the ROK forces, forcing them to retreat beyond the 38th parallel. The conflict continued for another two and a half years. Armistice talks began in the summer of 1951 when it was clear that neither side had th e ability to win a complete victory, but they soon became bogged down in endless discussions over the fate of Chinese and North Korean prisoners. Finally the war -weariness of the Chinese and the Americans meant that the deadlock was broken, and an armistic e was reached in July 1953 with the border between the DPRK and the ROK only marginally different to that of 1950. The outbreak of the Korean War had a profound effect on the development of the Cold War in Asia. The most obvious consequence was that it further exacerbated the divide between China and the United States. The mixture of radical nationalism and Marxism that defined the Chinese Community Party led it ceaselessly to denounce the imperialist intentions of the United States. Adding fuel to the fire was th e American support for Chiang Kai-Shek ’s Republic of China in Taiwan. On the American side, its failure to appreciate the nationalist element in the Chinese Revolution led it to perceive the communists as an unbalanced threat to the international order, which was perhaps even more dangerous than the Soviet Union. In 1953 the United States signed a security pact with the ROK, and in 1954 military containment was extended even further with the foundation of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the signing of a security pact with Taiwan. In parallel to this, Washington expanded its provision of econo mic and military aid to its clients in the region, and, in particular, escalated its assistance to the French in Indochi na (Vietnam). The relationship between the USSR and China since WW2 The Sino-Soviet alliance was signed in February 1950. The alliance worked reasonably well during the Korean conflict, for the Soviet Union assisted China with the provision of air support and supplied a great deal of military matériel. In 1953 Stalin died, which was important because, while Stalin was alive, Mao had sometimes resented his bullying attitude and self-interested policies, but had not had the temerity to disobey him. Stalin’s removal from the scene therefore allowed a more equal relationship between Russia and China to be constructed. The new Soviet leadership was based around Nikita Khrushchev. The Korean War ended soon after , which was a policy that appealed to the PRC’s leaders. Now that the PRC was at peace, its main priority was to construct a socialist economy by adopting the Soviet five -year plan model of industrialization and moving towards state ownership of all property. To help it achieve these goals, the Soviet Union sent thousands of advisers and technicians to China to provide assistance across a broad range of state activities. By 1955 the Soviets started to assist with the development of a Chinese nuclear capability. Difficulties were created when, in February 1956, Khrushchev made his wide-ranging and controversial ‘de-Stalinization’ speech, in which he sharply criticized the cruelties and failings of Stalin, called for a move towards peaceful co -existence with the West, and announced that there was more than one path to the goal of constructing a socialist society. One positive aspect of the speech was that, by attacking Stalin, Khr ushchev allowed the Chinese leadership to follow suit and to engage in criticism of Stalin’s behavior towards China. The implication of such a line was obvious: the Soviet Union should treat the PRC as an equal. Even more significant was Khrushchev’s ackno wledgement that other socialist states did not have to adhere rigidly to the Soviet model. This was important because by 1956 Mao was beginning to doubt whether economic development based on centrally planned heavy industrialization was suited to a country like China, which sti ll possessed a relatively small industrial sector. Mao believed instead that the PRC could build socialism by concentrating on a massive increase in agricultural production. Essential to this rapid economic transformation of China, la belled the ‘Great Leap Forward ’, was the idea of devolving power from the centre to rural communes containing thousands of households. By 1958 Mao was beginning to express doubts about Soviet policy towards the West, which appeared to centre upon its desire to establish peaceful co-existence, thus guaranteeing the security of its empire in Eastern Europe. Mao believed that, as a result of recent events in Asia and Africa and the technological advances symbolized by the launch of Sputnik, the communist bloc was now in a superior position to the West and did not need to pursue such a cautious line. He therefore argued that socialism should be more radical in its denunciations of imperialism and in the provision of support for revolutionary national liberation movements and newly independent states in the Third World. Mao started to act as an independent actor, and, with the Taiwan Straits crisis, began an international confrontation against the United States. The Soviet leadership was greatly concerned by the belligerency and unpredictability of Chinese policy, and sought to restrict the PRC’s ability to undermine international stability. In 1959 the Soviet Union therefore abruptly reneged on a promise to provide the PRC with a prototype atomic bomb and took a studiously neutral position when a border dispute developed between China and India, which Moscow had been courting with military and economic aid. For Mao, this behaviour confirmed his belief that the Soviets were temperamentally incapable of respecting Ch ina’s independence and were sliding towards a ‘revisionist’ foreign policy. However, arguably the greatest provocation was that it appeared to Mao that the Soviet Union was intervening in Chinese domestic politics. While clear ideological and geostrategic divisions had opened up by the start of the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split was at this stage not irrevocable. Indeed, military co-operation continued and the polemical battle that erupted briefly in 1960 subsided in the following year. In part this arose fro m China’s weakness after the failure of the Great Leap, which through arrogance, incompetence and indifference had led to more than twenty million deaths from starvation. In addition, the Great Leap’s demise had the effect of forcing its main protagonist, Mao, to retreat from the political front line. However, the uneasy truce that developed in 1961 proved to be only temporary, for Mao had no intention of allowing his eclipse to become permanent. Indeed, he saw his re - emergence in 1962 as essential to the r evolution, because in his view, if the PRC once again returned to a close relationship with Moscow, it risked being itself infected by the revisionism that he saw as endemic in Khrushchev’s Russia. By the early 1960s Mao was convinced that the Soviet Union was turning into a bureaucratically controlled form of state capitalism and a status quo power. The ignominious withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in November 1962 and its agreement in the following year to sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the United States and Britain only confirmed him in his contempt. Like all authoritarian states, China mixed ideological thinking and geopolitical rationale. From 1949 to 1954 China leaned towards the Soviet Union China was in between the two superpowers The rise of importance of the global south Kennedy-style policy: China perceived to be under the threat of a double front attack by the US and USSR As we said, a dramatic turning point of the 20th century was the reproachment of the US and China (US- Chinese normalization). In history, when China shaped its foreign policy based on the US, it was successful; when China shaped its foreign policy against the US, it was unsuccessful. This reproachment is part of the pluralization of the international relation system of the late 1960s. The original Asia -Pacific balance and global power changed. Why did the two countries got closer? -the balance of power of the realist approach. China feared the Soviet Uni on more than the US, so the only possibility was to get closer to the US -the decline of Mao’s popularity and ideology -the ideas of socialization. China wanted to be included in the international order. In the first phase there were ideological contrasts, but later there were interstate confrontations. The Soviet Union was older and more powerful (at first, but later China became more powerful). In fact, this friendship would last in the long run: it was just an axis of convenience. Historical overview: 1) In late 1950s, the 20th meeting of the Chinese communist party, produced the secret report of Stalinism highlighted the differences between the Chinese ideology and the destalinization process in the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong gave an important speech in the 40 th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The title was East wind (China) prevails over the west wind (USSR). It was a direct challenge to the Russian idea of peaceful coexistence. Relationships got even harder with the unleash of the second Taiwan strait crisis without inf orming the soviets (even though they were allied). 2) The Chinese became hostile both towards the US and the USSR. This confrontation was fueled by the cultural revolution in China. China accused the USSR to be an imperialist power, a traitor of communism. In late 60s China was surrounded by problems on any frontier: North Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, Vietnam, Tibet… China was in the middle of a diplomatic trap. China changed its international position, and so did the US. For China, changing its position from a n alliance with the USSR to a friendship with the US wasn’t simple, because they had to justify it, especially in terms of ideological reasons. The US was a competitor because they supported Taiwan against Beijing, but it was also useful to legitimate Mao as the leader of China. China redefined the concept of imperialism: before, imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism, but later it became the expression of soviet foreign policy. During the cultural revolution and after the Brezhnev doctrine in 1968, China stared to talk about Soviet-socialist imperialism, which should have replace the US’ type of imperialism. According to the US, there were two ways to face the Sino-Soviet split: -the US could have supported the USSR, marginalizing the Chinese (Ken nedy style) - the US could have supported China, marginalizing the USSR (Kissinger style). The US should have used China as a leverage against the soviets. This approach was useful for the US, as it kept good relations with China, creating new trade that fueled the development of new technologies, but it was also good for China, as it put the USSR under the threat of a diplomatic attack. Negotiations between the US and China remained secret and took place in Warsaw. The two countries knew that they wanted to keep friendly relations, but didn’t know which path to follow. Surprisingly, the perfect occasion arrived in 1971, during the world championship of tennis table, in Japan. In the final game, an American and Chinese player played, and deeply changed the atmosphere. This is the famous ping pong diplomacy. The US and China had two main problems: -the US became the security provider for Taiwan, which was on the path to become a republic. This created frictions with China -China, like all dictatorships, breached human rights. This was very hard to explain and justify to the American public opinion, so Nixon and Kissinger simply avoided the public opinion. After the championship, in 1972 Kissinger went to Beijing to discuss about these 2 issues: -the US would withdraw 2/3 of all armed forces in Taiwan, but only after the end of the Vietnam war -the US recognized that Taiwan was part of China. This agreement was a secret -the US committed to end the Vietnam war through negotiations. This meeting created huge consequences: -China became part of the UN Security Council -Nixon and Kissinger officially visited China in February 1972. Mao and Nixon signed the Sino-US joint communique, in which agreed on the differences they had. The document was used t o justify their position in terms of coherence. They agreed on the fact that Taiwan was formally part of China. Since then, the US cannot formally support Taiwanese independence. Both countries considered this document a success. Mao used it to justify China as a revolutionary power. The Chinese propaganda described the document as the continuation of the Chinese revolutionary identity. The US described it as a turning point in the logic of the Cold War. The public opinion antagonized this agreement. This new scenario changed the balance of power in the Asia -Pacific: the US won the Vietnam peace after losing the Vietnam war because the war destroyed the axis between the USSR and Vietnam. In Vietnam communists won, but thanks to the Sino-American axis there was China between Vietnam and its biggest supporter. Vietnam was isolated. Moreover, thanks to the new axis with the Chinese, the US started to talk with the soviets (the period of détente will start). China was used by the US as a way to force the Soviet Union to negotiate, to avoid diplomatic isolation. Brezhnev doctrine= the doctrine expounded by Brezhnev in November 1968 affirming the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the affairs of communist countries in order to protect communism. Triangular diplomacy and great détente (1968-1979) Détente is a French world which means relaxation. It refers to the relaxation of the tensions between the western side and the Soviet Union during the cold war. Thanks to the easing of the geopolitical tensions, the USSR could apply domestic reforms. The two men who shaped the period of détente were Nixon and Kissinger. They organized regular meetings with the soviets and regulated arms. Important steps were taken in: -1968-> nuclear nonproliferation treaty -1972-> strategic arms limitation talk treaty -1975-> Helsinki final act, which recognized the political borders designed after WW2, established military confidence, created opportunities for trade and cultural change and promoted human rights. The majority of the treaties signed during the détente age were about arms control. The cold war was the golden age of weapon control, especially nuclear weapons. There is no official declaration of the start of the détente, but historians believe it started around 1953 , with the victory of Eisenhour and Stalin’s death. Both the Us and the USSR were slowly declining, so they both had to change their strategies. They started to have a competition, not a confrontation, and started to promote domestic social reforms. Détente has 3 important pillars: 1) Strategy to manage the transformation of the USSR from a global superpo wer to a transregional power 2) Strategy to manage the pluralization of the international system (the players were enemies and collaborators at the same time) 3) Strategy to manage the Chinese rise The US NEEDED the Soviet Union. Détente was developed by Kissin ger. Since the US economy was in relative decline, the US needed to apply “cheap” strategies. The spending for national defense declined from 8.2% of GDP to 5.2% in just a few years. We need to understand the very peculiar position of the US: the biggest international power was also a revisionist power (usually revisionist powers are rising powers). The US was trying to destroy the system it created in the 1940s and 50s. The golden age of capitalism was declining. Since the US decreased its military spending, it counted on agreements with Russia and China to feel secure. Détente started before triangular diplomacy, but not before the Sino-Soviet split: the US used China to push Moscow. The most important phase of détente and triangular diplomacy emerged at a similar time. Just think about Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 and the signing of strategic arms l imitation talk treaty with the Soviet Union few months later. The three countries were strictly connected. At the Moscow Summit of 1972 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the first SALT agreement. There were, in fact, two treaties: one capping the number of offensive missile launchers (both ICBMs and submarine- launched ballistic missiles , or SLBMs), and another, which included strict limits on defensive missile systems (so-called anti- ballistic missiles). At the 1973 summit in the United States the two sides signed the Prevention of Nuclear War agreement. At the November 1974 Vladivostok Summit be tween the new American president, Gerald Ford, and Brezhnev, the two leaders made a tentative agreement on a SALT II treaty . All in all, it was a remarkable set of deals and summits that constituted a significant break from the atmosphere of the late 1960s, when America ’s growing involvement in Vietnam and the Warsaw Pact ’s invasion of Czechoslovakia had marred the early tentative efforts at détente. The early 1970s also stood in extremely sharp contrast to the crisis years of the early 1960s. While the Soviets and the Americans had been, in October 1962, on the brink of nuclear con- frontation, they signed, less than ten years later, the first strategic arms limitation agreement. From the American perspective, moreover, there were the promising prospects of the normalization of Sino-American relations in the early 1970s and the apparently permanent split in Sino -Soviet relations that had opened up. One should, though, bear in mind that the principal actors on the American side (Kissinger and Nixon) had relatively modest goals in their quest for d étente. It was not aimed at ending the Cold War but rather at changing the methods and framework used in fighting it. Triangular diplomacy= in order to avoid diplomatic isolation, Moscow was forced to sign agreem ents with the US. At the same time, the US also had agreements with China. In the 1970s there were also economic events: in 1972 the was a great famine in the Soviet Union. The US started to economically support the Soviet Union by sending grain there. Ho wever, this made grain prices rise in the US. At the same time, the USSR started to have economic relations with western Europe and the European Economic Community, but talks of agreement failed. The last important event was the 1975 Helsinki final act, thanks to which borders designed after WW2 were recognized, but also dealt with economic and cultural relations and human rights. Overall, the 1970s were a positive decade for the US, but in the American eyes’ the decline was inevitable. In fact, the public opinion had a negative perception of these changes because the Soviet Union had supported communist revolutionary movements all over the world (Portugal, Angola, Latin America). Moreover, the fact that the USSR stood against the US in the Israeli -Egyptian war (Yom Kippur War) was the evidence that it wasn’t The US believed that the USSR was superior in terms of military power, but it wasn’t true Anti-nuclear movements were strongly against nuclear wars, so the two countries were forced to sign agreements The Vietnam war underlined the US’ military weakness. The US was perceived as an imperial power The soviet military buildup put the US under pressure to push for military advancements economic decline throughout the 20 th century. However, it was still very strong in terms of military power. The US was aware of this dichotomy: in the first years of the 1970s, the US economically sustained the USSR, feeding its population. The two countries seemed to get long, and an example is the signing of the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, in which they promised to control the use of nuclear arms. The collapse of the soviet system was due to different reasons: 1) The pressure of global economy and the need for foreign capital. Modernization and the inability of the USSR to cope with the west development was crucial. The USSR economic system was created by Stalin and slightly reformed by Khrushchev. It was a traditional militarized economic system, while the western economies after the 1970s created the post-fords way of production, with computer science. 2) The Soviet Union had problems in combining the domestic pressure, the request of the population for social growth, and international commitments. The international economic system was changing, but the Soviet Union didn’t. 3) There were problems in satellite states, in particular in Czechoslovakia and Poland. In Czechoslovakia, the dissident Vaclav Havel wrote the Czech oslovak charter of 1977, in which he asked for social and political rights and started to antagonize the communist authorities. In Poland the same happened, especially after the election of the Polish pope John Paul II. The communist system responded by sending general Wojciech Jaruleski to contain the pressure. Both countries are important: the former is important in terms of economic production, while the latter for cultural background. 4) Since 1977 Brezhnev became sick and each politician belonging to the soviet political elite started to look at the region/country where he came from, not the whole empire. 5) A bad diplomatic position of the USSR. The détente was successful only in the long term, as the soviets started to look at western way of life more and more, and wanted to become more similar to the west. Soviets wanted to eat McDonald and wear Levi’s jean s. This obviously weakened the Soviet Union. moreover, at the end of the 1980s, a totally new class of politicians arrived in western Europe, that kept aggressive positions. Think about the trio Thatcher -Kohl-Mitterrand. Finally, the Soviet Union couldn’t confront 2 great powers at the same time (the US and China), so the difficult relations with China only made the position of the USSR worse. 6) The new approach of the United States with Ronald Reagan. He was elected as a reaction to détente, which was considered a failure. Two important speeches define the US position in this period: the evil empire speech (the Soviet Union was considered the evil empire) and the strategic defense initiative speech. The US planned to create a system of satellites and missile s to counterbalance a possible soviet attack (it was a bluff). It was a way for the US to challenge the Soviet Union: could the USSR follow the US in their economic conditions? Therefore, we can say that after the period of détente, in the 1980s, there was a new period of confrontation. Reagan fueled the US defense budget. In the western eyes, the Soviet Union was aggressive, especially after 1977, when the USSR placed nuclear missiles in eastern Europe, thanks to which the soviets could bomb any European c apital in a few minutes. Were the decisions by Reagan understandable? Yes. He wanted to provoke the soviets and keep them under diplomatic attack. An example is the breach of the anti -ballistic missile treaty. The US declared that they were ready for a nuclear war. 4 key documents define this period: o NSDD-32 (national security decision directive) signed in 1982. It loosened soviet control over eastern Europe using covert operations and it increased the soviets’ inability to supply consumer goods. Moreover, Reagan tried to push for Poland’s religious freedom (especially after the election of the Polish pope John Paul II). Reagan tried to sign an official alliance with the pope, but he refused. o NSDD-66 signed in 1982. It destroyed the soviet economic and f inancial system with the reduction of oil price. The soviet economy was a third world economy: it gave raw materials to the west and the west gave back finished products. The west started to receive oil not only from the USSR, but also the middle eastern countries o NSDD-73 signed in 1983. It sook for a fundamental change in the system by reversing Kennan’s containment. It wanted to destroy the Soviet Union o NSDD-75 signed in 1983. The US attacked the Soviet Union in eastern Europe starting from Poland and religion, then the US would have supported Afghanistan, then the economy and finally by bringing changes in the soviet leadership Indeed, there was great instability within the soviet political elite. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected. Gorbachev was a lawyer and was passionate about philosophy. When he came into power, he immediately introduced a new policy, the so-called new political thinking . The very heart of this policy is the idea of global interdependence and mutual security. That’s why we cannot use the realist approach to explain the behavior of the USSR after 1985. He started to search for a dialogue and an agreement with the US. When a great power declines, it can respond with aggressivity (1979 invasion of Afghanistan -> failure) or negotiation. Gorbachev started to build international confidence and trust. The idea of coexistence is nothing new, but for the first time the Soviet Union was actually able to create it. Gorbachev overcame the so-called soviet deadlock: the USSR during the cold war needed the cold war to justify its political and economic authoritarian system and its foreign policy. It needed the cold war to be viewed as the leader of communist countries in the world and go against the west. At the same time, the cold war revealed to be a problem to the USSR because it devolved too many resources towards the military and nuclear competition against the US. To overcome this deadlock, Gorbachev responded to the strategic defense initiative. The economic conditions of the USSR were too weak to cope with the new American diplomatic attack. Gorbachev and the new soviet leadership understood that the Soviet Union needed to reform its economy and needed a fundamental change with the west and the US. He was aware that the Soviet Union wasn’t a superpower, but a transregional power. Gorbachev understood the different needs that the population and the army had, and he knew he couldn’t satisfy everyone. Therefore, he decided to destroy the central position of the army by reforming the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, the soviet leadership was kept under pressure due to many crises around the world created by the west, with the aim of keeping soviet politicians under pressure, all occurred in 1983: 1) the most important military exercise of the cold war: 40 military ships concentrated in the pacific (Fleetex 83). In the eyes of the west, they were simply threatening the Soviet Union with their military power and convincing them not to enter a nuclear war 2) the Able Archer crisis. It consisted in a NATO mili tary exercise, a simulation of a nuclear war. For the first time a military simulation was organized in defcon 1 level of security (there are 5 levels, from 1 to 5. 1 is basically nuclear war). The west was only preparing their militaries for a possible fu ture counterattack, but the USSR didn’t know that. In fact, the USSR perceived this operation as the beginning of a NATO attack against Moscow. The soviet army was ready for war. The soviet leadership considered this simulation as the beginning of a genera l attack 3) Pershing II were deployed in Europe 4) Invasion of Grenada by the US, an island in the Caribbean Sea. It was controlled by the communists , but the Americans changed the regime 5) the USSR was convinced to have a dialogue with the west after the Autumn Equinox crisis of 1983. Stanislav Petrov was the commander of OKO=the soviet surveillance system of satellites that could predict attacks by the westerners. He was working in his military station, when the system perceived a nuclear attack from the US to the USSR. The attack wasn’t actually occurring, it was a mistake made by the computer. He decided not to act, and just wait for the attack. This showed that the soviet military technology wasn’t reliable, which created a great crisis within the sovie t leadership. The USSR realized it was too weak to keep up with the US. All these moves were considered aggressive in soviet’s eyes. If 1983 was terrible, 1984 is a turning point: 1) Reagan was trying to win the elections, so he had to reach some achievement s 2) Secretary of state George Schulz made Reagan change his hard-line position, because in the previous year things got really dangerous. Reagan sent a special envoy to Moscow to convince the soviets that all the previous crises were just military simulations. Gorbachev responded by accepting to meet Reagan. A simple but meaningful sign of openness was the cover of the Time given to Gorbachev, along with an important interview. Finally, Gorbachev appointed new soviet leaders, all very open to communication with the US (the so-called Americanists). This meant that he wouldn’t encounter any resistance for his new political thinking . Gorbachev had the total control of the soviet foreign policy. Thanks to these moves, the so-called summit diplomacy started. Gorbachev and Reagan organized meetings in which they created a new atmosphere, and they started to talk about nuclear disarmament. These summits were: o 1985 Geneva summit -> few results but there was a friendly atmosphere. Gorbachev proposed the abolition of all nuclear weapons by 2000. During the 27 th congress of the soviet communist party, Gorbachev proposed nuclear-free international relations. This congress is the first step towards the de - ideologization of soviet foreign policy. In the same year, there wa s another example of the failure of soviet military structure: the crisis of Chernobyl. o 1986 Reykjavik summit -> beginning of negotiations with the US. Gorbachev proposed to reduce the amount of strategic weapons by 50% immediately o 1987 Washington summit -> the USSR and the US signed the INF treaty (intermediate-range nuclear force treaty). This is considered the final treaty of the cold war because from this moment onwards there will be no competition between the two superpowers. o 1988 Moscow summit -> the two superpowers became officially friends, so much that the US admitted that the Soviet Union wasn’t an evil empire. We can say that the cold war officially ended (but the Soviet Union still existed). A combination of forces brought to the end of the Soviet Union, in particular the decision of the USSR to fuel the transition of eastern Europe towards democracy and the forces from below in the countries composing the Soviet Union to proclaim independence. Two important speeches made by Gorbachev explain the new condition in eastern Europe: -the first was given in 1988. It was given before the UN general assembly. It is considered the speech that destroyed the iron curtain. Gorbachev admitted that eastern Europe could have a different future from the USSR and promised to withdraw soviet military forces from eastern Europe -the second was given in 1989 before the council of Europe. It is considered the speech that went beyond the Brezhnev doctrine: Gorbachev recognized the autonomy of eastern Europe. Any in terference of external allies was inadmissible. Thanks to these two speeches the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany was possible in 1989. It was understood that the USSR was ready to leave eastern Europe. Why did the Soviet Union dec ide to act in this way? Because it was already experiencing internal disorders, in particular in 1) Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and east Germany, where there was a smooth transition from authoritarianism to democracy 2) Romania, where the soviet influence had alwa ys been weak 3) Poland, where the people didn’t want to live a democratic transition. The April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl and growing resistance within his own party forced Gorbachev to adopt, in 1987, more radical policies in his search for perestroika – including some form of freedom of speech (glasnost – openness). Moreover, Gorbachev’s acceptance of a non-communist government in Poland opened the floodgates for political change in Eastern Europe. Changes were seen in Hungary, Romania, and especially in Germany, where the famous Berlin wall was demolished in 1989. While the events in Eastern Europe were unfolding, Gorbachev insisted on absolute Soviet non -intervention (the so-called ‘Frank Sinatra Doctrine’). As he explained to his Politburo, the Soviet Union could not afford to intervene, for the financial costs and potential damage to the relationship with the West would be too high. But most importantly, Gorbachev believed that it would not be right to intervene, for he felt that just like the Soviets, the East Europeans should decide their own futures. In 1990, Gorbachev agreed to the FRG (federal republic of Germany)absorbing East Germany, and approved the idea that the new reunified Germany sh ould remain in NATO. Gorbachev ’s decision effectively sidelined those West European leaders, including the French president, Fran c ̧ois Mitterrand, and the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who feared the consequences of a quick German reunificatio n. Encouraged by the events in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, which had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, began a campaign for independence. As Gorbachev in early 1991 began to slow down his drive towards liberalization, Boris Yeltsin, who had been elected president of Russia, by far the biggest of the constituent republics, began to challenge his authority. In August 1991 conservatives within the Soviet Communist Party attempted to grab power in order to turn the clock back, but their coup against Gorbachev was defeated by their own indecisiveness, the army’s unwillingness to follow their orders and Yeltsin’s defence of the sovereignty of his Russian republic. The failed coup effectively brought about the end of the Soviet Union. The Baltic States broke away immediately, and one after another all the Soviet republics declared their independence, including Russia. Gorbachev remained in the Kremlin as the president of a union that had ceased to exist, until he resigned on Christmas Day, 1991. After seventy-three years of uneasy existence, the Soviet Union was no more. Why didn’t the Soviet Union try to keep the empire alive? There are two possibilities. Some historians believe that the soviet elite has a project in mind (Moscow nee ded dialogue and needed to improve soviet-west relations and trade, especially because eastern Europe was almost considered a burden for USSR resources), while other historians believe that the USSR was simply unable to intervene. Recently, some historians have believed that the USSR accepted the fall of the empire because it was hoping for the birth of a paneuropean security system, an alliance that would have included all European countries (not the US). A sort of new military alliance that would have supplanted both NATO and the Warsaw pact. The US with president Bush decided not to economically support the Soviet Union in this new journey: it didn’t shape a new “Marshall plan” for eastern Europe and refused to restructure the Soviets foreign debt. The US tried to sustain the USSR because they needed each other, but didn’t want to give too much. The formal collapse of the Soviet Union occurred in 1991, with the Belaveza agreement, signed by the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, who proclaimed thei r independence from the Soviet Union. Even Russia wanted to have a fresh start. Many new countries were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all following the principles of self -determination (even though many conflicts of nationality are still present, in fact the borders are very dangerous due to the presence of unrecognized minorities). 1989 in China: the crisis of Tiananmen The western countries believed that China would have followed the path of the Soviet Union. Of course, they were wrong. During the cold war, we saw that China was already included in major global issues, such as the victory of the communist revolution, the Sino-soviet alliance, the competition against the USSR and the following Sino-soviet split and finally the triangular di plomacy. However, it was also involved in smaller, local wars, like the one in Korea and Vietnam, civil wars in Poland and Hungary and organized international meetings like the one in Geneva. There are 4 phases of Chinese behavior during the Cold War: The international relations realm after 1991 The US: the domination of the United States over the international order in the 1990s constituted, according to many observers, a ‘unipolar moment’. In contrast to the decades of the Cold War when America was involved in a fearsome rivalry with the Soviet Union, the United States during the last years of the twentieth century had no serious rival within the international system. Its military and political might was second to none and, although the 1992 presidential election was overshadowed by a looming economic cri sis, the 1990s saw America as the unchallenged global economic superpower. In particular, by the mid -1990s entrepreneurs based in the United States dominated the ‘new global economy’ and its most obvious product, the Internet. In part as a result of the Cl inton administration’s welfare reforms but even more because of the economic boom of the late 1990s, unemployment figures in the United States plunged to their lowest levels since the 1960s. Fittingly, the United States projected its economic power into the wider world, driving forward the process of globalization. In regard to international trade, Washington played a key role in sponsoring the metamorphosis of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1995 into a permanent institution, the World Trade Organization (WTO). Russia: by contrast, the new Russia of the 1990s was a nation hampered by a series of economic and political crises. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new inde- pendent Russian Federation, faced a plethora of insurmountable challenges. In the economic sphere, Russia tried to move towards Western practices: prices were deregulated, a number of state enterprises were privatized and the Russian Federation tried to boost foreign trade. However, the results were hardly encouraging. In 1992 inflation in Russia reached a staggering 2,500 per cent while the gross national product declined almost 40 per cent in the first half of the decade. The chaotic state of the Russian economy was reflected in the country’s chronic political in stability. Given the lack of a democratic tradition, a constitution dating to the Soviet era and a parliament elected in 1990, the power struggle between the president and an aggressive legislature culminated in October 1993 when Yeltsin finally managed to disband the Congress of People’s Deputies. The December 1993 parliamentary elections, however, resulted in a virtual parliamentary deadlock, as right-wing nationalists and other populist parties gained large numbers of seats in the legislature (Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s far-right party won the most votes of any single party). Two years later, the parliamentary elections resulted in an even more surprising outcome when the supposedly defunct communists edged Zhirinovsky and his supporters from the top spot. Eq ually worrying to outside observers was Boris Yeltsin’s deteriorating health. Moreover, although he won the 1996 presidential election (which was marred by extensive corruption) and remained the dominant politician in the country, Yeltsin’s declining physical condition exacerbated the continuing political and economic uncertainty in Russia. Finally, on New Year’s Eve 1999, Yeltsin resigned and Vladimir Putin, a former KGB (Soviet intelligence service) officer, became acting president of Russia. In the 1990s there were numerous attempts to minimize the risk of nuclear war and the possibility that the former Soviet Union’s vast nuclear arsenals might fall into the ‘wrong’ hands. The United States and Russia continued to negotiate bilateral nuclear arms reduct ion treaties. In July 1991 they signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) agreement in which the two countries pledged to halve the number of nuclear warheads (to about 6,000) by 1998. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist only five months later, S TART was supplemented by the Lisbon Agreement of March 1992 in which three of the successor states, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons from their respective territories. Early in 1993 the START II agreement further reduced the number of American and Russian nuclear weapons to approximately 3,000 – 3,500 on each side. A potentially important moment in limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons was reached in 1995 when the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was made permanent and the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom committed themselves to a moratorium on nuclear testing. Yet such treaties did not produce foolproof methods of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as was made clear when India and Pakistan conducted a series of well -publicized (and retaliatory) nuclear tests in 1998. The main question was how to incorporate Russia in the newly created international sphere, and an example was including it in the G8. In general, many smaller conflicts broke out with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the cold war, in particular in countries where the influence of the two superpowers was important. In countries like Somalia, Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia civil wars broke out. The US and Europe VS Russia and China We will refer to the US and Europe as powers who want order, while China and Russia are considered revisionist powers. After the collapse of the USSR and the end of the cold war, the US followed the idea of socialization of China, its inclusion in the world order. The man who represented this policy was Bill Clinton. He wanted China to get richer, and promoted its inclusion in the WTO. Clinton also wanted Russia to become part of the world system, so much that Russia became part of the G8. Clinton and Boris (the Russian president) met 18 times. Politicians believed that Russia could have become a democracy. At the same time, eastern European countries became more democratic and joined the EU and NATO. This was proof of dem ocratization processes occurring all over the world. In general, in the 1990s, there was optimism and good relationship between the west and China and Russia. The turning point was in 1995: the Russian military intervened in the Chechen War. It was a failure. It was a violation of international rules. The second turning point was the US military intervention in Bosnia in the same year. The Kosovo War of 1998 crashed the relations between the US and Russia. Russia believed that the US were undermining their security by intervening in the Russian sphere of influence. Russia believed to be under undirect diplomatic attack (think about Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan). The US is thought to be fueling these crises to undermine Russian security. If Russia became increasingly isolated, the US also focused on unilateralism, first with the 1999 NATO strikes against Serbia, then with the war of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq and finally due to the 2008 financial crisis the US saw its legitimacy erode d. Capitalism showed its weaknesses, and brought to crack multilateral institutions such as the WTO. These changes brought the American and Chinese economies closer, the so -called Chimerica. The two historians that theorized this “monster” are Ferguson and Schularick. However, after the 2008 crisis the US economy was too damaged to be considered the only global economic power, and China became the number 1 global economic power. Clinton’s idea of socialization was provoking problems to the US economy, espe cially for the middle class: the income of the middle class all around the world shrank, and the most people make less money than before. This is super dangerous!! The middle class is the pillar of democracy!! With a bad, poor middle class, you have a poor democracy. Moreover, with a good middle class, your power projection on the world is working, otherwise it isn’t. therefore, we can say that all around the world, there has been a US decline. Obama, Trump, and Biden have all coped with US decline. US decline narratives o 1970s-> loss of US military-economic record o 1980s-> the rise of Japan o 1990s-> the rise of the European Union o 2010s-> the rise of BRICS and China o 2020s-> the rise of more authoritarian states Obama was the president of the 4 th wave of US decline narrative. Obama shaped two main policies: reset (US- Russia diplomatic normalization) and pivot to Asia with the trans-Pacific partnership (designed by secretary of state Hillary Clinton). Obama is considered a bad president in terms of foreign pol icy by many scholars, but in reality, he followed a peculiar approach in relationship with China and Russia. He followed the teachings by Otto Von Bismarck: Bismarck shaped a peculiar architecture in which he used competitors to maintain the pro - German hegemonic equilibrium, keeping the main enemy, France, isolated. This is similar to what Obama did. Obama’s policy was the so-called “congagement”. Obama wanted to use key centers of influence to support the costs of the management of the international system . The management of the international system was too heavy to bear for the US alone, so they turned to possible allies: China. Moreover, Obama wanted to focus on multilateral trade and “open door” policies. Two projects were the TTIP and TPP, two great geo economics projects. The TTIP promoted free trade between the US and the EU, while the TPP promoted trade between the US and Asian economies, keeping China out. It was a sort of globalization control by the US, as the US wanted to define the standards of production. The US was central in their newly created networks. It was a good project, but the TTIP failed. In fact, Europe didn’t trust the US and the American agriculture. The TPP was destroyed with the Trump administration. Obama also focused on recreating good relations with Russia: in 2009 the US retired the program of missile defense shield in Europe. The aim was always the same: use Moscow as a leverage against Beijing. The project of reset failed due to 3 great problems: the Syrian civil war, the Liby an civil war and the Russian conquer of Crimea in 2014. Putin was convinced that the real aim of the US was to change the Russian regime. Trump followed the policies of reset and peace through strength , more violent and more focused on economic issues. Trump started trade wars with China. It is a similar policy applied by Reagan with Japan. Trump had different approaches, but similar aims. He didn’t have the idea of multilateralism, but bilateralism. He used the power of the US economy directly against China. He lifted trade barriers and applied protectionism with the aim of protecting American production and the American middle class. Trump is personally related to Putin, even economically connected, and he used this connection as a leverage in an economic conflict against Beijing. This attempt failed because Putin asked too much in terms of economic and security requests. In fact, the US congress is strongly anti-Russian. The US is perceived as the power of liberty and globalization, but with Trump American products were preferred: this is the classical behavior of a declining power. In 2017 we started to talk about a new cold war between the US and China. 2017 is considered a “new” 1947: the first year of the cold war. There were many meetings between Trump and Xi Jinping, but all of them were failures. Since 2017, China is considered a threat. There is a strategic confrontation between the two countries. Since 2017, the west understood that China wouldn ’t have become more democratic while becoming more economically powerful. The US with Trump withdrew from many international agreements, and even expressed that NATO is obsolete. With Trump, the US became more isolationist. The US “doesn’t have eternal all ies, but eternal interests”. If in economy this way of thinking works, in international relations and diplomacy it doesn’t: the US and Europe went further and further. As a reaction, Europe got closer to China, and signed the CAI, the most important economic deal that China has ever made with another player. Before 2020, Europa and Asia got closer, and scholars were expecting the rise of “Eurasia”. The main example is the belt and road initiative, the railroad from China to Europe. China isn’t considered only a positive partner, but it’s also a competitor in terms of technological development and the production chain. Biden reorganized the western coalition, and tried to create an alliance with all democracies against authoritarianism. There is appeasement and dialogue with China due to the conflict against Russia. Biden brought back multilateralism. He rose the level of ideological confrontation against authoritarianisms. He uses a violent language, but takes few actual violent steps against China or Russi a. Biden attacked China in different moments with a strong phraseology, without taking important measures. The first trip by the Biden administration was in Asia. Biden knows the importance of India, and wants to use it against China (China and India don’t have good relations). Biden wants to shape good relations with India, Japan, and Australia in order to contain China (this isn’t an official alliance). It is important to highlight the the US are fueling the ideological confrontation, like the UK did after WW2. At the same time, Biden reorganized the western alliances for example by participating in the European Council. The outcome of this move was the freezing of the CAI (it was signed but not ratified by Brussels). Therefore, we can say that Europe is c loser to the US. The western world is worried about the good relations existing between China and Russia. Both of them are considered revisionist powers, and NATO is very worried about their moves. The concept of “Eurasia” was destroyed. There are frictions everywhere: Taiwan, India, Afghanistan, Ukraine… and above all this there was covid. The war in Ukraine destroyed the possibility of good relations with Asia. What is the outcome of all these crises? China is declining as the main global manufacturing hub, Russia is no longer the primary energy producer, Europe realized it was too dependent on foreign producers. In general, we see the “multipolarization” of the international system. China and Russia are revisionist powers and are getting closer: this can be destroying for the western world (think about the last time revisionist powers created an alliance together -> Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperialist Japan). Today the US is declining as the global hegemon, and is seeing China rising. The US is aware of this process, so they are becoming a revisionist power: this is unprecedented.