Soviet-American Relations during the Cold War: What Policies and Circumstances Conspired to Unravel the Soviet Empire?

<p>The two victorious superpowers of World War II – America and the Soviet Union – conceived and implemented unilateral foreign policies amid an atmosphere of intense hostility and suspicion of each other’s international intentions. Regardless of Moscow’s acquiescence in joining the United Nations and resolving a host of disputes (for example, the Security Council veto) regarding the establishment and operation of the same organization, it threatened to disequilibrate power relations between the US and the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, which convinced Washington to develop the containment policy, a defensive realist posture for repelling the Kremlin’s attempts to expand its empire. Nevertheless, the strategy – as effective as it was in protecting Western Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and some other nations from Soviet influence and intrusion – failed in Vietnam and fell short of expectations in Iran, the Congo and elsewhere, disproving its efficacy in many newly independent nations and then abandoned by the Nixon administration in favor of détente. Meanwhile, by the same token, the failure of Stalin’s imperialist designs to extend the empire beyond Eastern Europe testified to the success of US policy in checking Soviet expansionist designs. Following Stalin’s death and the repulsion of invading troops from South Korea in 1953, a change in Kremlin leadership gradually gave rise to a thaw in the Cold War between the two superpowers. The relatively peaceful interlude lasted only ten years and, in 1981, ushered in a change in American leadership of a strikingly more provocative disposition. The demise of three communist rulers in succession finally brought to power a reformer – Mikhail Gorbachev, whose appeals for glasnost and institution of perestroika divulged the economic, imperial and political decay of the Soviet system that reformers and even some remaining Bolsheviks in the communist party were only too eager to jettison. The chaos that ensued in Eastern Europe and the Republics deposed communist rule, fracturing the bloc into independent states. Yet, what is most instructive about the Cold War is that the foreign policymaking establishments of the US and USSR may have misconstrued their opponent’s intentions and concocted and executed flawed policies, but – to their credit – neither Washington nor Moscow seemed destined to battle one another in war, sparing the planet and humanity from nuclear extinction.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of International Affairs (M.I.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

International Relations

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Krey, John W

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jean Krasno
• Nicholas Rush Smith

• Cold War
• United States
• USSR
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
• Stalin
• Truman
• Nixon
• Kissinger
• Reagan
• Gorbachev
• International Relations

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1202

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:cc_etds_theses-2321