The Cold War

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Europe was no longer in the position to initiate geopolitical changes, rather it was a battleground, both militarily and economically, between the competing interests of the USA and the SU. By the 1950s, Western Europe had become incorporated into the American dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and thousands of American troops were stationed in Germany and elsewhere in Europe with the intention of protecting Western Europe from potential Russian attacks. Similarly, the Warsaw Pact symbolized the incorporation of Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere of influence. Sir Winston Churchill's famous phrase: "an iron curtain has descended across the continent" came to symbolize Europe's position in post-WWII geopolitics.

The world's geopolitics was also altered radically by new military technologies, which reduced the distance between competing nations. The atomic detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 for the first time showed the destructive power of the atomic weapons. By the early 1950s the Russians had also developed and tested nuclear weapons, and the destruction of the entire civilization through atomic war became possible for the first time.

After the WWII allied military success left the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union as the world's three strongest countries. The USA and the Soviet Union were on the same side against Germany, why they moved so quickly from allies to enemies represents an interesting historical question. In order to address this question, we must consider the fact that the cold war was one of the 5 possible geopolitical scenarios. These are as follows:

The British support to the Anglo-American alliance was motivated by the financial assistance expected to be received from the USA critical to the rebuild of British prosperity. Meanwhile, the USA moved into an extrovert period in its foreign policy and adopted a critical position towards the Soviet communism, especially after Eastern Europe and China came under communist control in the late 1940s. « mai multe referate din Stiinte Politice