World War 2 and the Superpower Nation :: essays research papers

The Second World War gave rise to a pack of new ideas which changed the course of modern society, the idea which has had the greatest impact on the world as a whole is the concept of the superpower nation. To be a superpower, a nation needs to have a whole economy, an overpowering military, immense international political power, and related to this, a slopped national ideology. It was this state of war (WWII), and its results that spawned the formation of superpowers and lead them to experience such a preponderance of power. To understand how the Second World War impacted sustain of superpowers it is important to first understand and examine the causes of the war. The United States gained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economic power and as a heavily industrialized nation. In the years preceding the war and the Great Depression, America was the worlds largest producer and arguably had the strongest and most stable economy. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his five year plans to modernize the Soviet economy. From these situations, similar strange policies resulted from widely divergent origins. Roosevelts isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic desire to prevail neutral in any international conflicts. It was widely believed that America entered the head start World War simply in order to save its industrys capitalist investments in Europe. Whether this is the case or not, Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherently isolationist Congress, solely expanding its horizons after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He signed the disinterest Act of 1935, making it illegal for the United States to ship arms to the champion governments of any conflict. The act also stated that belligerent nations could buy only non-armaments from the US, and even these were only to be bought with cash. In contrast, Stalin was by necessity evoke in European affairs, but only to the point of concern to the USSR. Ru ssian foreign policy was fundamentally Leninist in its concern to keep the USSR let on of war. Stalin wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernize the countrys industry. The Soviet marriage was committed to collective action for peace, as long as that loyalty did not mean that the Soviet Union would take a brunt of a Nazi attack as a result. Examples of this can be seen in the Soviet Unions attempts to achieve a mutual assistance treaty with Britain and France.