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Rise Of The Superpowers (Usa And Ussr)

Rise of the Superpowers (USA & USSR) from events prior
to and during WWII World War II: the process of
superpowerdom It is often wondered how the superpowers
achieved their position of dominance. It seems that the
maturing of the two superpowers, Russia and the United
States, can be traced to World War II. To be a
superpower, a nation needs to have a strong economy, an
overpowering military, immense international political power
and, related to this, a strong national ideology. It was this
war, and its results, that caused each of these superpowers
to experience such a preponderance of power. Before the
war, both nations were fit to be described as great powers,
but it would be erroneous to say that they were superpowers
at that point. To understand how the second World War
impacted these nations so greatly, we must examine the
causes of the war. The United States gained its strength in
world affairs from its status as an economic power. In the
years before the war, America was the world's largest
producer. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was
implementing his ‘five year plans' to modernise the Soviet
economy. From these situations, similar foreign policies
resulted from widely divergent origins. Roosevelt's
isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic
desire to remain neutral in any international conflicts. It
commonly widely believed that Americans entered the first
World War simply in order to save industry's capitalist
investments in Europe. Whether this is the case or not,
Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherently isolationist
Congress, only expanding its horizons after the bombing of
Pearl Harbour. He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935,
making it illegal for the United States to ship arms to the
belligerents of any conflict. The act also stated that
belligerents could buy only non-armaments from the US, and
even these were only to be bought with cash. In contrast,
Stalin was by necessity interested in...