Successes and Failures of Stalin Foreign Policy Essay Example

divisions among his enemies made things considerably easier for him.

Stalin then sought to check the further development of Fascism, and the threat posed by Germany, by a new emphasis on political unity in Popular Fronts, paralleled by an attempt to advance notions of collective security through the League of Nations. When this was perceived to have failed he then reached an understanding with Hitler, turning the political and diplomatic world upside down in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, an important preamble to the Second World War. Looked at in strictly rational terms the Pact was perfectly understandable from Stalin's point of view; what was not understandable was the continuing trust he placed in Hitler, which led to near disaster in 1941.

So, by the first and most important standard of all, that an adequate foreign policy has to be premised on national security, safeguarding the country from attack, Stalin's must, in my estimation, be judged a serious failure. What of the post-war period? Well here Stalin's actions in Eastern Europe, and his failure to come to terms with the United States, were crucial factors in the onset of the Cold War, the formation of NATO and the acceleration of the arms race. What might be termed the 'Politics of Force' was to place an intolerable burden on the Soviet economy, without measurably increasing national security. It was a burden that, in the end, the system could not stand, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union was perhaps Stalin's final legacy.