Journal of East China Normal University (Philosoph ›› 2015, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (3): 76-86.doi: 10、16382/j.cnki.1000-5579.2015.03.008

• 冷战史研究 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Heated Exchanges on European Collective Security between the United States and the Soviet Union, 1954-1957

Liu Kui   

  • Online:2015-05-15 Published:2015-06-08
  • Contact: Liu Kui
  • About author:Liu Kui

Abstract: It was the first time for the Soviet Union to propose formally the proposal of establishing the European Collective Security System at the Berlin Four-power Talks of Foreign Ministers on Feb 10th. 1954. After that, the problem of European collective security had become one of the foci for a long time until the burst of the dispute on the Berlin Issue between America and the Soviet Union in 1958. According to relevant archives, it is easy to find the basic difference between America and the Soviet Union on it. The Soviet Union wanted to establish the European Collective Security System and detoured the dispute of the German Issue between the West and the East for achieving more purposes such as stabilizing the division of Germany and Europe which was good for the controlling of its zone in Europe, weakening the West alliance and excluding the American troop from Europe and so on. America stood for some point of view that Germany must reunify in the free elections firstly then considered the problem of European Security, reunified Germany must join the NATO, and it objected the Soviet suggestion of setting up the system of European Collective Security which would weaken the force of the West alliance. For the sake of the immense divergence, the Soviet Union and America were unable to agree on each other’s viewpoint on European Collective Security at the Berlin Four-power Talks of Foreign Ministers and subsequent conferences. This paper argues that there are two main reasons about this, one is that these two countries didn’t truly quit the containment policy which was based on the power, the second is that it was hard to form consensus on European collective security between these two countries due to divergences over the German question, especially different ideas which they had on the sequence of solving the German Issue and European collective security.