The Consolidation of Spheres of Influence

Abstract

The agreement over principle and the hope for cooperation expressed in the Atlantic Charter continued into the last year of the war. But beneath the surface of cooperation spheres of influence were becoming a reality which increasingly divided the allied powers. Eastern Europe was becoming a Soviet sphere of influence which the United States was reluctant to accept and which it regarded as a violation of the Atlantic Charter principles. There was no agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States about the political future of eastern Europe and once this was acknowledged, each power consolidated the spheres of influence that had already formed. The Soviet Union tightened its control over eastern Europe and the United States sought to restrict Soviet influence on the continent to eastern Europe. In the western hemisphere the United States asserted its predominance over Latin America and consolidated what had long been its sphere of influence.