History of international systems Essay

On 5 October 1954 representatives of the United States, Britain, Italy, and Yugoslavia signed Trieste settlement in London. According to its terms military government was to stop in the two zones of the FTT, and Italy and Yugoslavia would presume governing authority on their respective sides of the new frontier. The agreement was approved promptly by the governments concerned and came into effect a few weeks later. Captivatingly, the Soviet Union accepted the Trieste settlement without dissent. The American embassy in Moscow accredited this reaction to the Kremlin’s â€Å"wish not to take sides in [the] matter or endanger its current efforts to regularize relations with Yugosalvia.† The issue also no longer held worth as a source of anti-Western propaganda once an Italo-Yugoslav agreement had been protected. As there were no other potential objectors of any implication, realization of the agreement proceeded smoothly. Though the departure of the Anglo-American garrison on 26 October 1954 ended almost a decade of direct United States contribution in Trieste. For various reasons, including bad weather and rumors of a plot to eliminate General Winterton, the formal ceremony to hand over authority from AMG to the Italians did not take place as planned. Winterton did, however, issue a public declaration on the morning of 26 October declaring that â€Å"the Allied Military government of the British and United States Zone of the Free Territory of Trieste is hereby finished.† In the afternoon thousands of Triestines crowded into Piazza Unità   in pouring rain and a howling bora (the notorious Triestine gale) to see the Italian tricolor once again rose over their city. As far as American policymakers were concerned, the Trieste disagreement had been decisively resolved. In terms of international law the settlement was in fact â€Å"provisional† in that a permanent, formal taking apart the FTT would have forced revision of the Italian peace treaty — an act needing the consent of all the signatory nations to that document. As a real solution, however, the London agreement was final as both the Italian and Yugoslav governments renowned it as a practical — if not ideal — cooperate and they wanted it to endure. The two Western powers helped make certain the effective decisiveness of the memorandum of understanding by making obvious they would support neither Italian nor Yugoslav claims to the territory now in the other’s sovereignty (Conrad Allison Alan. 1956). In the wake of a brief diplomatic erupt of the dispute in 1974, Italy and Yugoslavia ultimately decided to celebrate the provisional solution by concluding the alleged Osimo accords of 10 November 1975. These agreements meant that Italy given up its claims to Zone B while Yugoslavia officially recognized that Trieste was Italian territory. There were also prerequisites for protection of national minorities and for local economic collaboration between Italy and Yugoslavia. The two governments accordingly advised the United Nations Security Council, the United States and Great Britain that â€Å"the 1954 London Memorandum which recognized the situation prior to the present agreement is now void.† After more than two decades the â€Å"provisional† de facto settlement which had been so cautiously engineered in 1954 had lastly given rise to a permanent de jure elucidation of the Italo-Yugoslav boundary dispute. It is extremely unlikely that the Trieste question will be reopened in the predictable future. Though, throughout its history Trieste has shared the fortunes of a larger area known as the Julian Region, which has been of long-standing meaning in European political geography. For two thousand years this area at the head of the Adriatic was a strategic thoroughfare or frontier zone where the clash of competitor expansionist forces caused numerous changes in sovereignty. Since the nineteenth century it has also been the setting for a conflict between opposing national and political ideologies which would close in the struggle for Trieste and close by territories after World War II. One significance of these rivalries and shifting sovereignties has been that the area in question — now alienated between Italy and Yugoslavia — is difficult to define. Italians came to call this region Venezia Giulia (Julian Venetia), while Croats and Slovenes adopted the term Julijska Krajina (the Julian March) to portray an almost equivalent territory. In English, the area became known as the Julian Region. Physically, the Julian Region comprises a natural doorway between the Italian plain of the Po Valley and the Danubian Basin, in large part as of the excellent mountain passes found at the meeting point of the Julian Alps and the Dinaric Range. Its shores mark the point where the Adriatic reaches on the way to the landlocked states of Central Europe, and the Gulfs of Trieste and Fiume (Rijeka) on the two sides of the Istrian peninsula represent the most suitable northern outlets to that sea. In effect, the area is a natural crossroads between the Italian peninsula, the Balkans, and Central Europe. The strategic and economic allegations of this geographical setting prompted frequent conflict amongst nearby states for its control. The character of the Julian Region as a â€Å"zone of strain† was further resistant by the fact that it was one of the few points of direct contact between all three of Europe’s major ethnic groupings: Latins, Slavs, and Germans. It is barely surprising that all through history this area has been directly affected by the broader power struggles in the lands around it. The strategic and economic implication of the Julian Region was obvious as early as Roman times. After conquering the Illyro-Celtic peoples who initially inhabited this area, the Romans used the Julian Region as a major military and commercial thoroughfare. While the Roman Empire falls apart the area became a chronic battlefield and an open corridor into Italy for successive waves of invaders: Byzantines in 394; Goths in 400; Huns in 454; Ostrogoths in 488; and Lombards and Avars in 568 (Heim Keith Merle, 1973). By 811 the whole Julian Region had been integrated into the Carolingian Empire but was soon broken up into diverse feudal holdings whose rulers continuously intrigued against each other. After the tenth century the region became the focal point of a broader rivalry between the determined Venetian Republic and the rising Habsburg Empire. The two powers clashed continually in the area until the eighteenth century, when the Habsburgs finally dislodged the Venetians from their last footholds on the western Istrian coast. Excepting a brief break under French rule throughout the Napoleonic era, the Julian Region remained under Habsburg control until the First World War. In case of Yugoslavia, A secret British initiative in early 1941 provoked the first broader international contemplation of postwar revision of the Italo-Yagoslav boundary. At a time when Britain’s wartime situation was at its lowest ebb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill became persuaded that Hitler was preparing an advance into the Balkans. The British began considering diverse expedients to harden local resistance to German penetration, hoping particularly to persuade the Yugoslavs and Turks to enter the war. In the case of Yugoslavia, one measure was to promise postwar territorial compensations in the Julian Region. In January 1941 the Yugoslav minister in Moscow, Milan Gavrilović, suggested that â€Å"it might assist the Yugoslav government to strengthen their own position, and through them that of their neighbors against the Germans,† if Britain were to hold up Yugoslav claims in the Julian Region. Officials in the British Foreign Office noted that the proposal spanked of â€Å"bribery† and was reminiscent of the 1915 Pact of London but, in order â€Å"to be armed at all points,† they requested Arnold Toynbee’s Foreign Research and Press Service to study the Yugoslav case for frontier rectifications. A report was appropriately produced in early February concluding that Yugoslavia had sound claims on racial grounds to most of Istria and the Italian islands off Dalmatia, but not to the cities of Trieste, Gorizia (Gorica), Rijeka, and Zadar (Zara). The Foreign Office only desired cabinet approval â€Å"to hold out this bait to the Yugoslavs.† But the British war cabinet showed little interest while the subject was raised, and there the matter might have rested. Only days later the Yugoslav stance became more vital when the war cabinet decided on 24 February to send British forces to Greece. The Foreign Office now recommended that, in spite of the British policy of not discussing territorial changes during the war, â€Å"the verdict of the Yugoslav Government at the present juncture is of such importance that it would be valuable to disregard this rule on this occasion if by doing so we could persuade Yugoslavia to mediate forcibly on behalf of Greece† (Lees Lorraine Mary, 1976).   The cabinet concurred. At the time Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was meeting with the Yugoslav government. The cabinet informed him that if he thought it â€Å"necessary or useful† he could indicate that â€Å"his Majesty’s Government are studying with consideration the case for revisions of the Italo-Yugoslav frontier which they are disposed to think could be recognized and advocated by them at the Peace Conference.† Notwithstanding the importance placed on Yugoslav support, the cabinet specified that British policy on the matter must not move beyond this vague formula, which did not entrust Britain to a precise frontier line. British representatives in fact mentioned the territorial issue to the Yugoslavs, but the entire question became irrelevant in April while Italy and Germany invaded Yugoslavia (Kay Robin., 1967). Though inconclusive, the British initiative initiated the pattern according to which Allied policy on the Italo-Yugoslav boundary issue would open out throughout the war. The British had intentionally limited themselves to a vague proposal for approving consideration of Yugoslav claims in the Julian Region and were cautious not to suggest a specific location for an ethnic state line. While eager to tack somewhat, they did not believe the issue justified a major deviation from the policy of not committing themselves on postwar boundaries. In 1941 British interest in Italo-Yugoslav frontier rectifications was based on immediate military expediency. It was of a piece with historian Elisabeth Barker’s general account of British wartime policies in southeastern Europe as â€Å"a story of last-minute inventiveness and the undertaking of commitments without the resources to fulfill them. Policies, if that is the right word for them, were mainly dictated by negative outside factors.† (Black Gregory Dale, 1973) Insofar as Allied policies impinged on the Italo-Yugoslav fight for the Julian Region during World War II, their influence would usually remain indirect, a reverberation of broader military and political ideas of the different Allied nations. This early British incursion into the boundary dispute also prefigured later Anglo-American disagreements on military and political goals in southeastern Europe. Rumors of â€Å"secret agreements† on the Julian Region prompted concern amongst American policymakers, who were supporting an even more accurate policy of no political or territorial settlements throughout the war — partly because of experiences during World War I with secret accords such as the Pact of London. In July 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt queried Churchill about â€Å"the stupid story that you promised Trieste to Yugoslavia.† Recalling that in 1919 there were severe problems â€Å"over actual and alleged promises to the Italians and others,† Roosevelt asked Churchill to think stating publicly â€Å"that no post-war peace commitments as to territories, populations or economies have been given.† (Modisett Lawrence, 1981). At the Atlantic Charter discussions in August, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the British permanent in secretary of state for foreign affairs, assured Sumner Welles, the American under secretary of state, that Britain had made no such obligations, with the possible exception of an oral declaration to the Yugoslav government that at war’s end â€Å"the subject of jurisdiction over Istria was a matter which might well come up for reassessment!† Cadogan added that this statement noticeably did not constitute â€Å"a firm commitment† and that Trieste or Gorizia had not been mentioned. â€Å"Heartened† by this assurance, Welles underlined that the United States wished to evade repeating the problems caused in World War I while secret accords concerning Great Britain were disclosed. The British did not officially disavow secret treaties but Washington’s distress about their territorial agreements, which had been sparked by the â€Å"secret agreements† with Yugoslavia, was somewhat allayed by the signature on 14 August 1941 of the Atlantic Charter. The first two points of that document affirmed that neither Great Britain nor the United States sought â€Å"aggrandizement, territorial or other† and that both countries wished â€Å"to see no territorial changes that do not pact with the generously expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.† (Samuel Rosenman, 314). Despite this assertion of Anglo-American unity, the chance appearance of the Julian issue had already evinced differences in the two nations’ fidelity to a method of no wartime agreements on politico territorial questions. British interests in southeastern Europe would guide to further wartime disagreements with the United States on such matters. The withdrawal of American troops from Trieste in October 1954 marked the conclusion of nearly a decade of American participation together with Great Britain in the â€Å"temporary† management of the disputed city. Throughout that period the United States became the foremost partner in the occupation and provided the lion’s share of the funds needed to maintain AMG operations. Thousands of American soldiers spent some time in Trieste between 1945 and 1954, and a few even gave their lives whilst serving there. The United States, moreover, was the key actor in posing a lasting resolution of the dispute. United States was drawn into the Trieste disagreement as a by-product of the more general process throughout which wartime intervention in Europe led to American entanglement in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. After 1945 American policymakers at all levels came to view the Trieste question in terms of broader Cold War objectives — especially with revere to Italy and Yugoslavia. In one sense American policy on this issue was conquered by fundamentally negative goals: preventing Yugoslav control of the city and thereby restraining communism on the southeastern border of Western Europe. Yet the American presence in Trieste also symbolized the positive declaration of the principle of self-determination in accord with a fundamental liberal internationalist ideology which predated the initiation of the Cold War. The story of the American experience in Trieste can be viewed on the whole as the conjuncture of two historical developments. The first of these was the persistence into the twentieth century of the Julian Region’s momentous function as a barometer of broader pressures in European international politics. After 1945 Trieste was not just a localized focal point of national and ideological conflict but also became a deliberately important point on the edge of an increasingly sharp dividing line between two opposing systems of global order. If Trieste had not been a piece of disputed ground on that demarcation line between East and West, there would have been little motive for a major American presence there (Rabel Roberto. 1984). The other applicable historical development was, certainly, the rise of the United States to global power and its enthusiasm to exercise that power to encourage a liberal, internationalist world order. Under Woodrow Wilson’s leadership the United States first sought to use its power to this end in Europe throughout and after World War I, but with little success. As the United States became entangled in a second European war in the 1940s, it acted much more vigorously to achieve its wartime and postwar objectives, even though several of the latter were indistinctly defined. On both occasions American policymaking was a direct result of more general American aims in Europe. Throughout World War II, however, there was an absolute gulf between Washington’s general postwar aims as proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter and its efforts at developing a feasible policy mechanism to accomplish them in the Julian Region. American wartime policy toward the Julian dilemma was positively based on the hope of solving it according to Atlantic Charter principles, but policymakers in Washington failed to define the United States’ interests in the area and did not expect any significant postwar commitment there. Certainly, although American statesmen were concerned to avoid an armed clash with any of their allies, they made no pragmatic attempt to put up Yugoslav objections to Anglo-American plans for the occupation of the Julian Region. Until the crisis of May 1945 there was, quite purely, no coherent strategy for implementing American objectives in the Julian Region. When World War II ended Trieste was not yet a Cold War issue. It was throughout the crisis of May 1945 that an origin of Trieste as such first really began to take hold amongst leading policymakers in Washington. Winston Churchill and Alexander Kirk had long been urging that Anglo-American policy on the Julian Region be viewed as part of a broader anticommunist strategy, but their exhortations had not been observed by Roosevelt or the State Department. Certainly, the State Department had idealistically continued to assert its commitment to the policy of installing AMG throughout the Julian Region, as remaining cautious in practice and taking no practical steps to execute it. In the face of Yugoslav occupation of Trieste, the United States finally had to face the fact that its existing policy was vague and idealistic. Unable to rely on platitudes or to put off the issue for reasons of â€Å"military necessity,† policymakers in Washington chose to combat the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste in the name of liberal principles. State Department officials, of whom Joseph Grew was the most influential, now began to see the issue in terms of broader collective aggression. The new American president, Harry S Truman, appeared to coincide in their conclusion. However, the Americans did not wish to be too aggressive and were pleased to resolve the crisis with a working concession: the Yugoslavs withdrew from Trieste, while the United States and Britain inaudibly put aside their official policy of imposing AMG on the whole Julian Region. That outcome represented an accomplishment for the tacit spheres-of-influence approach to East-West relations which the Truman administration would take on in the immediate postwar period. In itself, Trieste was not an inner issue in the Cold War, and after the May crisis it had very little impact on the describing of the Cold War in general. It only came to prominence on occasions such as the discussions on the Italian peace treaty or the 1948 Italian elections, as the United States resurrected the issue for the opportunistic motivation of assuring a victory for the Christian Democrats. though not very important in itself, the Trieste case is of interest as an instance of the way in which Cold War politics unfolded in an area where the United States and the Soviet Union were not openly in confrontation. The deadlock between the powers that barred the establishment of the Free Territory of Trieste was a striking case of the way in which all kinds of issues were reduced to simplistic terms of direct East-West confrontation in the postwar world. For a time the predicament of Trieste became a small pawn in the great game of Cold War politics and, particularly, was locked into the more general American strategy of containment. Dispensable in the long run, pawns can nonetheless serve significant short-term functions. From the American perspective, Anglo-American control of Trieste was useful for numerous reasons: it prevented â€Å"communism† expanding into another part of Europe; it helped retain Italy as a stable member of the Western coalition; it justified an Anglo-American military presence in a potentially significant strategic point; it enabled the United States to appear as the champion of liberal principles; and, on the local level, it provided Trieste with an effectual and comparatively impartial administration. Whether laudable or self-serving, none of these American objectives was overtly related to the task of achieving a lasting, long-standing solution of the Trieste problem that Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Triestines could all believe. Ideally, the United States would have liked the return of the entire Free Territory of Trieste to Italy, but did not think that goal to merit the risk of an armed clash with the Yugoslavs. Short of that outcome, Washington usually viewed Trieste as a controllable issue and seemed ready to maintain a military presence there indefinitely. In Cold War terms there was little reason for importance in attempting to reach an eternal resolution of the dispute. After the Soviet-Yugoslav split of 1948, though, the advantages of retaining the status quo in Trieste gradually reduced. The United States now had a concern in keeping Tito out of the Soviet fold as well as sustaining the Italian government. In the past Italy’s Christian Democrats had productively played on American fears of Italian domestic instability to ensure a moderately pro-Italian line on Trieste, because Washington viewed Italy as a Cold War ally while Yugoslavia seemed a stalwart member of the Soviet bloc. Once Yugoslavia’s international status became more indefinite, Belgrade was in a position to play a similar game. The United States found itself in a perturbed situation where, because of past commitments, it lacked the autonomy to maneuver it would have liked on the Trieste issue. It is hard to assess the success of United States policy in Trieste from World War II to 1954 as that policy was often unclear in its explicit objectives. Yet there can be little doubt that American intervention â€Å"saved† Trieste for Italy — and, therefore, for the West (Kardelj Edvard. 1953). The American existence served as a stabilizing force in the area and assisted demonstrates the strength of the American commitment to Western Europe (and to the containment of communism on its borders). On the local level it helped make certain relatively impartial and efficient direction of the area until a permanent settlement could be agreed upon. Though the American stay in Trieste was needlessly prolonged, by 1954 the United States had determined the problem enduringly and at a minor cost. In Cold War terms American policy in Trieste might be termed a restrained success. That success did not essentially attest to the perspicacity of American Cold War policy in general but was in large measure due to circumstances unusual to the Trieste case. The United States would certainly not be generally as successful in the Cold War. Negotiations had been followed intimately in Washington from the moment Trieste was liberated. Certainly, the week or so during which Alexander sought a contract with Tito was a critical period in the development of American policy toward the problem. Throughout this time some American policymakers came to view the Trieste situation as an instance of totalitarian hostility and demanded firm opposition to it. The course of American policy after 10 May is particularly noteworthy in view of the mood in Washington throughout the final days of the military â€Å"race† for Trieste. Despite Kirk’s stress on the political necessity of establishing AMG in as much of the Julian Region as probable, Stimson’s caution had originally prevailed. Officials in Washington had seemed to recognize that perhaps only Alexander’s operational requirements could be met. Grew had even notified Kirk on 1 May that, if the Yugoslavs opposed the expansion of AMG, â€Å"we cannot consider the use of American troops to enforce this policy† (Harris, 1957). This apparent refutation of the State Department’s own policy stemmed largely from the fear of unsafe clashes with the Yugoslavs if they controlled the majority of the Julian Region. Trieste’s liberation on 2 May had complicated the state of affairs insofar as an armed clash was now possible even in satisfying Alexander’s minimum operational requirements. Officials in Washington continued to retort cautiously, recognizing that direct contact between the two armies at Trieste could be more volatile than the contingencies hitherto foreseen. The War Department advised stoutly against risking an armed clash, and Stimson repeated to grow his usual line that â€Å"the American people would not continue our getting entangled in the Balkan s.† Stimson believed that the problem was â€Å"another case of these younger men, the subordinates in the State Department, doing dangerous things.†(Coles Harry L., and Albert K, 1964) Grew was unrevealing, but the State Department risked no major initiatives as Alexander negotiated with Tito. Even with a crisis intimidating and Anglo-American control of Trieste itself uncertain, the State Department did not eagerly abandon its unrealistic AMG policy. While Alexander tried to safe a working compromise, Kirk continually warned his superiors in Washington of radical consequences in Italy if the original AMG strategy were set aside. The Italian government also dissents to the Americans, urging total AMG control of the Julian Region as promised. State Department officials were not adamant to these arguments. H. Freeman Matthews, Director of the Office of European Affairs, told Grew on 2 May that â€Å"when it becomes overtly known that Tito’s forces are assuming control in that area we might expect serious outbursts both in Italy and on the part of our large and significant Italian-American population here.† Grew himself expressed similar views to the president, suggestive of those American troops might have to be used to keep order in northern Italy if Yugoslav occupation of the Julian Region endured. Some State Department officials would have favored to maintain the original AMG policy but their hands were tied by Stimson’s and Truman’s antagonism as well as by Alexander’s insistence on securing only necessary military requirements. The president’s reluctance to use armed force at last brought them face to face with the basic discrepancy of having a forcefully articulated policy but no pragmatic means of implementing it. There is evidence, additionally, that the State Department was not content simply to await the outcome of the Tito-Alexander negotiations. The department wished to confer with the Soviet Union in the hope that Moscow might influence the Yugoslavs to withdraw from the Julian Region. Such a hope was predicated on the supposition already evident among American policymakers — that Stalin could manage Tito. It was of a piece with Washington’s faith in the effectiveness of summit-level negotiations amongst the great powers as a means of neutralizing local conflicts, assuring inter-Allied harmony and, presumably, securing the achievement of Atlantic Charter principles. Both Matthews and Ambassador Patterson in Belgrade suggested sounding out the Soviets even though Moscow had not yet replied to the earlier notification of American intentions in the Julian Region. When Alexander’s negotiations with Belgrade broke down on 9 May, the basic basics of the State Department’s postwar policy on Trieste were in place (Clissold Stephen, 1975). They were in large measure a rational extension of wartime goals but they also accepted intimations of an emerging Cold War atmosphere. Trieste policy would be directed by three major concerns, to be given conflicting emphases at appropriate times. Trieste itself remained in limbo as negotiations were proceeding. It was not surprising that the abrupt aftermath of war would be accompanied by displacement and tension in a city which had been the center of intensely challenging ethnic, ideological and strategic interests. In this particular case those problems were aggravated by the fact that the Yugoslav and Anglo-American contingents, both of which were resistant after 2 May, were systematically intermingled and lacked clear explanation of their respective lines of authority and accountability. Trieste’s value as a pawn in the Cold War had been approximately eliminated. It gradually became obvious to American policymakers that the Trieste question was now merely a needless source of tension between an appreciated ally and a would-be opponent of the Soviet Union. Although it remained convenient, the prospective existed for an awkward crisis and the United States became increasingly keen to reach a compromise resolution. The pressures to be purge of this occasionally exasperating problem were heightened by the local unrest and the Italo-Yugoslav tensions of 1952. By then the expedition for a Trieste settlement had become an ever more annoying challenge to Washington’s skills in alliance management. as a result, even if Clare Boothe Luce had not taken a strong personal interest in the matter, the Eisenhower supervision would still have acted much as it did to make certain that a lasting settlement was reached in 1954 by initiating four-power negotiations and by using political and economic control on Italy and Yugoslavia to bring about a final conformity. It is notable that the United States ended its presence in Trieste simply after the area had lost all effectiveness as a Cold War pawn. The United States began to work in intense for a conclusive settlement of the Trieste question after 1949. Shifting American objectives in Italy and Yugoslavia had eliminated Trieste’s worth as an instrument of Cold War policy for the United States. By the early 1950s Italy had become decisively integrated into the Western camp and was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as Yugoslavia remained outside the Soviet bloc. The unresolved problem of the FTT’S future was thus an unnecessary source of tension between two countries the United States believed important. Trieste was clearly no longer a Cold War problem in the sense that it had been before the Soviet-Yugoslav break. American policymakers justifiably accomplished that it was pointless to retain indefinitely a military and economic binder which now held few strategic or political advantages for their country. The United States had played a key role in the â€Å"provisional† declaration of the Trieste dispute, which had proved so annoying for so many years. Speaking in New York after the signing of the London memo of understanding, Dulles recalled that â€Å"when I became secretary of state, I made a list of the more significant problems which needed to be resolved in the interests of world peace and security. Trieste was in the top bracket of that list.† Of course, the â€Å"top bracket† also integrated more pressing and weighty problems such as Korea, Berlin, Germany, and the EDC. Alongside these issues the situation in Trieste did not seem to demand instantaneous attention and appeared â€Å"manageable† (Bass Robert, and Elizabeth Marbury, 1959). The Eisenhower administration did not actually take meaningful action on its intention to resolve the Trieste problem until provoked to do so by the threat of local violence and Luce’s potent and melodramatic reports from Italy. Thereafter, however, the American government acted more dynamically. After several false starts the United States thriving in initiating the three-phase negotiating process to evade the domestic pressures which had prevented Italy and Yugoslavia from reaching a solution. It was the United States, moreover, which ensured the success of these talks by taking advantage of its political influence in both countries, supplement by the economic force that had become a characteristic instrument of its Cold War policies in Western Europe. American policymakers did not trail a Trieste settlement simply for its own sake. It is true that after 1949 Trieste itself was no longer a central point of direct confrontation between the Western and Soviet blocs. Certainly, it was this development which made a solution potential by removing the perceived need for an enduring Anglo-American presence in the area. The Trieste issue had thus become a specific predicament in Washington’s relations with Italy and Yugoslavia. However, as had been the case since 1945, the interests of the United States in Trieste on the broadest level were still expressed in terms of the Cold War. The only change was that the larger purposes of the United States in the Cold War were now given out by terminating its commitment in Trieste. Eisenhower’s own reaction to the decree of the Trieste dispute exemplified this more general concern: â€Å"Now the way was open for Italian participation in the Western European Union and for success in negotiations for defense bases. The Communist threat to Italy had been avoided, and that nation now trod on firmer ground. And the risk of an explosion had passed.† Dulles was even more liberal in describing the implications of the Trieste settlement in October 1954: â€Å"A grave cause of dissension and unrest has been removed, so that all of South Europe can breathe more easily. Primarily, a demonstration had been given of the capability of the nations which are free of Soviet domination to resolve differences which abate them and divert them from the greatest issue of our time.† In short, the abolition of the Trieste problem was significant for the Eisenhower administration as it removed a needless distraction in Italo-Yugoslav relations, enabling both nations to stand more efficiently alongside the United States in its global confrontation with the Soviet Union. In that sense the important role of the United States in ending the dispute in 1954 marked the consummation of its policy of approaching the Trieste issue as a part of a broader Cold War strategy. Examined from today’s perspective, over fifty years after its declaration, the Trieste dispute seems at first glance to be of little implication in that broader struggle. For the United States it had been just one of the many skirmishes in the Cold War that did not involve direct American-Soviet military confrontation. Yet the Cold War has been an extensive series of such skirmishes, and Soviet and American armies have not met in face-to-face fighting in the postwar era. Basic strategies can have been conceived and approved in Washington and Moscow, but the key points at issue often concerned areas such as Trieste and concerned third parties. Viewed from that perspective, the story of American involvement in the Trieste dispute from World War II to 1954 is certainly that of the Cold War in microcosm. References: Bass Robert, and Elizabeth Marbury, eds. â€Å"The Soviet-Yugoslav Controversy, 1948-58: A Documentary Record†. New York: Prospect Books, 1959. Black Gregory Dale. â€Å"The United States and Italy, 1943-1946: The Drift towards Containment†. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1973.   Clissold Stephen, ed. â€Å"Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939-1973: A Documentary Survey†. London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1975.   Coles Harry L. and Albert K. Weinberg. Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1964. Conrad Allison Alan. â€Å"Allied Military Government of Venezia Giulia and Trieste — Its History and Organization†. M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1956. Harris C. R. S. Allied Military Administration of Italy, 1943- 1945. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957. Heim Keith Merle. â€Å"Hope without Power: Truman and the Russians, 1945†. Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1973.   Kardelj Edvard. Trieste and Yugoslav-Italian Relations. New York: Yugoslav Information Center, 1953.   Kay Robin. â€Å"Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War, 1939-1945: Italy†, Vol. 2, From Cassino to Trieste. Wellington: Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1967. Lees Lorraine Mary. â€Å"American Foreign Policy towards Yugoslavia, 1941-1949†. Ph.D. dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, 1976. Modisett Lawrence E. â€Å"The Four-Cornered Triangle: British and American Policy towards Yugoslavia, 1939-1945†. 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1981. Rabel Roberto. â€Å"Between East and West: Trieste, the United States and the Cold War, 1943-1954†. Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1984. Samuel Rosenman, ed., Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol.10 (1938-1950), 314.