American Engagement with Yugoslavia: Hardening Bipolarism and Building a Legend
Creators: name: Huerta, Mark
Publisher: name: Stanford Digital Repository
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Yugoslavia
subject: Tito, Josip Broz, 1892-1980
subject: Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
subject: Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971
subject: Kennan, George F. (George Frost), 1904-2005
subject: Diplomacy
subject: Cold War
subject: Soviet Union

description: Prominent foreign policy leaders in the United States latched onto a bipolar view of the world order in the aftermath of the Second World War. But one country did not fit neatly into well-established lines. Yugoslavia blazed a trail of non-alignment with its split from the Soviet Union in 1948. 
	Prior to 1948, Yugoslavia had been a bad actor on the international stage, in the eyes of the West and the Soviets. The Soviets did not like Yugoslavia’s communist regime, led by Josip Broz Tito, because they were provoking confrontations with the West that the Soviets did not consider worthwhile, especially by aiding the communist rebels in the Greek Civil War and in Tito’s attempt to gain control of the Italian port city of Trieste. The Americans, on the other hand, tended to view Tito as a mere puppet of the Soviets, another arm of the communist threat around the world. Both sides denied Yugoslavia its agency. Then, in 1948, the Yugoslav and Soviet communist parties split, complicating this simple bipolar framework. A Cold War bloc member had gone rogue. 
	Yugoslavia caused confusion to American policymakers prosecuting the Cold War. Still, this challenge only hardened the bipolar anti-Soviet framework. While not destroying their bipolar framework, American policymakers were able to allow Yugoslavia to maneuver to a position that would be more beneficial to the United States. Yugoslavia did not need to be a vassal to receive American aid. A middle ground between the two Cold War blocs was allowed to exist after 1948, with Yugoslavia the first case of a country leaving the orbit of one pole for the uncertainty of non-alignment. 
	The American response to the 1948 Tito-Stalin split revealed a level of deftness and flexibility that still preserved the core containment policy. In the initial wake of the Tito-Stalin split, senior foreign policy leaders in Washington were unsure of what to believe about what was happening. In the weeks after the 1948 split became public, the administration set on a policy: the United States would engage in talks with Yugoslavia if they sought them out. Some in the Truman administration sensed opportunity right away, though there was trepidation about how much Yugoslavia could be trusted. The logic of Cold War blocs motivated American foreign policy, although being a formal part of the American bloc and ideological sphere was not required. 	
	But as 1948 became 1949 and then 1950, relations between the United States and Yugoslavia grew apace. Yugoslavia did in fact reach out to the Americans, first to private firms and eventually with growing bilateral relations. Loans from the Export-Import Bank and deals with private companies buttressed the Tito regime.  As 1950 went on, economically devastated Yugoslavia put in requests for aid from the United States, which Congress ultimately granted in December of that year. The Americans were providing a communist country direct aid at the height of the Cold War. 
	The growing engagement with Tito was also aided by what may be called a “Tito legend” which was emerging in the United States, which saw him as an embattled freedom fighter for his country’s independence rather than a communist despot. The improvement in economic relations coincided with a push in Western media to improve the stature of Tito and portray him as a nationalist freedom fighter as opposed to a communist dictator. Newspapers and magazines built up the legend of Tito as a legend of Yugoslav history. Promoted in the media and foreign policy journals, this legend turned a communist despot into a sympathetic patriot in the eyes of the American public.