96 International Relations Theory of War
the League of Nations in 1933 and Italy in 1937, war clouds hovered above,
and the League of Nations did not have the ability to prevent its outbreak.
In response to the Soviet invasion of neutral Finland in 1939, the League of
Nations expelled the Soviet Union from its ranks. However, the burden of
defense fell on the shoulders of the victims, as tens of thousands of Finns
sacrificed their lives fighting the Soviet invasion,^90 while the rest of the
world looked on without intervening.
The Multipolar System, 1910–1945—Summary and Consequences. In May
1945, Germany was devastated. In August that year, the nuclear bombing
of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States led to the
end of Japan’s wars of occupation, America’s occupation of Japan, which
lasted for six years, and Washington forcing Japan to make social struc-
tural changes and adopt new values.
The victory of the allies against the axis powers redistributed power,
reshaped borders around the world, and led to new geopolitical territory
conditions. The Soviet Union annexed a territory of almost 600,000 square
kilometers of the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and
from Finland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania in response to the
loss of territories in the Brest-Litovsk Agreement of 1918, after the First
World War. Poland, which was a victim of Soviet expansion, was compen-
sated by territories that were taken from Germany. Germany itself was
divided into areas of control that later formed the basis for its division
into two countries—East Germany and West Germany. Finally, pro-Soviet
regimes formed in Eastern Europe. In the Far East, the Soviet Union took
the four Kuril Islands from Japan—the western territories, as they were
known by Tokyo—and Korea was divided into Soviet and American occu-
pation zones by the 38th parallel, which division remains to this day.
The First World War, like the wars of great powers or central wars in the
past, paved the way to change in global politics. The cooperation between
the allies after the war in forming a new international organization for
management of the postwar world order led to the formation of the UN
organization. In view of the expectation of great powers being able to
cooperate in managing the world, China was promised a seat in the UN’s
Security Council, with France and the three great powers—the United
States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The purpose of the Security
Council was to ensure that all dominant countries would share the respon-
sibility of keeping peace around the world.
A much more important phenomenon than postwar peace arrange-
ments was the effect of the allies’ victory over the systemic change that
occurred. At the end of the war, one global system, the multipolar sys-
tem of 1910–1945, ended, and a new global system, the bipolar system of
1945–1991, started. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union
remained the only two polar powers that were still strong and capable