Probability of conflict in the Balkans amid the outbreak of the Korean war: estimates of U.S. diplomats and military staff (1950-1952)

The paper examines the estimates of American diplomats and analysts of intelligence and military departments on the probability of a military conflict on the Balkan Peninsula in 1950-1952. The readiness of the USSR to unleash a war in the Balkans in the early 1950s and the adequacy of the American perception of the Soviet politics remain controversial in historiography. The author relies on the materials from the US National Archives, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the electronic archives of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the US National Security Council, as well as on published sources. The outbreak of the Korean War became an important milestone in American politics not only for the Far East, but also for other regions of the world. The American leadership tended to exaggerate the degree of aggression of the USSR and its military capabilities. The United States considered the Balkans as a secondary strategic direction, while not excluding the outbreak of a world war by the Soviet Union in the coming years. In this regard, the Americans were mostly afraid of the aggression of Soviet “satellites” against Greece and Yugoslavia. The Central Intelligence Agency made a serious contribution to the formation of distorted ideas about Soviet intentions, whose information on the military preparations of the USSR and its allies was highly unreliable. In response, in the early 1950s, the United States formed a new security model in the Balkans based on a differentiated approach: Greece became a member of NATO, while Yugoslavia could not get security guarantees from the West and entered the Balkan Pact affiliated with NATO. The author points out the confrontational rhetoric of the leadership of the USSR and the communist parties of other states and its negative impact on international relations, because it strengthened anti-Soviet phobias in the West.