Feeling threatened by the massive amount of aid the United States was giving Western Europe, the Soviet Union responded with its form of economic aid to its satellite counties. This rivalry led to the Western fear of Soviet domination, and was one of the precursors to the arms race of the Cold War. .
The foundation for the eventual rise of the Superpowers is clearly found in the years leading up to and during World War II. The possibility of the existence of superpowers arose from the imperial decline of Great Britain and France, and the power vacuum that this decline created in Europe. Germany and Italy tried to fill this hole while Britain and France were more concerned with their colonial empires. The United States and the Soviet Union ended the war with vast advantages inn military strength. At the end of the war, the United States was in the singular position of having the world's largest and strongest economy This allowed them to fill the power gap left in Europe by the declining imperial powers.
All throughout the first two years of the war, President Roosevelt focused on making life difficult for the Japanese. One way he did this was by creating various policies that would deter the Axis powers from being able to maintain the needs necessary to wage war on the Allies. One of these policies was the American financial and economic embargo, which supported China in its fight against Japan. It also, somewhat, forced neutral countries to side with the U.S. because it threatened that if any country would aid one of the Axis countries then that country would no longer be given aid packages from the United States. A second policy imposed by Roosevelt was the "moral embargo" of July 1938. This banned neutral countries from exporting planes and equipment to countries that engaged in the bombing of civilians. This made the U.S. look like the good guys because they were protecting the innocent people who were being killed just because .