| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
American aviation relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe followed an almost a predicable path. Initially, there was optimism that the Soviets would join the West in a system of international aviation. This matched the needs of an expanding aviation industry and the hopes of continuing East-West cooperation. But, continued Soviet refusal to open its air space and the developing cold war encouraged Washington to focus its efforts on Eastern Europe, seeing it as a means to maintain a wedge in the Iron Curtain. But by mid-1948 events in Czechoslovakia produced a new approach, the isolation of Soviet and Eastern bloc aviation behind the Iron Curtain. Convincing Western European nations to agree was like herding cats, but most grudgingly complied. The "success" of the "counter iron curtain" lasted until the mid-1950s, when changes in Soviet aviation policy lured most European nations away from U.S. policy. As governments flocked to Moscow jockeying for air routes, Washington's goal of isolation collapsed, leaving its policy a captive of the Cold War until 1967.
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