The Greece issue was settled under the informal Percentages Agreement with the Western Allies. Soviet intervention in Greece would've precipitated a direct clash with the British and more generally with the Western Allies. Considering the state of the USSR in the immediate postwar period, direct intervention in Greece would've been an idiotic move. Especially considering the Soviet leadership didn't know how history was going to go with emergence of the Cold War.
Greek Civil War 1949-1950 Europe's Korean War
- Thread starter Sheridantank1996
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Helping communist rebels does not mean war immediately with the West, WAllies also didn't want a war with the Soviets.
This is said with hindsight, it isn't information Stalin had access to at the time. His tendency to caution in foreign policy and his awareness of the American nuclear project certainly makes his decision to abide by the agreement pretty logical to my mind. Besides, a direct Soviet intervention in Greece may not directly lead to hostilities but would practically short circuit the agreements with the Western Allies before they had gotten started. With our knowledge of the Cold War, this doesn't seem like much but for the USSR this is still a period where a man like Henry A. Wallace may be president and the United States could accommodate the Soviets in the global order. Directly provoking the British like this and risking a war both sides considered very possible (Churchill's main fear vis a vis the EAM was an Anglo-Soviet War) would be both out of character for Stalin and incredibly risky with the information that was available at the time.
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A few years later Stalin had no problems supporting the DPRK in its invasion of the ROK and at that point the US still vastly outnumbered the USSR in numbers of nukes, so I wouldn't say that Stalin was completely against operations that would anger the West.
I would actually say the war says the exact opposite about Stalin’s intentions. He had repeatedly refused DPRK invasion plans and only finally was convinced to green light it when the situation vis a vis the PRC had stabilized and the war seemed a way of relieving pressure in Europe by drawing American focus to Asia. Stalin’s government was reticent about direct aid, and withdrew even their limited air support when it became clear it could provoke a wider confrontation with the United States. The burden was finally shoved off on the Chinese through some horse trading, but the USSR was willing to accept a defeat and take in the remnants of the North Korean government should that agreement not be reached. I think this does display an opportunistic caution which is consistent with the idea that Stalin was careful about the situation in Europe and thought a war in faraway Asia with a trickle of support to keep the conflict blazing and the United States stuck in would allow a little more breathing room in the European arena.
Source:
O’Neill, Mark. “Soviet Involvement in the Korean War: A New View from the Soviet-Era Archives.” OAH Magazine of History 14, no. 3 (2000): 20–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163360.
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So the American Expeditionary Force in Croatia Can't Be entirely be comprise of Airborne Units and US Marines can't It?