Roosevelt's Responsibility for the Cold War

Roosevelt's Responsibility for the Cold War

Certainly Roosevelt’s naive attempt to foster diplomacy with his World

War II ally allowed Stalin to quickly secure the Eastern front of

Russia placing the nation in a position of power in Europe. However in

the context of the post-war period this policy of appeasement and

gratuitous diplomacy during the Yalta conference was not significant

in starting the Cold War because it produced no immediate results that

would have triggered such a dispute. Truman on the other hand, created

an ideological discord between communism and capitalism that was

unprecedented at the time and pursued this policy with great ardor

during the Potsdam conference and during the closing stages of World

War II. It is a fallacious to assume that Roosevelt’s naïve foreign

policy with the U.S.S.R was significantly responsible for the Cold War

when it was clearly Truman’s belligerent approach to foreign affairs

that ignited the conflict.

Roosevelt diligently tried to ignore the popular claim that soviet

expansion into Eastern European nations bordering Russia was an

attempt to spread communism and attain hegemony. In his view, Russia

was just insecure having been the victim of the spurious Nazi-Soviet

pact and Operation Barbarossa instigated primarily through Poland. He

believed that Stalin just wanted to secure the Eastern front of Russia

to avoid future invasions. Harriman, advised Roosevelt on taking a

coercive stance with Russia, and on fulfilling the goals of the

Atlantic Charter. Roosevelt always took a moderate path and therefore

loosely abided to encourage democracy in Europe, but not to the extent

that it...

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...g of the

bombs indicated to Stalin that Truman was willing to threaten the

security parameters of the Soviet Union. Stalin therefore realized

that he could only gain back negotiating powers by building a bomb

himself.

It now appears inane to claim that Roosevelt’s attempt at avoiding a

conflict such as the Cold War actually led to it, when contrasting his

policies with those of Truman’s. Certainly the U.S.S.R. made

tremendous progress in terms of securing its influence of power, and

for that the blame is ascribed to Roosevelt. Yet he was never

significantly responsible for starting the Cold War. The conflict

could have easily been avoided. Without a doubt, Truman’s coercive

diplomacy incorporated with his atomic threat really created the

conflict. His policies also greatly shaped the conflict in its

entirety.