The Cold War Was Primarily The Result Of US Expansionism

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The statement that the outbreak of the Cold War was primarily the result of US expansionism is a statement that I disagree with quite strongly. I believe that the primary causes for the outbreak of the cold war were rather the desire of the Soviet Union to expand its territory and spread its influence and the heightened security concerns of the Soviet Union and the oppressive nature of the Soviet style of government which the United States was morally opposed to.
I also believe that the actions that may be perceived as examples of US expansionism are merely reactions to the expansionism of the Soviet Union and its various abuses against people who tried to be free to determine the future of their countries in ways the Soviet Union did not …show more content…

The Yalta conference is significant because it helped set the stage for the United nations and various other disputes were resolved the most important of these resolutions was on the question of Poland.
On this question, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a communist transitional government in Poland in return Stalin signed an agreement called the “Declaration of Liberated Europe" which said that nations should be able to choose their own governments after being liberated from the Nazi. Stalin broke this agreement within a month of agreeing to it with suppression of anti-communist poles and show trial. All of these events led Roosevelt to conclude as seen in (Berthon and Potts, 2007) that he had been overly optimistic about Stalin and that he was a totalitarian.
This shows I believe yet again that it was not the US’s actions that caused the cold war but the violations of human rights and agreements by the Soviet Union in their attempts to spread their influence across the world. The relinquishment of Poland into the Soviet Union shows that the United States was not originally expansionist towards the Soviet

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