Essay Database

Who Was to Blame for the Cold War? The blame for the Cold War cannot be placed on one person -- it developed as a series of chain reactions as a struggle for supremacy. It can be argued that the Cold War was inevitable, and therefore no one's fault, due to the differences in the capitalist and communist ideologies. It was only the need for self-preservation that had caused the two countries to sink their …

…single man, Stalin's expansionist policy was clearly an ever-present catalyst in the war. Certain Truman was not blameless, but the U.S. was not expanding its empire -- the Soviet Union was. Whether the expansion was for self-preservation, or whether it was merely imperialistic expansion, is relatively immaterial. What Stalin's actions unarguably did was start a string of chain-reactions within the western powers, and therefore, a good deal of the blame must rest with him.