The United States was primarily responsible for instigating the Cold War

Thanks, TN05, for another great round! I will be using this round to rebut all the major points of Con's R3 and present a concluding statement for my case. Since both of our cases seem to overlap quite a bit, I can just continue using the three sections from last round. I. Soviet Expansionism My main argument is based on the notion that the USA's enactment of containment policies, such as with the Truman Doctrine, and its other blatantly anti-Soviet actions, like the formation of NATO, were what caused the Cold War. Con's case attempts to pin the blame for those back on the USSR, claiming that they were just reactions to Soviet expansionism. However, what he fails to do is show that Soviet expansionism was actually a significant threat which warranted such hostile reactions on the part of the United States. I made two arguments in defense of Soviet expansionism: that it was no different from what any Western power had been doing for the past 200 years, and that it involved no direct aggression against Western powers. Con makes several claims in response. .. >> ". .. it is a massive reversal from his opening round, where he argued that the Soviets had no expansion" This is false. I did not deny that the Soviets were expanding-- I denied that the inflammatory responses of the United States to the perceived threat of Soviet expansionism were justified. I have been arguing from the start that it is those irrational, unjustified responses which were the cause of the Cold War. >> ". .. the US and allies hadn't expanded in decades at most" That does not change the fact that they have done so before, and that their current levels of prosperity could not have existed without undergoing a period of expansionism first. It is massively hypocritical for the Western powers to object to Soviet expansionism on any sort of moral basis after all that ("Jimmy, when I was your age, I used to cheat on tests all the time, which is why I aced all my classes and now have a 100k+ salary, but I'm going to beat the tar out of you if you try doing that! "). The USSR was a new country and was carving out its niche on the European international scene, like any rising political power. The Western powers had no reason to object, *especially* since there was no direct aggression against them involved. >> "Their expansion didn't cease, and would inevitably reach the borders of Western Europe. " Bare assertion. Stalin had no interest in a military confrontation with the Western powers, as I demonstrated earlier. Looking at it rationally, there was absolutely no reason for him to desire such a thing anyways, and historically, he did actively work to avoid it. >> "The expansion of the Soviets into Eastern and Central Europe certainly harmed economic trade. .. " Another bare assertion. No such trend exists. And even if there were indirect economic harms of Soviet expansionism, that is irrelevant, as the original argument was that there was no *aggression* against the West. The Soviets did nothing to directly threaten or harm the West, which is why the United States' provocative actions were wholly unjustified, with their fear of Soviet expansionism being based purely in delusion. >> "The West and the USSR were not moral equivalents and, more importantly, it was the USSR- not the West- that instigated the Cold War through a relentless march of expansionism" Yet another bare assertion. Con gives us no reason to believe that the two are not moral equivalents, when the all evidence (i. e. the fact that both have engaged in rigorous expansionism) suggests that they are. The cause of the Cold War was not the 'march of expansionism', but the Western powers' decisions to arbitrarily and hypocritically take issue with that expansionism, to see a threat where there was none, and to pull the Soviets into the Cold War with the resulting hostility. As for Con's claims that NATO was a defensive alliance, rather than an offensive one. .. they are irrelevant; the primary reason the formation of NATO is considered a display of hostility is that it purposefully alienated the USSR, almost making that one of its primary goals. The Warsaw Pact was simply a reaction to that blatant discrimination-- the equivalent of a child who has been excluded from the 'cool kids club' consoling himself by creating his own club with its membership consisting of all his action figures and stuffed animals. Both the Truman Doctrine (and all other forms of early containment) and the formation of NATO were displays of unprecedented hostility on the part of the United States. Con has not shown that Soviet expansionism posed even a minimal threat to the West, much less that it justified such hostility. This argument alone wins the debate-- the Berlin Blockade only happened *after* the USA's initiation of containment. It was the United States which first introduced the tension of the Cold War with its paranoia and jealousy. II. Berlin Blockade Con pulls a rhetorical appeal to emotion on me, but it is entirely irrelevant; the Soviets are justified in rejecting American aid simply because they have sovereignty over their own subjects. They even had rational reason (politically) to reject the aid, as Americans were only giving the aid with the goal of self-aggrandizement and the spreading of democratic ideals. Furthermore, there is nothing remotely wrong about what the Soviets did, from a legal perspective. Again, I readily concede that the Berlin Blockade was not the *ideal* Soviet reaction to the Truman Doctrine, but I maintain that it was an *acceptable* reaction. Con has not been able to prove otherwise. III. Continued Aggression Con dismisses my rationale for why this topic is outside of the resolution's scope, instead just claiming that I ran a similar argument earlier. However, if we look back at my constructive case, the only reason I briefly mentioned the Vietnam and Korean Wars was to show that containment was a major cause of Cold War tensions. It was not meant to be used as evidence for the resolution itself, as Con is trying to do; it simply served as a validation of the notion that containment is important. ============ CONCLUSION ============ Soviet expansionism posed no direct danger to the West, and was quite typical of a growing political power. The United States instigated the Cold War with its irrational fear of Communism and Soviet power, initiating policies of early containment such as the Truman Doctrine and NATO. The Berlin Blockade was an understandable reaction to such displays of American hostility, being completely within legal bounds and having a just rationale as far as international politics go. The rest of the Cold War escalated much the same way that a heated argument turns into a fist fight. But regardless of how the fist fight proceeds, there is no doubt that the instigator of the fist fight was the one who first came up and randomly started cussing the other out, and in this case, that would be the United States. The resolution is affirmed.