1. What role did mutual misunderstandings and mistrust play in the emergence of the Cold War? The United States believed the Soviet Union sought to propagate communism, which led to mutual mistrust and misconceptions that sparked the Cold War. The Soviet Union assumed the United States had embraced capitalism. The Soviet Union believed that the United States was diminishing their prospects of obtaining economic resources. A competition was taking place between the Soviet Union and the United States for allies among independent countries. 2. Why did fear of Communists in positions of influence escalate in the late 1940's and early 1950's? Between the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Soviet Union's efforts to spread communism in eastern Asia and Europe caused the dread of communism to spread worldwide. Moreover, this can be attributed to the actions of Soviet spies Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Alger Hiss, and to rummers within government who guaranteed communism. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was successful in manufacturing its own nuclear weapons. 3. Give your personal opinion The Soviet Union, in my perspective, posed a threat to the United States because it deliberately wanted the demise of the US and its allies in order to strengthen its military dominance. It resulted in the US arming its forces with weaponry for a war.
