Assess responsibility for the development of the Cold War. What were the decisive milestones? What alternatives for peaceful coexistence existed and were overlooked? Was competition inevitable given Soviet misgivings about the potential for recurrent German aggression? Was the United States seeking economic and political dominance in the emergence of the power vacuum that developed in the aftermath of the destruction of the Axis aggressors? Were the atomic bomb and the lack of personal trust a decisive factor in the evolution of the Cold War in the decade which followed World War? In the final analysis, was bipolar confrontation inevitable? Explain why.