The reason that the U.S. secretary of state James Byrnes’ belief that atomic weapons “might well put us in position to dictate our own terms with the Soviets at the end of the war” proved to be incorrect was that the Soviet also developed their own atomic weapons, ushering in the nuclear bomb rat race.
The main causes of the cold war and the subsequent nuclear bomb rat race that pitted the Soviet Union ideologically against the United States can be traced to the following differences between the two world powers:
Thus, James Byrnes' belief about the atomic weapons was incorrect because the Soviets developed similar weapons.
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