The United States government was afraid that the Soviet Union would generate a revolution in the western European countries and which would eventually reach United States soil and therefore they had to fight the Cold War. The Soviet Union used the veto power 18 times to protect their national interest against the United States. Many more vetoes were used because of Cold War and anti-Communist actions taken by the Western states. Soviet Union had veto power since February 16th, 1946—when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) cast the first veto on a draft resolution regarding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon and Syria. I am not sure, that Cold War could have been prevented if Soviet Union did not have veto powers but rather if Truman and Stalin had not gotten into so many arguments. The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies, and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states ).