Strategically, the United States opposed Soviet annexation of the Kars Plateau for its necessity to defend Turkey. Ideologically, certain elements in the American government saw the Soviet territorial claims as expansionist and reminiscent of Nazi irredentism over the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. Since 1934, the State Department had concluded that its earlier support for Armenia since President Wilson (1913-1921) had expired since the loss of Armenian independence.[1].