Containment

The Cold War and the Origins of the Concept

Containment was adopted by President Harry S. Truman's administration (1945–1953), both as a doctrine and as a rationale for external action, and was carried on by Truman's successors, especially Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969). The main objective of this new doctrine was to use military, economic, and diplomatic means to oppose what Kennan depicted as the Soviet Union's “hegemonic” strategy: “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies” (X [Kennan], 1947, Part 2). The United States pursued a host of policies in the name of keeping an essential commitment to prevent the spread of the Soviet influence throughout the world. A large proportion of these actions were carried out in Europe and Asia. Some examples include support given to Greece to fight against the “Communist subversion” (1947); the launching of the Marshall Plan (a program of direct economic aid to Europe); the promise to support “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” as stated by President Truman in a speech on March 12, 1947; the construction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (1949); and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Although declining in the late 1960s (during the “détente” promoted by U.S. President Richard Nixon and the U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, then during the easing of tensions with the USSR and communist China), and challenged by the more radical concept of “rollback” (most notably under President Eisenhower's secretary of state John Foster Dulles, who called for the “liberation” of Eastern Europe), the policy of containment continued to mark the American foreign policy landscape until the end of the Cold War, as President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) sent military aid to anticommunist movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, and Nicaragua; deployed the Pershing II missiles in Europe; and promoted the Strategic Defense Initiative, which would use ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States against nuclear missile attack.

Both external and internal factors influenced the relative power of containment as a doctrine. The Truman administration had the advantage of a favorable economic context. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 allowed U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be less influenced by balance of power relations. Instead, he focused more on cutting government spending and reducing economic assistance plans and gave less priority to expensive conventional military deployments. It [Page 432]would have thus been reasonable to deduce that the end of the Cold War (1989–1991) would have marked the official end of the United States' reliance on containment policy. Once America's 40-year enemy disappeared, the expectation was that a “brave new world” would pay “dividends of peace” and render obsolete an expensive containment policy. But 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are more than 700 operable U.S. military bases, and approximately 370,000 American troops remain deployed in more than 150 countries. Nevertheless, fears continue to be expressed about the need to circumscribe emerging peer competitors, new global enemies, and new threats.

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