Containment and the Truman Doctrine

U.S. Cold War policy of limiting the expansion of Soviet influence by challenging the Soviet Union with all means short of military confrontation. In 1947, an anonymous article appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs. Its author's name was listed simply as “X,” [Page 162]but it was later revealed that the author was George Kennan, a diplomat, historian, and political analyst. The subject of the piece was a policy option for dealing with the Soviet Union and limiting its expansion. Kennan wrote, “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.” This policy became known as containment, and its impact on international relations would be felt for the rest of the 20th century and perhaps beyond.

Before the article appeared, Kennan had served four tours of duty as a diplomat and ambassador in Moscow. He was familiar with Soviet political ideology and psychology, and he possessed a keen insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet system. He believed that Soviet society and government could not last indefinitely within the rigid communist ideology and state apparatus that silenced dissenting views, constrained the social system, and held its population captive. Despite the Soviet threat to U.S. security, Kennan viewed the Soviet system as fragile and predicted that if anything happened that disrupted “the unity and efficacy of the [Communist] party as a political instrument, Soviet Russia might be changed overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies.”

Although Kennan was aware of the of the Soviet system's inherent weaknesses, he did not underestimate the ambitions of its leadership. Kennan had analyzed the Soviet Union's expansionist tendencies and described its political action as “a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power.”

Principles of Containment

Although he urged a firm stance against Soviet expansion, Kennan advocated neither direct military conflict nor an attempt to recover the territorial gains the Soviet Union had made after World War II. Rather, he proposed that the principle weapon against the Soviet Union should be psychological warfare through overt propaganda, covert operations, and even economic assistance.

Containment theory also advised the United States to identify and defend only its most vital spheres of interest. In the mid-20th century, these included the major centers of capitalist industrial power, Western Europe and Japan. Kennan maintained that active defense of nonvital territories was not in the best interest of the United States. Expanding the theater of conflict beyond Western Europe and Japan would commit the United States to innumerable conflicts in which it had no real political stake and would cause an incalculable drain on resources and the treasury.

Meanwhile, Kennan believed that the Soviets were acting in their own interests as well. Those interests required the Soviet Union to have an adversarial relationship with the West. To demand sacrifice and loyalty from the Soviet people, who enjoyed few personal liberties under its militarized economy, the state needed a military and ideological enemy. The United States, whose political and economic systems contrasted so dramatically with those of the Soviet Union, filled that role perfectly. Kennan believed that this constant, institutional fortress mentality would push the Soviet system to the brink of collapse at a far lesser cost to the United States if containment were adopted instead of a policy of active military confrontation. Containment policy also offered the Soviets an honorable way to avoid warfare. Kennan proposed that the United States should offer the Soviet Union disarmament treaties and financial assistance if they would agree to adopt democratic forms of government.

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