US Policy of Containment

8 Key excerpts on "US Policy of Containment"

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  The Economic Cold War

  America, Britain and East-West Trade 1948–63

  • I. Jackson(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1 The Origins of Economic Containment, 1947–48 In March 1948 the Truman administration implemented domestic restrictions on exports to the Soviet Union. This marked a change in policy from economic cooperation with Moscow through the Lend-Lease Programme in the Second World War to a strategy of economic containment, which was ultimately transformed into an economic cold war against the Kremlin. There are several reasons why American government officials initiated this policy reversal. First, at the end of the Second World War the Soviet Union embarked on an ambitious programme of expansionism in Eastern and Central Europe. Fearing Soviet domination of the Eurasian heartlands, the United States intervened in the Near East and Western European regions through two major foreign policy initiat- ives: the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. The resulting clash between the two powers over the control of Europe, and in particu- lar Germany, led to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Second, officials in the Commerce and State Departments, under pressure from an increasingly anticommunist Congress, began to examine the merits of a strategic embargo on East–West trade aimed at preventing Soviet military build-up. Finally, the State Department feared that Moscow, which had not been included in the European Recovery Programme (ERP), would attempt to acquire strategic items through third-party trade under the Marshall Plan. It was thus imperative for the ERP governments to participate in a common export control policy with the United States to ensure that American assistance in the form of military supplies was not re-exported from Western Europe to the Soviet bloc. 11 The onset of the Cold War Despite their contrasting political and economic systems, the threat of Nazi Germany brought the United States and the Soviet Union together in a close alliance during the Second World War. During the conflict the American president, Franklin D.

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  Guide to U.S. Foreign Policy

  A Diplomatic History

  • Robert J. McMahon, Thomas W. Zeiler, Robert J. McMahon, Thomas W. Zeiler(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  The strategy developed by the Truman administration to contest the perceived expansionistic tendencies of the Soviet Union originated with American dip-lomat George Kennan, who was stationed in Moscow in 1946. In his “Long Telegram” in February of that year, he admitted that the United States could do nothing about the fact that the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe. However, Kennan contended that U.S. policymakers could limit or “contain” Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s ambitions to Eastern Europe through diplomatic, economic, and military means. He believed that the Soviet Union had expansionistic tendencies but likely would back down when con-fronted with the resolve of the United States. The concept of containment led to policies during the Truman administration such as aid to Greece and Turkey (1947), the Marshall Plan (1948), the Berlin Airlift (1948–1949), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (1949), and the defense of South Korea (1950–1953). Scholarship on containment in the Cold War can be divided into three categories: traditionalists, revisionists, and post-revisionists. Traditionalist scholars viewed containment as exactly the right response to the Soviet Union, which they categorized as an expansionistic power that threatened Western Europe and other parts of the world. They held that the Soviet Union was at fault in the early Cold War. Revisionists, on the other hand, blame Truman and his containment policies for provoking the Soviet Union. To the revisionists, Stalin’s actions (such as the Berlin Blockade) were reactions to Truman’s confrontational policies. Finally, post-revisionist scholars combine the arguments of both the traditionalists and the revisionists.

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  A People and a Nation, Volume II: Since 1865

  • Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Along with the Truman Doctrine, Kennan’s “X” article became a key manifesto of Cold War policy. 24-2a Lippmann’s Critique The veteran journalist Walter Lippmann took issue with the containment doctrine in his slim but powerful book The Cold War (1947), calling it a “strategic monstrosity” that Truman Doctrine U.S. policy designed to contain the spread of communism; began with President Truman’s 1947 request to Congress for economic and military aid to the struggling countries of Greece and Turkey to prevent them from succumbing to Soviet pressure. containment U.S. policy uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to prevent the spread of Soviet communism and to enhance America’s security and influence abroad. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 24-2 Containment in Action 703 failed to distinguish between areas vital and peripheral to U.S. security. If American leaders defined every place on earth as strategically important, Lippmann reasoned, the nation’s patience and resources soon would be drained. Nor did Lippmann share Truman’s conviction that the Soviet Union was plotting to take over the world. The president, he asserted, put too little emphasis on diplomacy. Ironically, Kennan himself agreed with much of Lippmann’s critique, and he soon began to distance himself from the doctrine he had helped to create. Invoking the containment doctrine, the United States in 1947 and 1948 began to build an international economic and defensive network to protect American prosperity and security, and to advance U.S.

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  Cases in Public Policy and Administration

  From Ancient Times to the Present

  • Jay M. Shafritz, Christopher P. Borick(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  How the U.S. Strategic Policy of Containment (of Communism in General and the Soviet Union in Particular) Gradually Evolved Just After World War II to Win the Cold War in 1989

   

  PREVIEW

  A cold war is a war with no traditional combat (in contrast to a “hot war”) that emphasizes ideological conflict, brinksmanship, and consistently high international tension. This is not new. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the English social contract theorist so famous for observing that in a state of nature without a strong government, human life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” also had much to say about war. In Leviathan (1651), he wrote: “War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.” Then he compared this “not in battle” war to bad weather. “For as the nature of foul weather, lyeth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together; so the nature of war, consists not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.”

  In the twentieth century, “the” Cold War was the hostile but (in the Hobbesian tradition) nonlethal relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in 1945 after World War II and ended in 1989 with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall that divided East from West Germany and was the symbol for the Soviet domination of Eastern and Central Europe. By 1991 the Soviet Union itself was dismantled and replaced by constituent republics formed into a loose confederation known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. Credit for the modern use of “cold war,” for the revival of Hobbes’s concept, goes to journalist Herbert Bayard Swope (1882–1958), who first used it in speeches he wrote for financier Bernard Baruch (1870–1965). After Baruch told the Senate War Investigating Committee on October 24, 1948, “Let us not be deceived—today we are in the midst of a Cold War,” the press picked up the phrase, and it became part of everyday speech.

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  The Geopolitics Of Super Power

  • Colin S. Gray(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  For one policy reason only should the United States seek to contain the Soviet Union in a power-balanced condition in Eurasia with as few extra-Eurasian security dependents of geostrategic note as possible: specifically, the Soviet Union is a threat to U.S. security interests. Geopolitically, popular local concepts of political right conduct in Africa, Latin America, and Asia are important to the United States because political authorities who function in violation of those concepts are certain to be unstable. As a great power with a strong political ide-ology, the United States understandably wishes to extend the benefits of American, indeed Western, values abroad. But the policy challenge of containment for the United States is geostrategic, not ideological. It is through selfish determination to protect its own national interests first and foremost that the United States is in fact protecting the longevity of the values of Western civilization. Halford Mackinder made his geopolitical assessments with tough-minded realism, but he was never confused over the salience of the outcome of persisting continental/ East-maritime/West conflict for the quality of civilization. 36 In this secular and nuclear-armed age, however, the American public will not tolerate the expenditure of economic resources and lives in pursuit of ideological goals alone. U.S. armed forces deployed abroad are defending U.S. security interests; they are not committed to a mission civilisatrice on a grand and global scale. Dynamic containment sees the U.S. political and military commitment to NATO-Europe as a determination through main-tenance of a balance of power in Europe and Asia to keep the Soviet Union continentally distracted and thereby vastly constrained in its conduct of extra-Eurasian VJeltpolitik.

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  Interpretations of American History, 6th Ed, Vol.

  Since 1877

  • Gerald N. Grob, George Athan Billias(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Free Press

    (Publisher)

  The orthodox interpretation was presented in scholarly books and journals in the late 1940s and early 1950s by historians like Herbert Feis and policymakers such as George F. Kennan. These men, too, held that the Cold War had been brought about mainly because of Soviet actions. Motivated by the traditional desires for greater security, power, and larger spheres of influence, they said, the Soviet Union resorted to an expansionist foreign policy. Coupled with these age-old drives was the new ideological zeal of communism which made the Soviets ambitious to foment revolution and conquest in behalf of their cause. Scholars sometimes disagreed about the primary motivation of the Soviets; some favored the importance of ideology as an explanation, while others believed the main focus should be placed on Russia’s traditional policy of imperialism and pursuit of national interest. But they all tended to agree that no matter what the motivation might be, Soviet objectives were expansionist in scope. The orthodox view also argued that the Soviet Union violated its agreements with the Western powers, including the Yalta accords as they concerned the political future of Eastern Europe and, to a lesser extent, the role of China in the postwar world.

  America’s foreign policy, according to the orthodox interpretation, was in marked contrast to that of the Soviet Union. The United States, at first, held high hopes for a peaceful postwar world. The actions of its leaders were predicated on the principles of collective security, and they looked to the newborn United Nations for the solution to any future conflicts. Faced with Soviet aggressive moves, however, America was reluctantly forced to change its views and foreign policy. To prevent the Soviet Union from spreading its influence over large parts of the world, the United States finally felt compelled to embark upon a policy of “containment.” Without this containment policy, argued many, the Soviet Union would probably have become the master of all Europe—instead of dominating only Eastern Europe.

  Many of the arguments of the orthodox position were set forth in an article published by George F. Kennan under a pseudonym, “Mr. X,” in 1947. Kennan, an American diplomat, provided many of the insights upon which the foreign policy of the Truman administration was based. In his piece Kennan suggested, among other things, an American containment policy to check Russia’s expansionist tendencies. Kennan subsequently claimed, however, that he was not thinking primarily in terms of containment along military lines.2

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  The World Island

  Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West

  • Alexandros Petersen(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 3 George Kennan and Containment George F. Kennan has been variously described as the architect and father of the containment strategy that emerged in response to the Soviet threat after the Second World War. Such was Kennan’s perceived influence in the formulation of American geostrategy that some went so far as to call him “America’s Global Planner.” 1 In White House Years former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger claimed that Kennan had come as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in America’s history. 2 Kennan is, therefore, popularly credited with having provided the intellectual framework from which initiatives such as the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine were begot, and which were to represent the Western attitude towards Russia for over 40 years. Yet Kennan’s approach was fundamentally premised upon the geopolitical understanding ren- dered to us by Mackinder. Soviet policy, Kennan argued, could be attrib- uted to a mixture of ideology and circumstances. The circumstances, Kennan said, were those power relations that had existed in Russia for the three decades of Soviet rule prior to the Allied victory in 1945. In fact, they were those of Russia’s geography and chronic sense of insecu- rity, as traced by Mackinder. The ideology was that admixture of Marxism and Russian nationalism, in describing the effect of which Kennan was to make his most valuable contribution, drawing as he did on his years of service in Russia and Eastern Europe. The effect of Kennan’s influence at the end of the Second World War was to reemphasize the paramountcy of Eurasia in the minds of American statesmen, at a time when their focus threatened to shift back to hemispheric concerns. In this way Kennan was instrumental in facilitating a continuation in the tradition of Mackinder- esque geopolitics, a timely example for today’s Western statesmen, the vacillations of whom in their attitude to Eurasian affairs threaten losing

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  US Foreign Policy in the Middle East

  The Case for Continuity

  • Bledar Prifti(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  60 Thus, the main argument that will be tested in this chapter is that US foreign policy toward the Middle East during the Cold War was character- ized by continuity rather than change because its foreign policy objectives and strategies to achieve them remained unchanged. Foreign policy objec- tives and strategies remained unaltered due to the continuous status of the USA as the only hegemonic power and its geographic location in the Western Hemisphere. Its primary foreign policy objective throughout this period was preventing the expansion of the Soviet Union and the emergence of another regional power that would challenge its geostrate- gic interests and influence in the region. The USA feared another WWII scenario in which a potential expansion of the Soviet Union around the world would lead to the encirclement of the Western Hemisphere and the de facto strangulation and capitulation of the former. This fear was tested positive in the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the continuing attempts of the Soviet Union to establish allies in the region for the pur- pose of facilitating power projection against the USA. In service of the first objective, the USA also aimed at preserving the oil-rich Persian Gulf and controlling the free flow of oil from the region to the global market. The control over the oil flow was crucial to prevent any regional power and the Soviet Union from increasing its power and influence by threating to cut vital oil supply to European allies. Also, several secondary but important factors influenced US foreign policy in the Middle East: the anarchic status of the international sys- tem, the possession by the Soviet Union and regional great powers of significant military capabilities that can hurt or even destroy US interests, suspicion about their intentions toward the USA, the need to survive in an anarchic system, and the need to act rationally against the threats by maximizing power vis-à-vis other states.

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