HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 3)PRESENTATION 14

TRUMAN’SCONTAINMENT

POLICY

Historian James Oakes explains the strategy of containment

"The federal government would surround the south with free states, free territories, and free waters, building what they called a 'cordon of freedom' around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses

forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery."

TRUMAN’S CONTAINMENT POLICYTruman's Containment policy was the first major policy during the Cold War and used numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad.Containment is a geopolitical strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is best known as the Cold War policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. Containment represented a middle-ground position between detente and rollback.

KEY POINTS• Containment was suggested by diplomat George Kennan who eagerly

suggested the United States stifle communist influence in Eastern Europe and Asia.

• One of the ways to accomplish this was by establishing NATO so the Western European nations had a defense against communist influence.

• After Vietnam and détente, President Jimmy Carter focused less on containment and more on fighting the Cold War by promoting human rights in hot spot countries.

KEY TERMSDETERRENCEAction taken by states or alliances of nations against equally powerful alliances to prevent hostile action

ROLLBACKA withdrawal of military forces.

CONTAINMENT DEFINITION• Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to

prevent the spread of communism abroad. • A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of

moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.

• It represented a middle-ground position between détente and rollback.

GEORGE F. KENNAN• The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by United States

diplomat, George F. Kennan. • As a description of United States foreign policy, the word originated in a

report Kennan submitted to the U.S. defense secretary in 1947—a report that was later used in a magazine article.

USA’S PRESIDENTS AND THE CONTAINMENT POLICY• The word containment is associated most strongly with the policies of

United States President Harry Truman (1945–53), including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact.

• President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–61) toyed with the rival doctrine of rollback, but he refused to intervene in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

• President Lyndon Johnson (1963–69) cited containment as a justification for his policies in Vietnam.

• President Richard Nixon (1969–74), working with his top advisor Henry Kissinger, rejected containment in favour of friendly relations with the Soviet Union and China; this détente, or relaxation of tensions, involved expanded trade and cultural contacts.

HUMAN RIGHTS VS ANTI-COMMUNISM• President Jimmy Carter (1976–81) emphasized human rights rather than

anti-communism, but dropped détente and returned to containment when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

• President Ronald Reagan (1981–89), denouncing the Soviet state as an "evil empire", escalated the Cold War and promoted rollback in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.

• Central programs begun under containment, including NATO and nuclear deterrence, remained in effect even after the end of the war.

WHO WAS GEORGE KENNAN?

• George F. Kennan, in full George Frost Kennan (born February 16, 1904, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.—died March 17, 2005, Princeton, New Jersey) American diplomat and historian best known for his successful advocacy of a “containment policy” to oppose Soviet expansionism following World War II.

THE X-ARTICLE• Kennan’s ideas, which became the basis of the Truman administration’s

foreign policy, first came to public attention in 1947 in the form of an anonymous contribution to the journal Foreign Affairs, the so-called “X-Article.”

• “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union,” Kennan wrote, “must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

COUNTERING SOVIET PRESSURE• To that end, he called for countering “Soviet pressure against the free

institutions of the Western world” through the “adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy.”

• Such a policy, Kennan predicted, would “promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”

CONTROVERSY• Kennan’s policy was controversial from the very beginning. Columnist

Walter Lippmann attacked the X-Article for failing to differentiate between vital and peripheral interests.

• The United States, Kennan’s article implied, should face down the Soviet Union and its Communist allies whenever and wherever they posed a risk of gaining influence.

• In fact, Kennan advocated defending above all else the world’s major centers of industrial power against Soviet expansion: Western Europe, Japan, and the United States. Others criticized Kennan’s policy for being too defensive.

DULLES AND NITZE• John Foster Dulles declared during the 1952 election campaign that the

United States’ policy should not be containment, but the “rollback” of Soviet power and the eventual “liberation” of Eastern Europe. Even within the Truman administration there was a rift over containment between Kennan and Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the Policy Planning Staff.

• Nitze, who saw the Soviet threat primarily in military terms, interpreted Kennan’s call for “the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force” to mean the use of military power. In contrast, Kennan, who considered the Soviet threat to be primarily political, advocated above all else economic assistance (e.g., the Marshall Plan) and “psychological warfare” (overt propaganda and covert operations) to counter the spread of Soviet influence.

EXPANSION OF US MILITARY BUDGET

• In 1950, Nitze’s conception of containment won out over Kennan’s. NSC 68, a policy document prepared by the National Security Council and signed by Truman, called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget.

• The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. “In the context of the present polarization of power,” it read, “a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.”

CONTAINMENT AS A BASIC STRATEGY• Despite all the criticisms and the various policy defeats that Kennan

suffered in the early 1950’s, containment in the more general sense of blocking the expansion of Soviet influence remained the basic strategy of the United States throughout the cold war.

• On the one hand, the United States did not withdraw into isolationism; on the other, it did not move to “roll back” Soviet power, as John Foster Dulles briefly advocated.

• It is possible to say that each succeeding administration after Truman’s, until the collapse of communism in 1989, adopted a variation of Kennan’s containment policy and made it their own.

BIBLIOGRAPHY“The Cold War and Containment.” Boundless Political Science.Kennan, George, "The Long Telegram"Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011) pp 249-75.Larsen, Deborah Welch, Origins of ContainmentJames Chace (2008). Acheson: The Secretary Of State Who Created The American WorldJohn Schuessler, "Absorbing The First Blow: Truman And The Cold War"Efstathios T. Fakiolas, "Kennan's Long Telegram and NSC-68: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis""Kennan and Containment, 1947"