In the period immediately after the Second World War, tensions between East and West grew. Not only were the economic ideals of the West's free-market capitalism and the Soviet command economy totally incompatible, there were serious ideological differences. The USSR sought to build a 'buffer zone' of friendly states between themselves and and Europe, and chief among these was Poland - which did not sit well with the United Kingdom in particular, who had ostensibly entered World War Two to protect Poland from totalitarianism.
Kennan's 'Long Telegram'
Security was becoming a real concern, and this was underlined by George Kennan, the Deputy US Ambassador to the USSR, in his infamous 'Long Telegram' of 1946. In it he stated that it was a certainty that the USSR would look to expand wherever possible, to the detriment of all free states. Kennan advised that the USA should look to contain Soviet influence by the "vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points".
This was the birth of 'flexible containment'. Kennan believed that as long as Britain, Germany, the USA and Japan remained free of Communist control, lesser areas of influence could be sacrificed - places like Vietnam and Korea. Kennan favoured economic and political containment over direct military intervention, and postulated that the Soviets would back down if confronted militarily - which they duly did when challenged over incursions into Iran in 1946.
This 'flexible' method of containment was short lived, however. By 1950 considerable changes had been wrought in the world; China had fallen to Mao's Communists, the US moved to involve itself directly in the affairs of Europe through the Marshall Plan - prompting the Soviets to throw up the Berlin Blockade to isolate the East German economy from Western influence - NATO was established, directly tying the U and most importantly the Soviets conducted their first nuclear weapons test. The US was no longer the sole nuclear superpower, and the threat of the Soviet Union loomed ever larger.
Truman and NSC-68
President Harry Truman ordered a full review of US Foreign Policy in National Security Resolution 68. NSC-68 recommended massive military re-armament, putting emphasis firmly on military containment rather than economic. Truman received the justification he needed to ratify NSC-68 in June 1950, when Communist North Korea invaded the South. By September, NSC-68 was passed alongside a $50 billion defence budget, and the US became directly militarily involved in anti-Communism.
Upon his election in 1953, Eisenhower continued the policies of NSC-68, seeking to ally the US with anti-Soviet states and organisations around the globe. They often found themselves supporting groups which were not particularly free or democratic, but which were vital in the fight against Communism, and the CIA began covert operations to trigger coups in Iran and Guatemala. During this period, America's nuclear stockpile more than doubled.
Kennedy and 'Flexible Response'
The Soviets gained some ground on the US during Eisenhower's second term; they launched Sputnik, the first satellite, and developed ICMB nuclear delivery systems. When John F Kennedy was elected in 1961, the focus of the Cold War had shifted somewhat; Colonialism was coming to an end, and with new states emerging in the Third World, the battle for hearts and minds was on to sway them in favour of democracy or communism.
The Third World was also where most military confrontation took place under Kennedy; the US had been at war in Vietnam for two years before Kennedy came to power, and as well as continuing this conflict he pushed the nuclear arms race to the point of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Vietnam War was proving impossible to win, however, and the Cuban Missile Crisis set nerves on edge; hence, Richard Nixon came to power in 1968 actively looking to truly change Containment and Foreign Policy for the first time since NSC-68.
Nixon and Detente
Nixon pressed for 'peace with honour' in Vietnam, returning to Kennan's position that not every battle must be won - or even fought. He also focused on maintaining four major power nodes, repositioning them to the US, Western Europe, Japan and - significantly - China. Nixon recognised the problems that the emerging political and industrial powerhouse of China was having with the Soviets, and sought to open talks with them in a visit to Beijing in 1972.
He also opened negotiations with the Soviet leadership, and in the same year signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with them, limiting strategic anti-ICMB defence. Jimmy Carter continued detente after Nixon's fall from grace, but in 1979, the balance was to swing once again, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The Second Cold War
By the time Soviet ground forces entered Afghanistan in December 1979, Carter had already given the CIA permission to support anti-communist rebels in the country. He had also withdrawn SALT-II, expecting it to be rejected; antagonism between the West and the Soviets was growing, and the Second Cold War was underway.
Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981 fully prepared to return to 'inflexible' containment. He employed aggressive rhetoric - dubbing the USSR an 'Evil Empire' - and increased defence spending by 40%. He also pumped money into the Strategic Defence Initiative - 'Star Wars', which would stand in the way both of SALT and Mutually Assured Destruction - seeking to technologically and militarily dominate the Soviets. The Soviet economy struggled to keep up, and by the time Mikhail Gorbachev took charge in 1985, the USA was negotiating from a position of strength.
Collapse of the Soviet Union
With the Soviet economy slipping into decline, Reagan and his successor George Bush Snr could afford to relax their hard-line containment policy somewhat to a level more akin to detente, holding a series of summits with Gorbachev between 1985 and 1988. These summits were steps on the road to ending the Cold War once and for all, and in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.
Containment, although envisioned in different ways by different administrations, ranging from the hard inflexibility of NSC-68 to to the detente of the Nixon years, had been the core policy of the US throughout the Cold War, and indeed the driving force behind the West's eventual victory in the Cold War against Communism and the Soviet Union.
References:
Dobson, Alan, US Foreign Policy Since 1945, Routledge, London, 2006
Dobson, Alan, Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Cold War, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 1999
Garthoff, Raymond, Détente and Confrontation, The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. 1994
Leffler, M, & Painter, D, Origins of the Cold War: an international history, Routledge, London 1994
Philip Sim - Philip Sim is a trainee journalist based in Aberdeen, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Dundee in 2009 with an honours degree ...
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