George Kennan's Containment Plan

During the cold war, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union.

of the US in the early years of the Cold war. The policy was to defeat

The U.S. Cold War began shortly after WW II. The two world superpowers, the Soviet Union and the U.S., wanted to spread their own form of government. The Soviet Union wanted to spread communism to the “satellite nations” under its control, while the U.S. wanted to spread democracy to the newly created zones in Europe. NATO was created by North American countries to deter the Soviet Union from attempting to invade Western Europe. In retaliation to the creation of NATO, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact with its Eastern satellite nations. Both alliances were created to deter the other from trying to influence nations under their spheres of influences, and during the Cuban Missile

Kennan Kennan's strategy was to contain Soviet power by a system of alliances and foreign aid. Kennan’s ideas became the basis of both the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. However, Kennan later lamented that his ideas also became the basis for the arms race and insisted that

During the Cold War, America's basic policy was that of "containment" of the Soviet Union. The policy of containment was based upon several principles. First, the Soviet Union wanted to spread socialism to all areas of the world. However, it was felt that the leadership of the Soviet Union felt no particular rush to accomplish their goal. "The Kremlin is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry. Like the Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of a long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. (Hook and Spanier, 42)." In other words, the Soviet leadership believed that, since their ideas were the correct ones, they would eventually prevail, and thus, no direct confrontation would be

George Kennan did not make any detailed policy recommendations in the Long Telegram of 1946, although he made it clear that he did not regard the Soviet Union as the same type of threat as Nazi Germany. He opposed the ideas of National Security Council Memorandum 68 (1950) as a hysterical overreaction, and thought that global containment was a serious strategic error, especially in peripheral regions like Indochina. Unlike Hitler, Stalin's aggression and expansion were unplanned and opportunistic, and its leaders did not wish to risk a general war with the West. For this reasons, the Soviets were highly sensitive to the "logic of force" and would retreat if confronted with resolution (Kennan 1946). Internally, it was a police state ruled by a Communist Party oligarchy and bureaucracy, but one that was always insecure in its power. Although Marxism had no real emotional appeal to the masses, the elites were guided by the assumption that the imperialist powers were always attempting to encircle the Soviet Union and that the contradictions within capitalism would always lead to wars. They would attempt to exploit these differences within the capitalist nations, while at the same time attempting to weaken their hold on the colonial areas. Kennan was well aware that the main problem in Western Europe was war-weariness and economic insecurity, and the U.S. would have to take the lead in reviving these countries or the "Russians certainly will" (Kennan 1946). In this case, though,

Soviet leaders probably did not enjoy reading George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram,” abbreviated LT for short. A 1946 State Department cable sent from the American embassy in Moscow to Washington, D.C., the LT provided the intellectual foundations for the U.S. policy of containment. Although containment did not necessarily advise officials to eradicate communism’s existing footholds, the policy did make the Cold War “hot” in many countries in an attempt to stop communism’s spread – Vietnam (1965 – 1973), Korea (1950 – 1953), and Greece (1946 – 1949), to name a few. Somewhat less importantly from a policy standpoint (but arguably more so for the individual kingpins within Russia), the LT attacked the USSR’s leaders on a personal level, calling

1. Truman’s Policy of Containment was that the U.S. would work to stop the spread of communism by providing political, economic, and military assistance to all democratic nations under the threat of communism or any external authoritarian forces. The political aspect of this policy was the alliances made during the Cold War. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was a defensive alliance among the U.S. and other European countries against the Soviet Union. This alliance still exists today. The Warsaw Pact was a defensive alliance that included the Soviet Union and its satellite governments in Eastern Europe. These alliances assured that if one country was attacked, then the others must react by coming to the defense.

This caused the US to believe that Soviets had mainly expansionist aims. The US was “not prepared to see the opportunity for future investment [in Eastern Europe] foreclosed” (Crockatt 67) and this belief sparked the development of the containment policy directed by George Kennan, outlined in the Long Telegram (Lightbody 5). In addition, “the west had to oppose the Soviet Union for its own survival” (Lightbody 5) as the nuclear race between the US and USSR ensued and the USSR strived to equal the already well-established program of the US. This tension did not recede as Soviets sent spies into the US Manhattan Project, the nuclear development program (Lightbody 5). When the Soviets refused to join the Baruch Plan – which controlled nuclear weapon development – the USSR became even more openly viewed as a threat to US security. The growth of communism in Asia within the countries of Korea, Vietnam, and China along with tensions between the “Iron Curtain,” or divide, between Eastern and Western Europe also contributed to increasing threat towards capitalism and the Cold War’s inevitability.

At the end of World War II, American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy that they called “containment”. The Soviet Troops “had occupied parts of northern Iran, hoping to pressure that country to grant it access to its rich oil fields” (p. 714). In the famous Long Telegram, the diplomat George Kennan, advises the Truman administration that the Soviets could not be dealt with as a “normal government”. He also explained that “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree] as a result, America’s only choice was the ‘long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies’” (History). Kennan’s telegram laid the foundation that became known as “the policy of containment” and

It was a period of fear and hostility that involved new foreign policies and that shaped the relations between the nations as we know them now, wars between the superpowers’ allies such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War, also it marked the beginning of the nuclear arms race. It was this constant fear that United States had about the expansion of communism what caused the implementation of a new foreign policy called Containment, under the policy of containment adopted in the late 1940s “United States sought to halt the global expansion of Soviet influence on several levels- military, political, ideological and economic” (International Relations Brief Seventh Edition, page 25). The primary implementation of this policy, was in the application of Truman Doctrine in 1947. The establishment of US military bases all over the world and network relationships with other nations that included: economic and military assistance, were the main means used by United States in order to contain Soviet expansion to the West. It was a war of ideas that expanded throughout the military area, one example that demonstrates the impact of this policy was: the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the policy of containment was applied by John F. Kennedy in 1962, after the rising fear of Soviet nuclear missiles that were stablished in Cuba. After months of debate, United States and the Soviet Union agreed that the Soviets will

During the Cold War from 1946 to 1990 the United States had formed a policy called the containment policy which was adopted by President Harry Truman. The containment policy was a doctrine uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to turn back communism and to insure that America would hold the leading role in world affairs.

President Truman believed the US needed more than a "get tough on the Russians" policy following the war. Russia's history was one of expansion and the Soviet Union was following that same idea. Because of the desire of the Soviets to expand westward, and the fact that Stalin had a pathological mistrust of the US, it would be impossible to come to a peaceful settlement with the Soviets. Thus, the policy of containment, developed by George F. Kennan of the State Department, was adopted by the Truman administration. The policy would allow communism where it already existed, but would use all force necessary to prevent any further expansion. In other words, communism would be "contained" where it presently existed. Because of Russian expansion to the west, a policy carried on by the Soviets, it would be impossible to come to a quick settlement with Stalin, following the Second World War. Since the Russians would test the US by a cautious expansion and not start a major war, Truman developed the Truman Doctrine, with the aid of George Kennan. This Doctrine provided military and financial aid to all the nations that agreed to resist any attempt by Russia to take them over. It was first applied in Greece and

In The Sources of Soviet Conduct, George F. Kennan explained “Containment was the central post-war concept of the United States and its allies in dealing with the Soviet Union”. To contain communism, the United Stated strategy was to have a strong

Harry Truman came up with the Policy of Containment, which was known to be the first major policy to be implemented during the Cold War. This policy used numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism in other countries. It was earlier suggested by diplomat George Kennan, who also suggested that the United States to restrain communist influnece in Eastern Europe and Asia. The term “containment” is correlated mostly to the policies of the United States President Harry Truman. This includes the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact. In spite of the fact that President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) casually considered the counterpart doctrine of rollback.