Containment

For other uses, see foreign policy.

Containment refers to the foreign policy strategy of the United States in the early years of the Cold War. Its policy was to stop what is called the domino effect of nations moving politically towards Soviet Union-based communism, rather than European-American-based capitalism.

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Later developments

U.S. containment policy developed into a principled opposition to the Soviet ratcheting of its sphere of influence. However, the policy suffered setbacks, and after the U.S. pullout from the Vietnam conflict, the policy of containment was somewhat discredited. U.S. politicians advanced new theories of “détente” and “peaceful co-existence”.

At the end of the 1970s—a particularly ineffective decade for U.S. foreign policy—the U.S. elected Ronald Reagan for what became an 8-year term. Reagan believed that détente was misguided and that peaceful co-existence was tantamount to surrender to relentless Soviet ratcheting of influence. Reagan believed that the policy of containment did not go far enough. His policies were highly controversial and unpopular in many countries. They included new missile systems in Europe, and significantly, plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars", that would render the U.S. immune to a first strike. Later on, Reagan's actions were interpreted as being aimed at defeating the Soviets by the use of an expensive arms race that the Soviets could not match. There is no contemporary evidence, however, that this was indeed a planned strategy. It was never formulated as a strategy by anyone within the Reagan government. Reagan also pursued the comprehensive disarmament initiative START I, which would have been completely at odds with a strategy of bankrupting the USSR through an arms race.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This marked the official end of U.S. containment policy, though it kept its bases in the areas around the former Soviet Union, such as ones in Iceland, Germany, and Turkey. (The Naval Air Station Keflavik in Iceland was closed in September 2006.) As of 2005, the U.S. had at least 700 military bases around the world. Some estimates suggest that the real number is much higher.

Iraq

A containment policy, was also applied by the U.S. to Iraq from 1991 to 2003. When Saddam Hussein, contrary to the hopes of the George H.W. Bush administration, was not ousted from power after the Gulf War the U.S. adopted containment towards Iraq via severe sanctions, U.N. weapons inspections, basing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, patrol of the Iraq no-fly zones, and periodic airstrikes. By 2000, these elements of containment were fraying because Iraq was able to smuggle many prohibited items via Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The Oil for Food which began in 1996 was also corrupted, and the U.N. withdrew their inspectors in 1998 because of Iraqi non-cooperation and were unable to verify whether or not Iraq's prescribed weapons programs were destroyed. The U.N. was divided. Meanwhile, Arab public opinion in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere became increasingly hostile to the U.S. military presence in their nations because of renewed violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After 1998 Iraq began to fire on allied aircraft in the no-fly zones and thus suffered from retaliation via bombing, but such strikes did not threaten Saddam's grip on power. Containment was abandoned by the George W. Bush administration which opted for regime change via military action in 2003.

Asia

In the post-Cold War world, scholars have debated the extent to which containment—or some variant of that strategy—continues to animate U.S. diplomacy, particularly vis-a-vis China. At a speech to Tokyo's Sophia University in March 2005, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid abundant tribute to Kennan and his intellectual legacy and then elaborated on the logic of the new alliances Washington was building in Asia: "[As] we look to China's life... I really do believe the U.S.-Japan relationship, the U.S.-South Korean relationship, the U.S.-Indian relationship, all are important in creating an environment in which China is more likely to play a positive role than a negative role. These alliances are not against China; they are alliances that are devoted to a stable security and political and economic and, indeed, values-based relationships that put China in the context of those relationships, and a different path to development than if China were simply untethered, simply operating without that strategic context."

Further reading

• Kennan, George F., American Diplomacy, The University of Chicago Press. 1984. ISBN 0-226-43147-9
• Wright, Steven. The United States and Persian Gulf Security: The Foundations of the War on Terror, Ithaca Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0863723216