Page 92 - Encyclopedia Of World History

442 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs
and wooden shoes coming up. • Voltaire (1694–1778)

had meant more than just military force, but such dis- in any one country might prompt a whole series of
tinctions were quickly lost in the heated atmosphere of takeovers, resulting in an eventual direct threat to the
the Cold War. United States itself.The logic of containment resulted at
Truman did not run in the 1952 presidential election, least partially in American involvement in the Vietnam
which was won by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. War in the early 1960s. Some feared that the loss of
During the campaign the Republicans bitterly criticized South Vietnam would topple other Southeast Asian
containment for abandoning the people of Eastern states, so the United States became involved in a second
Europe to a tyrannical political system. John Foster major land war in Asia since 1945. The result was a
Dulles, soon to be Eisenhower’s secretary of state, prom- costly and bitter conflict, deep social division in the
ised to “roll back” Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. But United States, and the eventual military defeat of South
Dulles recoiled from the idea of war, and so could do lit- Vietnam in 1975.
tle more than continue containment after 1952. Dulles With military containment discredited, U.S. presidents
knew that a direct attempt to intervene in the Soviet East- still had to struggle with how to respond to perceived
ern bloc would provoke full-scale war. Instead, Dulles Soviet gains in what was seen as the zero-sum nature of
assumed, especially after Stalin died in 1953, that forces the Cold War. In Angola and southern Africa in the late
of nationalism in Eastern Europe would do the job in 1970s, and in Afghanistan and Central America in the
bringing down the Soviet system. Yet another review of 1980s, Washington relied on proxy forces to combat
American defense strategy, carried out in 1953, came to Soviet influence. The United States found dissident
the same conclusion. However, the Americans did esca- groups and organizations opposed to Soviet-backed
late the propaganda war by improving the broadcast Marxist states. Such organizations were then armed and
capabilities of Radio Free Europe. supported by the U.S. Examples include the Contra
rebels in Nicaragua, the mujahideen resistance factions in
Containment after Korea Afghanistan, and the UNITA movement in Angola.
The Korean War also posed continuing serious questions The obvious decline of the USSR in the late 1980s
about what exactly containment meant.Was the United prompted much retrospection on Kennan’s original ideas
States to become involved in every single conflict around and the ways in which they had been used, or misused.
the globe where Communism was perceived to be a In 1987 Foreign Affairs reprinted Kennan’s article in its
threat? Were some areas of the globe more valuable to entirety. Some saw Kennan as a far-sighted and perceptive
the United States than others? Some commentators, observer of the USSR, while others decried what they felt
such as Henry Kissinger, have pointed out that contain- was the distortion of his ideas and the high cost of mili-
ment was essentially a defensive, reactive policy that tary containment over the years.
conceded the initiative to the other side. Others have Historically containment, in the context of the Cold
argued that proponents of containment grossly over- War, will be remembered as a doctrine that did much to
rated the Soviet military threat, which in the early 1950s define the ‘battle lines’ of the Cold War.The wars fought
was still minimal in terms of atomic weapons. Contain- under the banner of containment had a tremendous
ment was also said to have underestimated the usefulness impact of the peoples of Asia and Africa. However, con-
of long-term negotiations in solving East-West problems. tainment will also remain an important diplomatic tool
During the 1950s supporters of containment con- in the new century and in the near future will most likely
jured up the metaphor of a row of dominoes to illustrate be applied to perceived ‘rogue’ states.
what might happen if containment failed in any given
Paul W. Doerr
area. The successful toppling of the first domino means
the whole row will fall.A successful Communist takeover See also Diplomacy