Cold War Containment Analysis

Containment is a military 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 abroad. This policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam.

To understand the policy and why was it put to action , you have to understand the US and Soviets relationship. Throughout much of World War II, the U.S. and the USSR were unwilling allies. Germany posed a significant threat to both countries and necessity dictated that they cooperate militarily. Germany had launched a brutal invasion into the Soviet Union that eventually caused the deaths of 20 million

Soviets. The USSR asked western countries like the U.S., and England to help them defeat the Germans. The U.S.and England didn’t have many resources and were very unwilling to launch a expensive attack the Germans. Instead, the western Allies engaged the Germans on other fronts, allowing the Soviets to regain lost territory and push the Nazis back. The U.S. and the Soviet Union had vastly differing political philosophies and their relationship was strained until it finally began to break apart during the later part of the war.
When a victorious conclusion to the war with Germany seemed inevitable, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. They created plans to defeat Germany and began discussing important postwar issues. Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would let some countries have free democratic elections after the war. Right after the war Stalin broke his promise and made these countries communist by force with no change at a democratic form of government or lifestyle . The U.S. and its allies were surprised that Stalin broke his promise and tried to expand communism throughout Europe. Another of Stalin's broken promises was to remove troops from Iran after the war. Iran was rich in oil and was an crucial allie to have for both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviets set troops in Iran during the war to secure the Middle East and prevent German attacks. At the Tehran Conference in 1943, all of the major Allies agreed to remove troops from Iran. However, the Soviets still had troops stationed there in 1946, a full year after the war. Stalin went so far as to use his military to support and aid a rebellion in Iran in 1946. US President Truman was mad about Stalin's actions. Americans and other countries grew distrustful of the Soviets and began to worry that the USSR wanted to spread communism to the Middle East. Key State Department personnel grew increasingly frustrated with and suspicious of the Soviets as the war drew to a close. Averell Harriman, U.S. ambassador in Moscow, once a "confirmed optimist" regarding U.S.-Soviet relations, was disillusioned by what he saw as the Soviet betrayal of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as well as by violations of the February 1945 Yalta Agreement concerning Poland. Harriman would later have a significant influence in forming Truman's views on the Soviet Union.
In February 1946, the U.S.

State Department asked George F. Kennan, then at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, why the Russians opposed the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He responded with a wide-ranging analysis of Russian policy now called the Long Telegram. In this telegram Kennan said that the Soviets perceived themselves to be in a state of perpetual war with capitalism, the Soviets would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies, Soviet aggression was not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with economic reality, but with historic Russian xenophobia and paranoia, and The Soviet government's structure prevented objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality. Kennan's cable was hailed in the State Department as "the appreciation of the situation that had long been needed." Kennan himself attributed the enthusiastic reception to timing: "Six months earlier the message would probably have been received in the State Department with raised eyebrows and lips pursed in disapproval. Six months later, it would probably have sounded

redundant."
Although the term "containment" was first used for the strategy in the 1940s, there were major historical precedents familiar to Americans and Europeans. In the 1850s anti-slavery forces in the United States developed a containment policy in hopes of preventing the enlargement of slavery or forcing its failure.
Containment was used and executed by the US after WWII founding its first key purpose in the Truman Doctrine of 1947. President Harry Truman warned of the threats communism could have over the democratic freedom of the people in the US and even those in countries targeted by the Soviet Union. Even though the Soviet alleged they bestow all citizens with economic and social rights, the US saw Communism as box where the citizens had no opinion or say in the government. Communism was a threat that violated both democratic rights and civil liberties of the people , which this created a push in prevented it from spreading in the US and other non communist countries . This policy of containment declared that the US would try to limit the spread of Communism by providing aid to weak countries still rebuilding since World War II ,so those countries don’t descend to the hands of the communist. The US did this by providing either military support, economic or technical assistance to non communist countries. The US thought of it like the domino effect, help one weak country and the other desperate countries are most likely to follow, which limits communism from spreading. This idea was started by “the father of containment” , US diplomat and historian, George F. Kennan. His writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of containment during the Truman Administration.
The policy was also used by former US President John F.

Kennedy when he tried to stop communism to spread to Cuba. However, this resulted in The Bay of Pigs where John F. Kennedy was humiliated and questioned by the people if he was a smart war leader.

Containment if understood primarily as an anti-Soviet policy was clearly no longer effective with the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of a couple of states, and preeminently Russia, in place of the USSR. But among the challenges to Bush in his remaining months in office moving to President Bill Clinton’s two terms in office , then into George W. Bush’s first year , was to determine how much of the intrinsic anticommunism in the containment policy, as it had evolved between 1947 and 1991, was important in dealing with the very different communist bases in Cuba, North Korea, and

China.