George Kendan Containment Policy Essay

564 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: First world cold war

During the Cold War in Europe, the battle between United States and the Soviet Union was considered to be the fight to spread Communism and the struggle to end it. (T) When George Keenan wrote “the containment policy” in his efforts to end the spread of Communism, this impacted and created a new outlook for the Soviet Union. In this essay I will be discussing (a) the motivation for Communists to take over, (b) their approach to persuade the U.S. and (c) why George Kennan considers the U.S. policy of “containment” to be successful.
(a)As they slowly began to obtain a hold on Eastern Europe, the Soviets motivation to take over had stemmed from wanting ownership through as much nations possible. (E) They wanted to prevent any other national leaders from attaining an independent status, and wouldn’t be satisfied until their influence would spread all through Western Europe. (A) The Soviet government would unmorally persuade other nations to have them join communism at any cost. They were fighting for expansion and fought against capitalism and democracy. They couldn’t grasp the idea …show more content…

was through domination and aggression. The Soviets had already viewed themselves as an invincible nation due to all the control they’ve gained, Communism and their supporters would inevitably infect other nations. (E) The Soviet Union perceived the United States as weak, and quickly took advantage of their weaknesses by analyzing their every move. (A) American administration were convinced that only a firm policy of containment could stop Soviets in expanding their power beyond Eastern Europe. This then would impact American policymakers and lead them with the idea of containment. If stopping the Soviet Union wasn’t an option, then the least they could do would be containing it to the areas already infected. This strategy is exactly what George Kennan proposed, and containment became the key principle in American policy for the duration of the Cold

Show More
Related

  • Kennan's Assessment Of The Soviet Threat To American Interests Around The World

    281 Words  | 1 Pages

    1. What conclusions can you draw about Kennan’s assessment of the Soviet threat to American interests around the world? What can you infer about his opinion of this larger threat, based on his description of the factors motivating Soviet aggression?

    Read More

  • Truman vs. MacArthur

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    The question was whether the USA should pursue the same policy regarding communism in the Far East as in Europe, or should it concentrate on making sure that the Soviets couldn?t expand westward? Despite being a little too optimistic, MacArthur?s decisive policy addressed the global threat of communism better because it acknowledged that the U.S. shouldn?t just ignore one communist sector of the world, and because it recognized that we should eliminate an enemy that we are inevitably bound to come into conflict with.

    Read More

  • Autonomy and Political Responsibility after the Cold War

    2605 Words  | 6 Pages

    The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...

    Read More

  • DBQ: Cold War

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    The United States were in favor of democracy and capitalism while the Soviet Union sought for the chances of influencing communism. The Cold War did not involve the use of physical arms, but was intensely fought. Propaganda, economic aids, Arms Race, and the creation of alliances were the main methods to fight the war. The use of propaganda played a crucial role in containment by criticizing the other power and raising the morale and spirit of their nation. The economic support for nations helped them recover from the desperate situation after World War II, which prevented the nations from falling under communism.

    Read More

  • Cold War Dbq Essay

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...

    Read More

  • How The United States Contained Communism in the Cold War

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    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. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild.

    Read More

  • The United States' Containment Policy During the 1940's

    633 Words  | 2 Pages

    The type of policy known as containment was the foreign policy that the United States of America used between the times of 1947 (two years after World War Two) until 1989 (he fall of the Berlin Wall). The definition of containment in this case is strategies whether it was diplomatically, militarily or economically to contain the forming and progression of communism and to give America an influential advantage abroad. The policy of containment all started out with what was known as the Yalta conference, which consisted of Franklin D Roosevelt, the president of the United States at the time, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of the United kingdom, and Joseph Stain, leader of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). It was during this conference that the three men came to an agreement that these three countries would separate the world into three different parts and have their influence on those three parts. This was known as the sphere of influence and it was divided like this; The United States would have control of influence the western hemisphere meaning all of the Americ...

    Read More

  • Kennan, Nitze and the NSC 68

    1619 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” Foreign Affairs, 1947, explains the difficulty of summarizing Soviet ideology. For more than 50 years, the Soviet concept held the Russian nations hypnotized, discontented, unhappy, and despondent confined to a very limited Czarist political order. Hence, the rebel support of a bloody Revolution, as a means to “social betterment” (Kennan, 567). Bolshevism was conceptualized as “ideological and moral, not geopolitical or strategic”. Hoover declares that… “five or six great social philosophies were struggling for ascendancy” (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 20).

    Read More

  • Containment and the Cold War

    536 Words  | 2 Pages

    In February 1946, George F. Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, proposed a policy of containment. Containment is the blocking of another nation’s attempts to spread its influence. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the United States used this policy against the Soviets. The United States wanted to take measures to prevent any extension of communist rule to other countries. The conflicting U.S. and Soviet aims in Eastern Europe led to the Cold War. The Berlin airlift, formation of NATO, and the Truman Doctrine all relate to this policy of containment.

    Read More

  • who if any one won the cold war?

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    The cold war was failed by the Soviet Union for many reasons, including the sudden collapse of communism (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) This sudden collapse of communism was brought on ultimately by internal factors. The soviet unions president Gorbachev’s reforms: glasnost (openness) and perestroika (political reconstructering) ultimately caused the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Gorbachev’s basics for glasnost were the promotion of principles of freedom to criticize; the loosening of controls on media and publishing; and the freedom of worship. His essentials of perestroika were, a new legislature; creation of an executive presidency; ending of the ‘leading role’ of the communist party; allowing state enterprises to sell part of their product on the open market; lastly, allowing foreign companies to own Soviet enterprises (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev believed his reforms would benefit his country, but the Soviet Union was ultimately held together by the soviet tradition he was trying to change. The Soviet Union was none the less held together by “…powerful central institutions, pressure for ideological conformity, and the threat of force.

    Read More

  • The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    containment. By breaking down containment in this manner, historians and researchers alike can look at containment like never before. Instead of containment all being viewed as the same, Gaddis differentiates among many of the different presidents to prove the different types of containment and how each president believed their type of containment would be successful in handling the spread of communism. By beginning with Kennan, the original believer in containment and ending with Kissinger, who used a hybrid of many of the different approaches, the reader can fully understand the progress, both positive and negative. The book is an essential read for those who want to perform research on cold war policy in the United States, as well as political decisions on many of the Presidents throughout the cold war, as the book is full of sources, both primary and secondary.

    Read More

  • The Hungarian Revolution of 1956

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    the forces of the Soviet Union pressed the ideas of soviet communism almost unilaterally,?the Soviet Embassy supervised all activities in Hungary?Soviet?experts? were present in all important agencies (Felkay 45).

    Read More

  • The cold war

    2042 Words  | 5 Pages

    Macdonald, D. J (1995), 'Communist bloc: expansion in the early cold war: Challenging realism, refuting Revisionism', International Security, Vol. 20, N°3, The MIT Press. (Online). Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539142?seq=7 (Accessed: 16th November 2013)

    Read More

  • Containment Theory Essay

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    The theoretical model is extremely hands-on, in that each component appraises practice. None of the theory is new, but what is new is the combination of different theoretical ideas into one model and then translating them all into everyday practice.

    Read More

  • Covert Operations: An Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy

    1875 Words  | 4 Pages

    Following Second World War Stalin began an aggressive expansionist campaign, and United States security policy was soon dominated with Soviet-related issues. Scholars and advisors surrounding the Truman administration maintained that the Soviet republic would either collapse or change if it was could be geographically contained and thus forced...

    Read More

More about George Kendan Containment Policy Essay

Open Document