Containment: Strategic Operations in Modern Warfare

By Fouad Sabry

What is Containment

Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Containment

Chapter 2: Domino theory

Chapter 3: Dean Acheson

Chapter 4: Truman Doctrine

Chapter 5: Reagan Doctrine

Chapter 6: Cold War

Chapter 7: John Lewis Gaddis

Chapter 8: George F. Kennan

Chapter 9: United States presidential doctrines

Chapter 10: NSC 68

(II) Answering the public top questions about containment.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Containment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jun 3, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Containment

In order to stop the development of communism following World War II, the United States pursued a geopolitical strategic foreign policy known as containment. The term cordon sanitaire, which was used to restrict the Soviet Union during the interwar years, was somewhat related to the word.

Being a part of the Cold War, The Soviet Union responded to this tactic by stepping up its communist influence in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America is also.

Containment represented a middle-ground position between détente (relaxation of relations) and rollback (actively replacing a regime).

The doctrine's foundation was described in a 1946 communication by the U.S.

envoy George F.

Kennan during the U.S. government's post-World War II.

Harry S. Truman.

Truman.

Given that the United States.

foreign policy, the term first appeared in a 1947 report Kennan gave to US Defense Secretary James Forrestal, This later appeared in an essay in Foreign Affairs.

Europeans and Americans were both aware of important historical precedents. In order to prevent the spread of slavery until its eventual collapse, anti-slavery groups in the United States created the free soil containment plan in the 1850s. James Oakes, a historian, outlines the tactic:

Building what they referred to as a cordon of freedom around slavery, the federal government would surround the South with free states, free territories, and free waters, encircling it until the slave states were compelled to renounce slavery one by one due to the system's inherent flaws.

Germany repeatedly meddled in the domestic affairs of France's neighbors between 1873 and 1877. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck applied persistent political pressure to assist the election or appointment of liberal, anticlericalism-supporting governments in Belgium, Spain, and Italy. That was a component of a comprehensive plan to isolate President Patrice de MacMahon's clerical-monarchist rule and advance republicanism in France. It was anticipated that French Republicans could overcome MacMahon and his reactionary followers by encircling France with a number of liberal states. Understanding the mechanics of this approach can be modeled effectively using the contemporary idea of confinement.

Following the Russian October Revolution of 1917, appeals for isolation of the Bolshevik government, which appeared bent on sparking a global revolution, came from Western politicians. In order to isolate Soviet Russia, French Premier Georges Clemenceau urged for the formation of a cordon sanitaire, or ring of non-communist nations, in March 1919. US President Woodrow Wilson referred to it as quarantine and demanded it.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Lenin withdrew Russia from the First World War, allowing Germany to reallocate soldiers to combat the Allied forces on the Western Front. As a result, the World War I allies started an incursion into Russia.

In order to increase American export markets, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the country's policy of first refusing to recognize the Soviet Union in 1933.

The Munich Agreement of 1938 was an effort to stop the Nazi advance in Europe, but it was a failure. Between 1937 and 1941, the U.S. attempted to stop Japanese expansion in Asia, and Japan responded by attacking Pearl Harbor.

The United States and the Soviet Union found themselves partnered against Germany after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and they employed rollback to defeat the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan.

As the war came to an end, important members of the State Department grew increasingly dissatisfied with and wary of the Soviets. Averell Harriman, the American ambassador in Moscow, was once a proven optimist about relations between the US and the USSR, Unlike Hitler's Germany, Soviet power is neither strategic nor intrepid. With set plans, it does not function. It doesn't take unwarranted chances. Both the logic of reason and the logic of force are completely ineffective against it. It may therefore easily retreat, which is what it typically does when faced with significant resistance.

The State Department applauded Kennan's cable as the appreciation of the situation that had long been needed.

President Truman, a Democrat, delivered a dramatic address after the Republicans won control of Congress in the 1946 elections. This speech is frequently seen as the official start of the Cold War. He asked Congress in March 1947 to allocate $400 million in help for the Turkish and Greek governments, which were battling communist penetration. The Truman Doctrine is the name given to this vow. The speech announces the acceptance of containment as official US policy by portraying the situation as a titanic struggle between totalitarian regimes and free peoples. The funds were allocated by Congress.

Numerous schools of thought and a significant amount of research have been done on Truman's motivations on that particular occasion. According to Herbert Feis' standard theory, a string of aggressive Soviet acts in Poland, Iran, Turkey, and other countries between 1945 and 1947 alerted the American people to a fresh threat to freedom, to which Truman responded. It came to the conclusion that to counter the Soviet threat, a significant military expansion was required. The report, written by Paul Nitze and others, claims:

The means to be taken must be proportionate to the extent of the evil, the Federalist (No. 28) writes. The trouble may be a world war or a Soviet operation with specific goals. In either case, we should avoid any action that could turn the conflict into a war of annihilation, and if we have the power to stop the Soviet Union's pursuit for certain goals, it might be in our best interests to prevent a world war from breaking out.

In the late 1940s, three alternatives to containment measures were being discussed. The first was a return to isolationism, which would have reduced American participation with the rest of the world. Conservative Republicans, particularly those from the Midwest, such as former President Herbert Hoover and Senator Robert A. Taft, backed this approach. Many other Republicans, including Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, argued that the program was risky to continue because it contributed to the outbreak of World War II. in the late 1940s, among other conservative strategists. Burnham and other like-minded thinkers joined William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review magazine as editors after 1954.

Following the victory of the Inchon landings in September 1950, Truman personally adopted a rollback strategy in the Korean War, only to change his mind and return to containment following the Chinese onslaught two months later. Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur for disobedience after he urged Congress to continue the rollback program.

When the U.S. initially intervened in the Korean War to protect South Korea from a communist invasion by North Korea, containment was the strategy used. This first guided U.S. efforts to just force North Korea back beyond the 38th Parallel and restore South Korea's sovereignty, enabling North Korea to continue to exist as a state. However, the U.S. and the UN decided to pursue a rollback policy and overthrow communist North Korea as a result of the Inchon landing's success, enabling for national elections to be held under UN supervision.

John Foster Dulles and other Republicans were worried that Truman had been acting too cautiously. Dulles advocated for retreat and