Truman's containment policy was a key Cold War strategy aimed at preventing the spread of communism, articulated by George Kennan, who emphasized a firm approach against Soviet expansionism. This policy, implemented by various U.S. presidents, evolved over time, balancing between deterrence, rollback, and human rights. Despite criticisms, containment remained a fundamental strategy throughout the Cold War, shaping U.S. foreign policy until the collapse of communism in 1989.

1. HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 3)
PRESENTATION 14
TRUMAN’S
CONTAINMENT
POLICY

2. Historian James Oakes explains the strategy of containment
"The federal government would surround the south with free states, free
territories, and free waters, building what they called a 'cordon of freedom'
around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses
forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery."

3. TRUMAN’S CONTAINMENT POLICY
Truman's Containment policy was the first major policy during the Cold War
and used numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad.
Containment is a geopolitical 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.
A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of
moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern
Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam.
Containment represented a middle-ground position between detente and
rollback.

4. KEY POINTS
• Containment was suggested by diplomat George Kennan who eagerly
suggested the United States stifle communist influence in Eastern
Europe and Asia.
• One of the ways to accomplish this was by establishing NATO so the
Western European nations had a defense against communist influence.
• After Vietnam and détente, President Jimmy Carter focused less on
containment and more on fighting the Cold War by promoting human
rights in hot spot countries.

5. KEY TERMS
DETERRENCE
Action taken by states or alliances of nations against equally powerful
alliances to prevent hostile action
ROLLBACK
A withdrawal of military forces.

6. CONTAINMENT DEFINITION
• Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to
prevent the spread of communism abroad.
• A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of
moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence
in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.
• It represented a middle-ground position between détente and rollback.

7. GEORGE F. KENNAN
• The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by United States
diplomat, George F. Kennan.
• As a description of United States foreign policy, the word originated in a
report Kennan submitted to the U.S. defense secretary in 1947—a report
that was later used in a magazine article.

8. USA’S PRESIDENTS AND THE CONTAINMENT POLICY
• The word containment is associated most strongly with the policies of
United States President Harry Truman (1945–53), including the
establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual
defense pact.
• President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–61) toyed with the rival doctrine of
rollback, but he refused to intervene in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
• President Lyndon Johnson (1963–69) cited containment as a justification
for his policies in Vietnam.
• President Richard Nixon (1969–74), working with his top advisor Henry
Kissinger, rejected containment in favour of friendly relations with the
Soviet Union and China; this détente, or relaxation of tensions, involved
expanded trade and cultural contacts.

9. HUMAN RIGHTS VS ANTI-COMMUNISM
• President Jimmy Carter (1976–81) emphasized human rights rather than
anti-communism, but dropped détente and returned to containment
when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
• President Ronald Reagan (1981–89), denouncing the Soviet state as an
"evil empire", escalated the Cold War and promoted rollback in
Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
• Central programs begun under containment, including NATO and nuclear
deterrence, remained in effect even after the end of the war.

10. WHO WAS GEORGE KENNAN?
• George F. Kennan, in full George Frost Kennan (born February 16, 1904,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.—died March 17, 2005, Princeton, New
Jersey) American diplomat and historian best known for his successful
advocacy of a “containment policy” to oppose Soviet expansionism
following World War II.

11. THE X-ARTICLE
• Kennan’s ideas, which became the basis of the Truman administration’s
foreign policy, first came to public attention in 1947 in the form of an
anonymous contribution to the journal Foreign Affairs, the so-called “X-
Article.”
• “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union,”
Kennan wrote, “must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

12. COUNTERING SOVIET PRESSURE
• To that end, he called for countering “Soviet pressure against the free
institutions of the Western world” through the “adroit and vigilant
application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical
and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of
Soviet policy.”
• Such a policy, Kennan predicted, would “promote tendencies which must
eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual
mellowing of Soviet power.”

13. CONTROVERSY
• Kennan’s policy was controversial from the very beginning. Columnist
Walter Lippmann attacked the X-Article for failing to differentiate
between vital and peripheral interests.
• The United States, Kennan’s article implied, should face down the Soviet
Union and its Communist allies whenever and wherever they posed a risk
of gaining influence.
• In fact, Kennan advocated defending above all else the world’s major
centers of industrial power against Soviet expansion: Western Europe,
Japan, and the United States. Others criticized Kennan’s policy for being
too defensive.

14. DULLES AND NITZE
• John Foster Dulles declared during the 1952 election campaign that the
United States’ policy should not be containment, but the “rollback” of
Soviet power and the eventual “liberation” of Eastern Europe. Even
within the Truman administration there was a rift over containment
between Kennan and Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the
Policy Planning Staff.
• Nitze, who saw the Soviet threat primarily in military terms, interpreted
Kennan’s call for “the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force” to
mean the use of military power. In contrast, Kennan, who considered the
Soviet threat to be primarily political, advocated above all else economic
assistance (e.g., the Marshall Plan) and “psychological warfare” (overt
propaganda and covert operations) to counter the spread of Soviet
influence.

15. EXPANSION OF US MILITARY BUDGET
• In 1950, Nitze’s conception of containment won out over Kennan’s. NSC
68, a policy document prepared by the National Security Council and
signed by Truman, called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military
budget.
• The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of
major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. “In the
context of the present polarization of power,” it read, “a defeat of free
institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.”

16. CONTAINMENT AS A BASIC STRATEGY
• Despite all the criticisms and the various policy defeats that Kennan
suffered in the early 1950’s, containment in the more general sense of
blocking the expansion of Soviet influence remained the basic strategy of
the United States throughout the cold war.
• On the one hand, the United States did not withdraw into isolationism;
on the other, it did not move to “roll back” Soviet power, as John Foster
Dulles briefly advocated.
• It is possible to say that each succeeding administration after Truman’s,
until the collapse of communism in 1989, adopted a variation of
Kennan’s containment policy and made it their own.

17. BIBLIOGRAPHY
“The Cold War and Containment.” Boundless Political Science.
Kennan, George, "The Long Telegram"
Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011) pp 249-75.
Larsen, Deborah Welch, Origins of Containment
James Chace (2008). Acheson: The Secretary Of State Who Created The
American World
John Schuessler, "Absorbing The First Blow: Truman And The Cold War"
Efstathios T. Fakiolas, "Kennan's Long Telegram and NSC-68: A Comparative
Theoretical Analysis"
"Kennan and Containment, 1947"