The Containment Theory.

The term containment describes the foreign policy strategy pursued by the United States after the Second World War. The term was introduced into the public debate by George F. Kennan, a diplomat and U.S. State Department adviser on Soviet affairs. In his famous anonymous X-article Kennan suggested a "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." The Strategy of Containment found its first application in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, which guaranteed immediate economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey. John Lewis Gaddis has argued that all post-1945 U.S. foreign policy doctrines and concepts were in some way "Strategies of Containment." How was the concept of containment developed you may ask? For Kennan containment was a political concept. As a strategy, containment sought to achieve three goals: the restoration of the balance of power in Europe, the curtailment of Soviet power projection, and the modification of the Soviet conception of international relations.

English: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Gen...

Soviet Union - FDC European U-18 Football Champion...

George F. Kennan published his doctrine of contain...

The first goal of the containment theory was restoration of the balance of power. According to Kennan, the ultimate goal of U.S. foreign policy should not be the division of the world into Soviet and American spheres of influences. Rather, U.S. foreign policy should aid the establishment of independent centers of power in Europe and Asia and help encourage self-confidence in nations threatened by Soviet expansionism. In order to aid the establishment of diverse concentrations of power, Kennan believed it was vital to use restraint. For that purpose he suggested a long-term economic aid program. The aid program should treat geographical regions as a whole, and aid recipients should be responsible for the planning. The U.S. should only minimally interfere in internal affairs and should help specifically those that were willing to help themselves. In order to avoid overexertion the U.S. should concentrate...