Containment Policy
At a glance:
- Series: Magill’s Guide to Military History
- Categories: Diplomacy, International Relations, Foreign Affairs, Military History
- Subcategories: Communism, Communists, Cold War
- Curriculum: American History 1901-1950, American History 1951-present
- Geographical Location: United States
- Date: Late 1940’s to the early 1950’s
Foreign policy practiced by the United States in the late 1940’s and the early 1950’s, designed to neutralize Soviet expansionism. The term was first coined by George Kennan, U.S. State Department adviser on Soviet affairs, in an anonymous article in the 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs. Kennan wrote that a “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies” should be pursued in the hope of an eventual state of U.S.-Soviet détente or the collapse of the Soviet Union. In short, it was a policy that sought to control the fire of communism by...
[The entire page is 138 words long]
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