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"STRATEGIES OF CONTAINMENT" (JOHN LEWIS GADDIS).   Term Paper ID:22761 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical review of 1982 work on origins & evolution of containment of Soviet Union from WWII through 1970s. Military planning, Cold War ideology, leadership, geopolitics, detente.... More...

6 Pages / 1350 Words 3 sources, 9 Citations, APA Format $24.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Critical review of 1982 work on origins & evolution of containment of Soviet Union from WWII through 1970s. Military planning, Cold War ideology, leadership, geopolitics, detente. Paper Introduction: The doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union, first set forth in detail in a celebrated article by George Kennan in the late 1940s, was the essential strategy of the United States during the Cold War era. In its most essential terms, containment as a doctrine argued that an ultimate confrontation with the Soviet Union was neither inevitable nor necessary; that if the United States and its allies could hold their ground and buy time, that would in the end be sufficient. Events, indeed, have borne out Kennan's argument. Well into the 1980s, the Cold War still appeared as though it might persist indefinitely. But from 1985 on, the Soviet system collapsed from its own internal tensions, nearly bloodlessly and indeed all but effortlessly. A final confrontation did indeed prove unnecessary; containment succeed in its objectives, albeit after Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Here, perhaps, is aweakness is Gaddis' analysis. As James Cumings observes in "Japan and the Asian Periphery"(Leffler and Painter, 1994, pp. B-52s might suffice to keep the Soviets from siezing WestBerlin, but could they adequately respond to a guerilla war in the ThirdWorld. cut the ground from underany potential revolutionary movements in the region, thus achieving thepolitical component of containment with respect to Europe. 133-34). It is true, arguesGaddis, that FDR relegated containment of the Soviets to a very secondarypriority, in part because of the overriding need to defeat the Axis, and inpart because Roosevelt was inclined toward "containment by integration"(Gaddis, 1982, p. Such dispositions made sense only if the bombers were notexpected to ride out an attack, but to deliver one first. (1985). Gregg Herken, in Counsels of War (1985), deals in particular withnuclear strategy, and its interactions with general strategy, through theCold War era. But from 1985 on, the Soviet system collapsed from its own internaltensions, nearly bloodlessly and indeed all but effortlessly. After the end of the war, the fate and form of containment strategycontinued to be shaped by a broad range of consideration, and theseconsiderations, and their resulting dynamics, are a major theme in Gaddis'work. In light of these perspectives, how should we evaluate the doctrineof containment, and more narrowly, how should we evaluate theinterpretation of this doctrine presented by Gaddis? The lines of demarcation between superpower spheres of influence werevastly more diffuse in the Third World than they had been in Europe. A basic political difficulty, however, was that Marshall Plan-typeprograms were often little different, in Third World eyes, from anextension of colonialism. We learn, for example, that the decision of the TrumanAdministration to rearm on a large scale in 195 was driven primarily notby the Pentagon, but by liberal Keynesian economists within theadministration, who looked upon military expenditures largely as aninstrument of fiscal policy (Gaddis, 1982, 93). Strategic Air Command planningin the 195 s was predicated on a first strike, or "anticipatorycounterattack" (Herken, 1985, p. Gaddis emphasizes this point, arguing that U.S. 2 1-14), deals specifically with the American effort to grasp andrespond to one aspect of this new world. But the Cold War tookplace partly in a military context, and part of that context was nuclearweapons. Hunt andSteven I. But it was not true of the rest of East Asia. One implication that Herken finds inhis study of nuclear planning is that U.S. P., and Painter, D. first-strike intentions on the military level thatHerken discusses. While military planning in the 195 s was centered on a climacticconfrontation with the Soviet Union, and presupposed the use of nuclearweapons, political contingencies were moving in quite a differentdirection. 211)--a view unlikely to draw anenthusiastic support from nationalists. Thetendency of grand strategy is to envision military forces and means asabstract counters like those on a "Diplomacy" board. Herken, G. 5-6). He tends to see the world as U.S.policymakers saw it, and in the portion of his book dealing with theEisenhower Administration, he gives insufficient attention to thecomplications that were already emerging in the U.S. policy makers werenot naive about the prospects of future Soviet-American relations after thewar, but were well aware of the potential for rivalry and incorporated itinto their wartime thinking (Gaddis, 1982, pp. Yet certain threads of commonalty run through all the perspectives wefind here. effort to applycontainment doctrine in Asia, complications that in the next decade wouldexplode forth into the Vietnam War. As a sort of riposte, the"New Look" policy of the Eisenhower administration was encouraged in partby Eisenhower's skepticism about the social effects of what he famouslydubbed the military-industrial complex (Gaddis, 1982, pp. L. The essence of Kennan's containment doctrine was, in its mostbasic formulation, to take the Soviets at their word on this crucial point,and to meet the Soviet challenge not by war but by demonstrating that theWestern political and economic system had the strength and resilience toendure indefinitely. New York: Oxford. U.S. S., eds. Origins of the ColdWar: An International History. The European colonial empires were crumbling, introducing newplayers onto the political chessboard, and with them new problems for U.S.policymakers. strategy during the Second World War,when the Soviets were our allies, not our rivals. There seems to be very little dispute as to actual facts onthe ground. Theworld view of Asian nationalists was, of course, even more different. Itwill be noted that the above sentence contains a striking assertion, namelythat containment as a concept well predated Kennan's formulation, and wasindeed an active component of U.S. wartimecasualties, a policy that maximized reliance on the continued performanceof the Red Army. Thiswas the true reason why massive retaliation was becoming an obsoletedoctrine. This broad framework was indeed adhered to, thoughall the shifts from the early Truman years to the late Truman years and onthrough the Eisenhower administration. 9), holding that the Soviets would be less a threat ifthey could somehow be integrated into a global system of great powers.Other factors at work included a desire to minimize U.S. A finalconfrontation did indeed prove unnecessary; containment succeed in itsobjectives, albeit after nearly half a century. One of the essays in Leffler and Painter, Origins of the ColdWar, Robert E. It was not a secret that could be kept, since much of itwas revealed by, for example, the highly vulnerable dispositions of U.S.bombers. New York: Knopf. 26 -61), and only looselymodeled on orthodox, Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism. The Marshall Plan for theeconomic reconstruction of Europe had been one of the most conspicuousAmerican successes of the early Cold War. Wood's "From the Marshall Plan to the Third World" (1994,pp. In the first six chapters of Strategies of Containment (written in1982, well before the Soviet collapse was visible), John Lewis Gaddisoffers a historical and analytical survey of the first two decades ofcontainment doctrine, through the end of the Eisenhower administration. Counsels of War. Indeed, in Indochina, one policy report arguedthat Marshall Plan aid to France was itself indirect aid to Indochina(Leffler and Painter, 1994, p. (1994). 97). Levine point out in their essay "Revolutionary Movements in Asiaand the Cold War," in Leffler and Painter (1994, pp. Instead, as Michael H. A special characteristic of nuclear weapons is that we haveessentially no practical experience of their use; Hiroshima and Nagasakiare enough to inform us that these weapons are indeed dreadful in theireffects, but they give little guidance in planning for their use, and stillless in planning for their non-use. Melvyn Leffler and David Painter, in Origins of the Cold War(1994), offer a selection of recent views dealing with some of theseproblems. policy makers saw a different world and differentproblems than did those within the American national-security structure whowere charged with responsibility for planning American nuclear forces. New York: Routledge.----------------------- 8 The first point tonote is that, in spite of the widely varying perspectives of the sourcesconsidered here, they may be viewed as complimentary rather thancontradictory. The Soviets, acutely aware of their own weaknesses--and unlikely tocomfortably suppose that the West was unaware of them, however hard theythemselves tried to conceal those weaknesses--must have had some awarenessof the evidence for U.S. References Gaddis, J. Strategic and geopolitical analysis almost invariably suffers from asimplification of actual complexities, particularly military ones. The doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union, first set forth indetail in a celebrated article by George Kennan in the late 194 s, was theessential strategy of the United States during the Cold War era. Events, indeed, have borne out Kennan's argument. Nothing couldhave been more natural for American policymakers to project the same logiconto the emergent Third World. Strategies of Containment: A CriticalAppraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. 215-35), the same was becoming true ofJapan. Well into the198 s, the Cold War still appeared as though it might persist indefinitely. 257-75), thesenationalists were turning toward a revolutionary model, but one drawn fromthe experience of Mao Zedung in China (1994, p. By restoring the conditions of amiddle-class society in Western Europe, the U.S. The differences emerge rather from the interpretations of facts, andthose interpretations were determined by the perspectives of the initialparticipants. Leffler, M. By the middle 195 s, it had beeneffectively achieved in Europe; NATO had been established, and there was noserious prospect that revolutionary movements would take hold in WesternEurope. By the late 195 s, the focus of containment shifted from Europe tothe Third World, and particularly to East Asia. In a collection of independent essays it is difficult toidentify a unifying thread, but one important issue that emerges from theseessays was the difficulty that American policymakers had in coming to gripswith what is now called the Third World. (1982). In itsmost essential terms, containment as a doctrine argued that an ultimateconfrontation with the Soviet Union was neither inevitable nor necessary;that if the United States and its allies could hold their ground and buytime, that would in the end be sufficient. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.