George
Kennan: The Father of US Containment Policy
 Containment
of the Soviet threat originated under the George Kennan.
He provided the foundation for all subsequent geo-strategic
policy doctrines for US military police actions around
the globe. Later he would disagree with some such interventions,
especially US intervention in Vietnam, attributing such interventions
as having to do with more of an ideological divide in the
bipolar system then the need to conduct rational relations
with the soviet's who in reality were merely exercising the
same foreign policy objectives as the Tsars had before them.
Stationed in Moscow as an attaché to the US state department,
Kennan underlined containment and patience as the means to
meet and combat Soviet expansionism. He had seen the transformation
of Russia, from pre Bolshevik times to the vast purges of
Military police state under Stalin.
It
was Kennan who developed the Four pillars of American policy
later to be announced in the Truman Doctrine and later to
be carried out officially with the Marshall Plan. This Marshall
plan marked the official beginning of the Cold War, as the
Soviet's responded with their own plan the Comintern. With
containment came the justification for vigilant counter force
and as such his famous "Mr. X," article along with Churchill's "Iron
Curtain Speech," characterized the tone of America's
ideological conflict with the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet's
had already withdrawn from the Bretton Woods system
a mobilization of American political and economic resolve
was deemed necessary to counter the Soviet's
plan to create their own economic world order.
Kennan's
"Mr. X" article relayed much for American policymakers. Not
only did America's newfound role as the top political and
economic power reach a level of heightened importance by containing
the Soviet threat but it also provided the impetus for lawmakers
in the US Congress to challenge isolationists intent upon
returning America to what they perceived as pre-WWII obscurity.
Yet Kennan as well provided a window into Soviet political
thought by underlining the Soviet's ideological objectives
in the new emerging Cold War.
"For
ideology as we have seen taught them that the outside world
was hostile and that it was their duty to overthrow the political
forces beyond their borders."(X[Kennan], Foreign Affairs,
1947)
Kennan was developing a notion
of a mutually sustained antagonism between two opposites,
that the Soviet Union was the exact opposite of the US in
ideology, and culture. Kennan argues that the Soviet's were
also realists. As realists the USSR had to preserve the guise
of Cold War antagonism and the US as antithesis to the worker,
so that their people could be compelled to make sacrifice,
albeit trade democracy in times of war for military government
and state security aims that required a never ending state
of crises as justification for the Soviet's to legitimize
their institutional means of control over the Russian populace.
Kennan further states that "..the Kremlins conduct of foreign policy: the secretiveness..the
duplicity, wary suspiciousness, and the basic unfriendliness
of purpose," characterized the tone of Russian foreign
policy. Thus, Kennan concludes, "United States policy toward
the Soviet Union must be that of a long term, patient but firm and
vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."
(Foreign Affairs, 1947. p575) He later concluded that the
Soviet Union would fall due to its over developed military
and underdeveloped economic system.
***
Kennan's cry for containing
the Soviet's developed from the Truman
Doctrine in which four months prior to the writing
of the X article, Truman had underlined US general containment
objectives when he described Soviet influence in Western Europe
as expansionistic. Truman ordered military and civilian advisors
to Greece and Turkey. This corresponded to Truman's vision
of the Domino theory. Truman's Domino theory required
the US to draw geographic lines to limit Soviet peripheral
expansion. The method for this was to envision a security
net drawn over portions of Europe and elsewhere-whereby geo-strategic
centers of power and economic production, albeit Iran, Turkey,
Greece had been firmly locked into the political and economic
orbit of the West. According to US policymakers, to allow
Communist or even nationalistic uprising in these countries
would create power vacuums that the soviets could in
turn exploit to their advantage by wreaking havoc on the economic
supply client production system of the West.
Truman viewed the balance
of power after the war as unstable and that various states
were dependant upon one another for the development of mutual
and regional security. In terms of US security framework these
target countries had to be installed with pro western conservative
regimes to maintain the Western Alliance, by preserving stability
in the region, and conversely deny the Soviets the opportunity
to spur Marxist revolt even if it constituted a populist base
of support. According to the Truman Domino theory, if Iran
falls then Turkey and Greece will follow and soon Red Armies
would be converging on Central Europe. This would lead to
WWIII with the Soviets. The Domino Theory was not just exclusively
applied in these regions but also throughout the world. The
Domino theory would be the impetus for incursions in Korea,
Vietnam, Latin America, Africa and Asia. This was a major
departure from just containing the Soviet's to one of which
every revolt in the Third World was believed to be under Soviet
sponsorship, of which to certain extent was a legitimate reality,
and on the other, also a representation of US ideological
disdain for populist based class revolt when it interfered
with the needs of capitalism to have raw markets at its disposal.
Chapter 3: NATO: Multilateral Containment
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