SOURCES

Section 1

• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “In 1945, the defeat of Germany in World War II resulted in a power vacuum in Europe. To fill this void, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), headed by Joseph Stalin, expanded its sphere of influence – the area in which it expressed substantial military, economic, cultural, and/or political influence. The U.S.S.R. also capitalized on disruptions to the status quo that resulted from the war to promote its Marxist-Leninist ideology. Throughout the world, people wanted to know who were the Soviets and what were their motives. An erudite man and expert on Russia ultimately answered these pressing questions. That man was George Frost Kennan, an American political adviser and diplomat. In 1946, while stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he sent his famous “Long Telegram” to the State Department in Washington. This 8,000-word secret cable outlined his views of the U.S.S.R. and proposed his strategy to protect the United States (U.S.) from them.” (p. 1)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “A year and a half later, Kennan, under the pseudonym “X,” published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” based on the still classified telegram. This piece has come to be widely known as the “X” article. In these writings, Kennan did not perceive the U.S.S.R. as a military threat but rather as an “ideological-political threat”. The “X” article explained régime, needed to create an external enemy. As a result of the war, Kennan viewed Europe as economically maladjusted and vulnerable to dictatorships, and he feared that the Soviets would exploit this weakness. Perceiving Soviet economics as incompatible with those of the U.S., he believed the U.S. must act to prevent the Soviet takeover of Europe. With the acceptance of this goal to prevent Soviet seizure of Europe, the Cold War began. The U.S. plans incorporated 1) many of Kennan’s ideas, such as the Marshall Plan, 2) some alterations of his theory, including the Truman Doctrine, and 3) many actions that ran counter to Kennan’s strategy all together, for instance the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In the end, the discrepancy between his theory and the U.S.’s praxis led Kennan to see containment as a failure.” (p. 1)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan explains, in the “Long Telegram” that at the “bottom of [the] Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” and the U.S.S.R. would crumble should a “strong resistance [be] encountered at any point”. Kennan proposes that U.S.S.R. can be “contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy”. Despite confusion caused by some ambiguity in his writing, Kennan’s view of Soviet containment was based on the use of soft power, or non-military influence, rather than hard power, or the use of military power to coerce. The definitions herein follow: “Hard power seeks to kill, capture, or defeat an enemy. Soft power seeks to influence through understanding and the identification of common ground”. Kennan publicly stated his support of non-military pressure, yet, many U.S. presidents implemented policies centered on the use of hard power.” (p. 1-2)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan’s framing of the Soviet Union as an ideological-political threat and his emphasis on using soft power rather than military force. ‘The only concrete policy proposal included in the “X” article is the section regarding the “application of counterforce,” a term whose meaning can vary and that continues to be misunderstood. Many people famously took counterforce to indicate military action; however, Kennan’s papers propose a more peaceful approach. A draft of the “X’” article from Kennan’s personal documents reads: [T]he Kremlin … must be firmly contained at all times by counter-pressure which makes it constantly evident that attempts to break through this containment would be detrimental to Soviet interests. The irritating by-products of an ideology indispensable to the Soviet regime for internal reasons must not be allowed to become the cause of hysterical alarm or of tragic despair among those abroad who are working towards a happier association of the Russian people with the world community of nations. The United States … must demonstrate by its own self-confidence and patience, but particularly by the integrity and dignity of its example, that the true glory of the Russian national effort can find its expression only in peaceful association with other peoples and not in attempts to subjugate and dominate those peoples. Such an attitude … could not fail to carry conviction and to find reflection in the development of Russia’s internal political life and, accordingly, in the Soviet concept of Russia’s place in international affairs. In other words, Kennan wanted the U.S. to be patient and outlast the U.S.S.R. He believed that the Communists were territorially overstretched, and that America only needed to wait and continue to interrupt the spread of Soviet influence. He viewed any disruption to the “efficacy of the Party as a political instrument” as capable of changing the U.S.S.R. “overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies”. America just needed to maintain its use of liberal democracy and capitalist economics and disrupt Moscow’s plans for expansion without the use of coercion to bring about the collapse of the U.S.S.R.” (p. 2)
• Callaghan, J. (2014). Anti-communism in the USA and American foreign policy in the late 1940s. Twentieth Century Communism. “The idea that the USA was faced by a worldwide communist threat centred upon Moscow was also the view that some officials had arrived at. George Kennan’s analysis, for example, from the US embassy in Moscow, was not initially intended for public consumption. His ‘long telegram’ of February 1946 warned that there could be ‘no permanent modus vivendi’ with the fanatic Soviet state and its ‘elaborate and far-reaching apparatus’ for the subversion of other countries. The large impact of the telegram in Washington–where his text was circulated by such confirmed anti-Communists as Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal–suggests that many within the political elite were not merely inclined to support a tougher foreign policy stance, but easily persuaded of the Soviet Union’s ideologically-driven behaviour.” (p. 7)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Nitze claimed that he derived the National Council Report 68 (NSC-68), the top secret, 58-page document that provided the actual outline for US containment policy, from Kennan’s earlier paper, NSC-20/4. NSC-68 differed from Kennan’s theory in three major ways. First, Kennan’s strategy confined America to “a few strategic regions,” but NSC-68 called for the U.S. to counter communism globally. Additionally, because a year earlier in 1949 the Soviets developed a nuclear weapon, Kennan suggested that the U.S. “adopt a policy of never using nuclear weapons before the Soviets did”. This policy of no first use would lower the risk of nuclear conflict, but Nitze rejected it. Finally and most importantly, the two papers differed on the question of political or military containment. NSC-68 claimed that the U.S. “could afford a massive arms buildup”. Kennan’s paper did address the need for a larger military and “strong action against the Kremlin,” but its primary focus was soft power, for the U.S.S.R still sought “‘to achieve its aims primarily by political means’”. Kennan was outraged by NSC-68 and claimed that he had nothing to do with its development, saying, “‘I was disgusted about the assumptions concerning Soviet intentions’”. The weapons buildup signaled the hardline victory and the start of an arms race. Kennan saw hazard in this weapons race “not because of aggressive intentions on either side but because of the compulsions, the suspicions, the anxieties such a competition engenders, and because of the very serious dangers it carries with it of unintended complications—by error, by computer failure, by misread signals, or by mischief deliberately perpetrated by third parties”” (p. 4-5)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan explains, in the “Long Telegram” that at the “bottom of [the] Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” and the U.S.S.R. would crumble should a “strong resistance [be] encountered at any point”. Kennan proposes that U.S.S.R. can be “contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy”. Despite confusion caused by some ambiguity in his writing, Kennan’s view of Soviet containment was based on the use of soft power, or non-military influence, rather than hard power, or the use of military power to coerce. The definitions herein follow: “Hard power seeks to kill, capture, or defeat an enemy. Soft power seeks to influence through understanding and the identification of common ground”. Kennan publicly stated his support of non-military pressure, yet, many U.S. presidents implemented policies centered on the use of hard power.” (p. 1-2)
• Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Thus, while the attempts to influence the domestic news media were successful, international strategies fell short of congressional expectations and proved inappropriate for the international community—a community where certain segments were persuaded by the communist message. In order to meet this changing propaganda environment and the new exigencies in the Cold War, the Truman administration responded with a more determined propaganda effort in April 1950, launching what it called America’s new “Campaign of Truth.”64 In the process, Truman took to the bully pulpit in support of the governmental propaganda program. Even before he began his public crusade, though, he moved toward a more militaristic model of propaganda, designing more secret modes of influence that worked in tandem with the official propaganda activities.” (p. 42)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Nearly all post-World War II presidential foreign policy doctrines, up to and including Reagan’s, were promoted under the auspices of containing communist threat. Although Washington implemented the Marshall Plan according to Kennan’s specifications, the Truman Doctrine lacked Kennan’s approval. This doctrine was Truman’s slightly earlier plan to give monetary aid to Greece and Turkey and which was implemented in conjunction with the Marshall Plan. Kennan found in it two main flaws. First, as a defensive act that suggested America would not act without the Soviet threat, it made America look passive and weak. Secondly, he saw that the American public viewed the doctrine as “a blank check to give economic and military aid to any area in the world where the communists show[ed] signs of being successful”. Kennan thought that the U.S. should only offer support if the benefits outweighed the costs and efforts. From the beginning, Kennan supported strict criterion to determine a nation’s eligibility to receive aid based on the following three conditions: 1) America was capable of solving the problem, 2) inaction would aid the Soviets, and 3) the aid would spillover to other nations and advance American goals. Kennan believed that placing troops globally would likely lead to disaster and that America ought not “support free peoples” everywhere as Truman suggested in his speech to Congress in 1947.” (p. 3)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “The two most infamous examples of militarism in the name of containment are the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Prior to 1950, America did not see itself as the police force of the world, nor did it desire that burden. It took on the “commitment to contain communism everywhere” just before the Korean War. For the North Koreans, U.S.’s hardline, militaristic containment triggered conflict. Truman claimed that conflict resulted from North Korean threats. The truth is still disputed. Kennan saw the fatal flaws of the U.S. involvement in Korea. First, the “police action” marked a shift from the peaceful Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine towards an aggressive policy.” (p. 4)
• Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Even though Smith-Mundt supporters defined propaganda as a necessary peacetime element of U.S. foreign policy, they secured bigger budgets for the Campaign of Truth by talking of a stepped-up Cold War crisis. The Hate America campaign weighed heavily on the minds of Truman officials and supporters. Mose Harvey of the State Department charged that the Russian campaign was ‘directed toward creating hatred of the United States … hatred on the part of the Russian people, on the part of the people on the outside.’ Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson argued that the Soviet efforts involved ‘falsification, distortion, suppression and deception’ intended to ‘misrepresent and discredit the aims and nature of American life, and the aims and nature of American foreign policy.’” (p. 59-60)
• Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1 “By 1929 the USA was the leading foreign investor in Latin America, supporting landlordism and military dictatorship. However, the economic hardship of the Great Depression caused political turmoil in 11 of the 20 Latin American republics. In El Salvador (1932), Cuba (1934), and Nicaragua (1927-1934), there was revolutionary violence. Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil installed populist regimes, coalitions of bourgeois nationalists, organized workers, and peasants, which directed national economic development and redistribution to suppress class conflict through national solidarity. They naturally restricted American corporation’s activities. While Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy refrained from direct intervention, the USA remained wary of populist attempts, for example, to nationalize Mexican oil, or of cautious steps toward land reform in Guatemala.” (p. 9)
• Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.) “Postwar, populism remained influential. Brazil’s President Getulio Dornelles Vargas (1950 1954) and Argentina’s Juan Peron (1946 1954) challenged resurgent American dominance and the power of domestic landlords and capitalists, introducing social welfare and labor legislation and accelerating industrialization. Eventually, however, the combined forces of the USA and the dominant landed and merchant oligarchies forced them out of power. In this it was helped by the 1947 anti-Communist Rio Pact, into which it had corralled most Latin American republics. It considered an attack on one member as an attack on all. Nearly all Latin America was caught in the US dragnet of counterrevolution. In Bolivia, partial land reform and stepped-up American military aid contained revolution in 1952. In Guatemala, the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government when it nationalized the United Fruit Company’s plantations.” (p. 9)
• Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.) “In this aperture, the USA arranged a coup d’etat in Brazil and Bolivia in 1964 to quash populist forces, fixed elections to oust a populist government in Guyana in the same year, and military intervention in the Dominican Republic to thwart what it deemed a Communist takeover the following year. The USA supplemented coercion with strengthening Latin America’s substantial middle class of farmers, merchants, bankers, industrialists, and professionals through the Alliance for Progress to foster growth and eliminate poverty, so inoculating Latin America against revolution. Announcing the Alliance for Progress a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion, this alleged Latin American Marshall Plan was projected to combine $20 billion in public and private aid and an estimated $80 billion of local capital to spur growth. While its economic success was highly questionable, it certainly helped insure against revolution.” (p. 11)
• Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1.) “In Guatemala, the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government when it nationalized the United Fruit Company’s plantations.” (p. 9)
• Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from [https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466.](https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466.) “In the case of the Guatemala coup, code-named PBSUCCESS, Eisenhower’s primary objective was to remove an overtly leftist government, which implemented policies that, in American calculations, opened the way for the establishment of “a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere”. Deeper research into the ouster of Guatemalan President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in June 1954, however, suggests that it was driven by more multifarious motives than at first seems apparent. In brief, PBSUCCESS served as a ready expedient. It drew attention away from the French withdrawal from Indochina while simultaneously acting as a catalyst for Foster Dulles’s achievement of anticommunist hemispheric solidarity in the Americas. Arbenz’s downfall, furthermore, illustrated to informed opinion in the United States that Eisenhower was able to pursue a hard line against what was represented as international communism without resorting to war.” (p. 110)
• Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Washington did not heed Kennan’s warning, ignored Korea’s lack of ‘geopolitical significance,’ and was drawn into years of conflict. Thus, Truman applied ‘to East Asia a containment policy that had originally been applied in Europe.’ This error was continued by later administrations in other Asian nations. For instance, Eisenhower, in his 1952 inaugural address, linked the French conflict in Vietnam to the American effort to stifle Communism in Korea, for ‘Communists in Korea and Vietnam were regarded as part of the greater war.’ When America entered Vietnam, Kennan was even more enraged than he was after the U.S. entry into Korea, foreseeing the unwinnable nature of the conflict. He testified to this in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he warned against ‘violent objection to what exists, unaccompanied by any constructive concept of what, ideally ought to exist in its place.’” (p. 4)
• Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Thus, while the attempts to influence the domestic news media were successful, international strategies fell short of congressional expectations and proved inappropriate for the international community—a community where certain segments were persuaded by the communist message. In order to meet this changing propaganda environment and the new exigencies in the Cold War, the Truman administration responded with a more determined propaganda effort in April 1950, launching what it called America’s new ‘Campaign of Truth.’ In the process, Truman took to the bully pulpit in support of the governmental propaganda program. Even before he began his public crusade, though, he moved toward a more militaristic model of propaganda, designing more secret modes of influence that worked in tandem with the official propaganda activities.” (p. 42)