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Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire , which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period .
In 1947, Truman announced the "Truman Doctrine" that implemented the containment policy to prevent the spread of communism. It started with providing aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent Soviet-aligned governments. Truman called for bipartisan support and won approval for an unprecedented $400 million aid package.
The Truman Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world. [5] It shifted U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union from a wartime alliance to containment of Soviet expansion, as advocated by diplomat George F. Kennan.
After the end of his brief ambassadorial post in Yugoslavia during 1963, Kennan spent the rest of his life in academe, becoming a major realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. [60] Having spent 18 months as a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) between 1950 and 1952, Kennan joined the faculty of the institute's School of Historical ...
He implemented the policy of containment, which aimed to stop the spread of communism and limit Soviet influence around the world. [39] Korean War: In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, leading to a bloody conflict that lasted until 1953. Truman authorized U.S. military intervention in the conflict, which led to a protracted and costly war.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought a significant change in Carter's foreign policy and ended the period of detente that had begun in the mid-1960s. Returning to a policy of containment, the United States reconciled with Cold War allies and increased the defense budget, leading to a new arms race with the Soviet Union. [47]
The US government responded by adopting a policy of containment, [25] with the goal of stopping the spread of communism. Truman delivered a speech calling for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. [25]
In the period, an active foreign policy was pursued to help Western Europe and Asia recover from the devastation of World War II. The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe rebuild from wartime devastation. The main American goal was the Containment of communism. An arms race escalated through increasingly powerful nuclear weapons.