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