The Idea of "Containment"

The American strategic posture since it was set in the postwar period by Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles has been dominated by the idea of "containment." It is hardly necessary here to document its application through overt military and covert CIA actions in the substantially successful repression of national liberation movements, and indeed of the most elemental progressive political developments all around the Third World. Dulles used to say that there are "no neutrals" and "those that are not with us are against us" and have to be combated tooth and nail. After the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States and thereby produced a nuclear "stalemate," the United States found it expedient to "widen its options" through "flexible response" in "limited local wars." According to the American political strategist Eugene Rostow, Khrushchev confirmed in an interview with James Reston that the Soviet Union had undergone a similar policy shift. Khrushchev declared that after Korea, conventional war was too dangerous, because "nuclear weapons don't respect class differences." Therefore, he said, it was necessary to rely on wars of liberation, especially in the Third World. The first major such war was fought in Korea in 1950-1952 with large "conventional" troop formations on both sides. It resulted in a standoff, which is still maintained across the 38th parallel. The Korean experience discouraged subsequent similar troop commitments, particularly because of the increasing threat of escalation into nuclear warfare. The next major such war was waged in Vietnam for two decades and spilled over into neighboring countries in Indochina. The increasing American troop commitment (up to 800,000, of which 500,000 were in the field) in a "nonconventional guerilla war," and particularly the subsequent liberation of Indochina from imperialist occupation, forced the United States into an "agonizing reappraisal" of its military posture. One result was the Nixon Doctrine of disengaging American troops from direct participation as much as possible and maintaining a military presence through arms supplies and other means of using "Asians to fight Asians." A major manifestation of this military posture has been the development of a rapid and flexible U.S. Navy that has modernized "showing the flag" and "gunboat diplomacy," which once seemed to have gone out of fashion, and the design and construction of naval and air forces that permit rapid "deployment" of troops and supporting weapons to "trouble spots" anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. The development and deployment of similar Soviet naval and air capacities and the war between Vietnam and Kampuchea, as well as the presence of Cuban troops in Africa, indicate that the Soviet Union and China may have developed their own versions of the Nixon Doctrine. (Moreover, it is clear that the Chinese welcome, if not demand, an American military presence in Asia.) The other major result of the American reappraisal has been the United States' temporary reluctance to intervene too directly in the Third World, particularly in Africa, where France and Britain seem to be in a better position to do so.