Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War

503 Pages·2005·26.96 MB·English

by  John Lewis Gaddis

Strategies of Containment
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Strategies of Containment
A Critical Appraisal of American National
Security Policy during the Cold War
Revised and Expanded Edition
JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1982, 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1982
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www.oup.com
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1982
Published as a revised and expanded edition, 2005
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaddis, John Lewis.
Strategies of containment: a critical appraisal of American national security policy during the cold
war / John Lewis Gaddis.—Rev. and expanded ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-517448-9 ISBN-10: 0-19-517448-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-517447-2 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-19-517447-X (pbk.)
1. United States—Foreign relations—1945-1989.
2. United States—Foreign relations—1989-
3. National security—United States—History—20th century.
4. National security—United States—History—21st century.
I. Title
E744.G24 2005
327.73'009'045—dc22 2004065459
987654321
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
For
WENDELL P. C. MORGENTHALER, JR.
Colonel, USMC (Ret.)
and
ALAN T. ISAACSON
Captain, USN
Strategy seminars, 1975-1977
U. S. Naval War College
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Preface
Historians, it has been suggested, can be divided into two groups:
"lumpers" and splitters."1 "Lumpers" seek to impose order on the past:
they deliver themselves of sweeping generalizations that attempt to make
sense out of whole epochs; they seek to systematize complexity, to reduce
the chaos, disorder, and sheer untidiness of history to neat patterns that fit
precisely within the symmetrical confines of chapters of books, usually de-
signed to be inflicted upon unsuspecting undergraduates. "Splitters," on
the other hand, write mostly for each other—and their defenseless gradu-
ate students. They like to point out exceptions, qualifications, incon-
gruities, paradoxes; in short, they elevate quibbling to a high historio-
graphical art. Both approaches are necessary, even indispensable, to the
writing of history, but they do not always occur in the same proportion at
the same time with reference to the same topic. Establishing a balance be-
tween "lumpers" and "splitters" is no easy thing.
This has been especially true of a field some people are not yet prepared
to regard as history—the record of United States involvement in the Cold
War. Initial accounts, written during the 1950s and early 1960s, tended
toward the particular—lengthy but not very analytical narratives of what
happened, based usually on memoir material and published sources,
sometimes also on inside information. One dipped into them at first fasci-
nated but then quickly surfeited by the detail: the question "what does it
all mean?" remained unanswered. An answer of sorts came in the late
1960 s and early 1970 s with that outbreak of "lumping" known as revision-
ism: it was general, analytical, breathtaking at times in its findings, but
vii
viii PREFACE
occasionally reminiscent as well of a trapeze artist in its leaps from one
conclusion to another without visible means of support. Inevitably, reac-
tion set in—the "splitters" appeared, gnawing away at the foundations of
revisionism until many of its most impressive structures—though hardly
all—came tumbling down. No comparably broad synthesis has emerged to
take their place. Cold War studies in recent years have seen much careful
monographic work, based on a wealth of new sources, but no overall pat-
tern has emerged from it. That is unfortunate, because as important as ab-
sorption in the particular is, there is a certain value in stepping back at
times to try to take in the larger picture, even if parts of it stick out of the
frame in awkward places.
This book is an effort to redress the balance in favor of "lumping." It
seeks to reinterpret, in the light of new evidence and recent research, the
whole of United States national security policy since World War II. It ap-
proaches its subject, not from the more traditional diplomatic, economic,
ideological, or military perspectives, but from an angle of vision that I
think incorporates all of these: that of strategy. By "strategy," I mean quite
simply the process by which ends are related to means, intentions to capa-
bilities, objectives to resources. Every maker of policy consciously or un-
consciously goes through such a process, but scholarly students of policy,
in their fascination with regional, topical, or bureaucratic approaches,
have paid curiously little attention to it. I should like to apply this "strate-
gic" perspective to what seems to me to have been the central preoccupa-
tion of postwar national security policy—the idea of containment*—with a
view toward explaining the successive mutations, incarnations, and trans-
formations that concept has undergone through the years.
My approach to this subject has been influenced by the work of Alexan-
der George, who has done a great deal to break down artificial method-
ological barriers separating the fields of contemporary history and political
science. George has suggested that there exists, for political leaders, some-
thing he calls an "operational code"—a set of assumptions about the
world, formed early in one's career, that tend to govern without much sub-
"The term "containment" poses certain problems, implying as it does a consistently defensive
orientation in American policy. One can argue at length about whether Washington's approach
to the world since 1945 has been primarily defensive—I tend to think it has—but the argu-
ment is irrelevant for the purposes of this book. What is important here is that American lead-
ers consistently perceived themselves as responding to rather than initiating challenges to the
existing international order. For this reason, it seems to me valid to treat the idea of contain-
ment as the central theme of postwar national security policy.
PREFACE IX
sequent variation the way one responds to crises afterward.2 Building on
this argument, I would suggest that there exist for presidential administra-
tions certain "strategic" or "geopolitical" codes, assumptions about Ameri-
can interests in the world, potential threats to them, and feasible re-
sponses, that tend to be formed either before or just after an
administration takes office, and barring very unusual circumstances tend
not to change much thereafter. "It is an illusion," Henry Kissinger has
written, "to believe that leaders gain in profundity while they gain experi-
ence. .. . the convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high
office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they con-
tinue in office."3
There have been, I will argue, five distinct geopolitical codes in the
postwar era: George Kennans original strategy of containment, articulated
between 1947 and 1949 and, I think, largely implemented by the Truman
administration during that period; the assumptions surrounding NSC-68,
put into effect between 1950 and 1953 as a result of the Korean War; the
Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," which lasted from 1953 to 1961; the
Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, which shaped the Ameri-
can approach to the world until Johnson left office in 1969; and that com-
plex of ideas we now nostalgically associate with the term "detente," put
forward by Nixon and Kissinger in the early 1970 s, and continued in effect
by both Ford and Carter until the invasion of Afghanistan late in 1979.
Borrowing again from Alexander George, I propose to undertake here a
modest "structured, focused comparison"4 of these geopolitical codes,
these successive approaches to containment, to see what patterns might
emerge from them. My objective in all of this is to throw out a large, but I
hope not too indigestible "lump," which should at least give the "splitters,"
who have been on a pretty thin diet lately, something to chew on.
A word is in order about the organization of this book. Chapters One
and Eleven treat, in a general way, the World War II antecedents and the
current status of containment. Chapters Two through Ten deal more rig-
orously with the approaches to containment outlined above. My proce-
dure generally has been to describe each strategy in one chapter,* and to
evaluate implementation in the one that follows. There are, however, two
*In line with George's call for systematic comparison, I have (I hope without being too obtru-
sive about it) asked the following questions of each strategy: (1) What conception did the ad-
ministration in question have of American interests in the world? (2) How did it perceive
threats to those interests? (3) What responses did it choose to make, in the light of those in-
terests and threats? (4) How did it seek to justify those responses?