David Urbano

History 6393

Professor Buzzano

9 March 2000

John L.Gaddis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar National Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. xv + 432 Table, appendix notes, bibliography, and index.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers, the Cold War originated in the postwar era between the Soviet Union and the United States. Fueled by the uncertainties and realities of a postwar devastated Europe, the United States and its communist adversary escalated tensions to the brink of war as both nations vied for hegemony in European economic, military, and political reconstruction. Gaddis’s monograph not only specifically addresses the strategies of containment the United States utilized to safeguard its national security, but also shows how those strategies were part of complex factors and not merely reactions to Soviet aggression.

Gaddis work shows the origins, evolution, and transformations of the strategy of containment to counter immediate Soviet postwar European and world dominance. But Gaddis makes a strong argument that containment did not originate after the defeat of the Axis Powers. Gaddis posits that Soviet containment was an integral part of Roosevelt’s and Truman’s war strategy to delimit Stalin’s role in the postwar settlement. Gaddis’s main argument is that certain "operational codes" (i.e., assumptions about world order) influences how individuals respond to world crises. Gaddis takes his thesis further and embellishes it by arguing "that there exist for presidential administrations certain strategic or geopolitical codes, assumptions about American interests in the world, political threats to them, and feasible responses, that tended to be formed either before or after or just after an administration takes office, and barring very unusual circumstances tend not to change much thereafter." (ix) Gaddis argues there were five geopolitical codes in the postwar period: George Kennan’s original strategy of containment (1947-1949), which Truman’s administration basically implemented; the advent of the Korean War and the articulation of National Security Council-68; Eisenhower’s "New Look" from 1953-1961; the "flexible response" of the Kennedy-Johnson Administrations which shaped U.S foreign policy until 1969; the policy of "détente" formulated in the Nixon-Kissinger in the early 70s followed by the Ford and Carter administrations until the invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. Gaddis keenly analyzes the approaches and rationales of each of those administrations and teases patterns in the evolution and implementation of containment strategies.

Gaddis discusses the impact of George F. Kennan’s analysis on the perils of Soviet intention, rhetoric, and military capability in the postwar age and the policy planner’s response to that agenda. Kennan’s strategy in dealing with Russia entailed a particularist versus a universalist approach; a commitment to a balance of power between the industrialized nations; a penchant for an asymmetrical response (a military response targeting the enemy’s weakest point) in lieu of a symmetrical response (a military response commiserate to the initial attack); selecting and identifying vital global areas of importance to combat aggression instead of over extending ones capabilities over wide perimeters that caused one to expand one resources needlessly.

After describing the salient characteristics of Kennan’s fundamental containment strategy, Gaddis shows how the respective presidential administrations and their foreign advisors defined threats to national security and how their responses delineated the nation’s interest. In the process Gaddis discusses how those administrations accepted, modified or transformed Kennan’s concepts.

In spite of Kennan’s perceptions of a limited Soviet threat, Truman adopted NSC-68, which provided for massive military expenditures to counter the "illusive" threat with a symmetrical approach. The events of the day-Communist China, the Korean War, the Greek civil war, and Russia’s nuclear capabilities- served to confirm American suspicion on Soviet aggression. On the other hand, Eisenhower and Dulles’ "New Look" on Soviet containment strategy, which espoused "massive retaliation", endorsed an asymmetrical approach. Moreover, this approach also supported the "vital" over the "periphery" area of interest. On the other hand, Kennedy and Johnson espoused a "periphery" concept of containment that necessitated an asymmetrical response and both premises bogged the United States in a costly war in Southeast Asia. In the early 70s Nixon and Kissenger pursued a policy of "détente". Détente as a strategy promoted "mulipolar" order or a multidimensional approach to foreign policy that countered Soviet aggression by soliciting the involvement of both China and the Soviet Union in a quest for world order and stability and linking that inclusion to positive rewards.

Even though Gaddis clearly depict patterns how those five administrations reacted to the Soviet threat (whether asymmetrically or symmetrical), he does not place Soviet aggression as the sole cause for the U.S. response. Rather domestic factors accounted for the strategies those administrations selected and those strategies were clearly a reflection of the means and ends.

Gaddis work is an important contribution to Cold War historiography. Gaddis’s knack for synthesizing and interpreting massive amounts of primary and secondary work is impressive. The bibliography provides students of diplomatic history with a wealth of information for those who desire to pursue the topic in dept. Finally, the work possesses a pleasant readability. The work does contain a minor shortcoming, however. Gaddis argues that foreign policy strategies reflect the perceptions, values, and assumptions of those who construct foreign policy, but he fails to give the reader pertinent examples on that personal connection.