Resident Scholar  Michael Rubin

Containment helped define United States foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Inspired by a view of the USSR as expansionist and intractably opposed to capitalist states, containment was viewed as the most cost-effective method to prevent Soviet extension without resorting to cataclysmic war.

The policy was perhaps best described by US national security adviser George Kennan in his 1947 'X' article, in which he claimed "it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of longterm, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."

Yet, although the X article was written about the idiosyncracies of the Soviet system, containment is not a policy necessarily specific to the unique characteristics of the Cold War. Many in Washington currently appear to view a similar policy as an option in its dealings with a very different but similarly ideologically opposed rival, Iran. . . .

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Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.