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Article: The case for "integration".(United States foreign policy)
- Article from:
- The National Interest
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 The National Interest, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN 2005 we saw the 101st anniversary of the birth, and the death, of George Kennan, widely acknowledged as the principal architect of containment, the doctrine that guided U.S. foreign policy for roughly forty years of the Cold War. Containment--in Kennan's formulation, "a commitment to countering the Soviet Union wherever it encroached upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world"--implicitly and correctly rejected two dangerous alternatives: appeasement of the Soviet and communist threat on the one hand (that would have led to a global diminution of security, freedom and prosperity) and direct confrontation on the other (all too dangerous in a nuclear era). ...