Doctrine of Containment

The doctrine of containment refers to a set of strategies that are applied militarily in order to halt or effectively contain the radical expansion and military power projection by the opposing enemy forces. The application of this doctrine especially by the United States government reached its height during the cold war era. To help protect the allies from falling under the control of the communist Soviet Union, the united states carefully undertook its military operations on foreign soil with due consideration of the doctrine. Eventually, the United States army succeeded in ensuring the retreat of soviet forces in countries such as South Korea, the entire Vietnam and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe.

During late 1940s, Harry Truman—the U.S president at the time—led his administration towards the enactment and implementation of policies that eventually influenced the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO is a pact that ensures the presence of a standby mutual defense mechanism especially in the westernized European countries. Notably, the pact was a response of the perceived threat of communistic influence by the Soviet Union. Today, NATO continues the defense and the containment strategy especially towards Russia. This is evident from the proposed inclusion of Ukraine in the European defense pact (Spalding, 2006).

Most of the European countries suffered a significant economic damage after the end of the cold war. This prompted the United States to provide financial aid to help rebuild the damaged European economy, hence the conception of the Marshall Plan. The plan sought to consolidate the unity of these affected states and hence avert the possible exploitation of the vulnerabilities by the superpower USSR. As a Doctrine of Containment strategy, the marshall plan helped in containing the Soviet’s influence from spilling over to the neighboring weak European states

The civil war in the Vietnam and Korea attracted the attention of the two superpowers at the time. Therefore, the U.S and the U.S.S.R took sides in the wars, leading to the split of the countries. For instance, in Korea, the U.S pushed its capitalistic idea through a military aid through an offer of military aid to South Korea as a containment strategy to USSR communist policies. This strategy partially succeeded in liberating the South Korea. However, the North Korea is still under a communistic regime. Containment strategy was successful in Vietnam though after lengthy periods of military involvement by the United States. The end of war signified the success of the capitalistic policy and containment of the highly influential communist policies (Nam, 1986).

The cold war era officially ended more than two decades ago. However, due to the observed success of the containment doctrine application, the U.S still utilize the containment strategy in most parts of the globe. A recent example is the rapid rise of China both politically and militarily. In this regard, the U.S foresees a military threat that the highly influential communist China may have across the region. As a result, the ongoing “pivot to Asia” constitutes some of the strategies of the doctrine of containment. This explains the ever rising military drills conducted by the United States alongside Asian allies such as Japan and South Korea. Additionally, there is an alarming increase of military confrontation on the Pacific Ocean between the Chinese forces and those of the U.S (Shapiro, 2007).

References

Nam, J.-H. (1986). America's commitment to South Korea: The first decade of the Nixon doctrine. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press.

Shapiro, I. (2007). Containment: Rebuilding a strategy against global terror. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Spalding, E. E. (2006). The first cold warrior: Harry Truman, containment, and the remaking of liberal internationalism. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.