Containment

American Cold War foreign policy against the spread of communism / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Containment?

Summarize this article for a 10 years old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period.

Stop_Communism_-_NARA_-_5730080.jpg
United States Information Service propaganda poster distributed in Asia depicting Juan dela Cruz ready to defend the Philippines from the threat of communism

As a component of the Cold War, this policy caused a response from the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Containment represented a middle-ground position between détente (relaxation of relations) and rollback (actively replacing a regime). The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan during the post-World War II term of U.S. President Harry S. Truman. As a description of U.S. foreign policy, the word originated in a report Kennan submitted to US Defense Secretary James Forrestal in 1947, which was later used in a Foreign Affairs article.[1]