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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.
United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC 68, was a 66-page top secret National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It was one of the most important American policy statements of the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC 68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC 68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the rollback of global Communist expansion a high priority. NSC 68 rejected the alternative policies of friendly détente and containment of the Soviet Union.
The "X Article" is an article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", written by George F. Kennan and published under the pseudonym "X" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. The article widely introduced the term "containment" and advocated for its strategic use against the Soviet Union. The piece expanded on ideas expressed by Kennan in a confidential February 1946 telegram, formally identified by Kennan's State Department number, "511", but informally dubbed the "long telegram" for its size.
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The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made is a non-fiction book authored by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas. Published by Simon & Schuster in 1986, it describes the actions of a group of U.S. federal government officials and members of the East Coast foreign policy establishment. Starting in the immediate post-World War II period, the group developed the containment policy of dealing with the Communist bloc during the Cold War. They also helped to craft institutions and initiatives such as NATO, the World Bank, and the Marshall Plan. An updated edition of the book was released in 2012.
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Karen Erika Donfried is an American foreign policy expert who previously served as the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. The State Department announced in March 2023 that Donfried will be stepping down from her post at the end of the month. She also served as president of the German Marshall Fund from April 2014 to September 2021.
The Cold War from 1947 to 1948 is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the incapacitation of the Allied Control Council in 1948. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–91. It took place worldwide, but it had a partially different timing outside Europe. Some conflicts between the West and the USSR appeared earlier. In 1945–46 the US and UK strongly protested Soviet political takeover efforts in Eastern Europe and Iran, while the hunt for Soviet spies made the tensions more visible. However, historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–48 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the breakdown of cooperation in governing occupied Germany by the Allied Control Council. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term "Cold War" to describe the increasingly chilly relations between three World War II Allies: the United States and British Empire together with the Soviet Union.
References
- ↑ Toosi, Nahal (October 26, 2017). "Tillerson's power play". Politico.
- ↑ "About Us – Policy Planning Staff". US Department of State. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
- ↑ Soylent Communications (2016). "US State Department Policy Planning Staff".
