CONTAINMENT: 40 Years Later : The Cold War

Walter Lippmann

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1987

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Summary:  Mr. X?s article is . . . not only an analytical interpretation of the sources of Soviet conduct. It is also a document of primary importance on the sources of INTRODUCTION: American foreign policy?of at least that part of it which is known as the Truman Doctrine.

Editor’s Note. This article is excerpted from a series of articles that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1947; the full series was republished by Harper & Brothers under the title, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy. Copyright © 1947 by Walter Lippmann; used with permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Mr. X’s article is . . . not only an analytical interpretation of the sources of Soviet conduct. It is also a document of primary importance on the sources of American foreign policy—of at least that part of it which is known as the Truman Doctrine.

As such I am venturing to examine it critically in this essay. My criticism, I hasten to say at once, does not arise from any belief or hope that our conflict with the Soviet government is imaginary or that it can be avoided, or ignored, or easily disposed of. I agree entirely with Mr. X that the Soviet pressure cannot "be charmed or talked out of existence." I agree entirely that the Soviet power will expand unless it is prevented from expanding because it is confronted with power, primarily American power, that it must respect. But I believe, and shall argue, that the strategical conception and plan which Mr. X recommends is fundamentally unsound, and that it cannot be made to work, and that the attempt to make it work will cause us to squander our substance and our prestige.

II

We must begin with the disturbing fact, which anyone who will reread the article can verify for himself, that Mr. X’s conclusions depend upon the optimistic prediction that the "Soviet power . . . bears within itself the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced"; that if "anything were ever to occur to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a political instrument, Soviet Russia might be changed overnight (sic) from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies"; and "that Soviet society may well (sic) contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential."

Of this optimistic prediction Mr. X himself says that it "cannot be proved. And it cannot be disproved." Nevertheless, he concludes that the United States should construct its policy on the assumption that the Soviet power is inherently weak and impermanent, and that this unproved assumption warrants our entering "with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and a stable world."

I do not find much ground for reasonable confidence in a policy which can be successful only if the most optimistic prediction should prove to be true. Surely a sound policy must be addressed to the worst and hardest that may be judged to be probable, and not to the best and easiest that may ...

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