The Lessons of Containment.

• Author: Brands, Hal

In 1947, Walter Lippmann wrote a small book called The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy. Based on a series of newspaper columns, it was hardly an endorsement of American strategy in the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Lippmann, rather, wrote his volume in response to George Kennan's "X Article," published in Foreign Affairs earlier that year, in which Kennan outlined the concept of containment. Lippmann, at the time perhaps America's most prominent pundit, issued a blistering critique of that concept, calling it a "strategic monstrosity" that would fail at an exorbitant price. Containment, he wrote, "cannot be made to work" and "the attempt to make it work will cause us to squander our substance and our prestige." One of the first prophets of American defeat in the Cold War was the man who gave that conflict its name.

Today, Kennan's essay is part of the pantheon of great American papers of state, even though Kennan himself quickly lost faith in his own prescriptions. Lippmann's rejoinder has been mostly forgotten, except by historians. Yet Lippmann's critique is worth revisiting, as Washington once again embarks on a contest with an authoritarian competitor.

The fact that America's most famous columnist trained his fire on what would become America's most famous strategy reminds us that containment didn't always look as impressive as it came to appear in hindsight. It illustrates many of the undeniable dangers and tragedies that accompany global rivalry. Not least, understanding what Lippmann ultimately got wrong about America's prospects in the Cold War illuminates the factors that made the United States such an effective competitor against the Soviet Union--as well as key attributes of good strategy in any long-term rivalry. Lippmann was right that the Cold War would expose America to great evils. He was wrong to think that America could not, or should not, accept them as the price of avoiding even greater ones.

The Cold War was a book written to refute an essay. In July 1947, Kennan--then head of the State Department's policy planning staff and one of America's top Soviet hands--published an anonymous article in Foreign Affairs. The article explained that Washington could not expect cooperation from the Soviet Union because the combination of Russian history and Communist ideology made the Kremlin unappeasably hostile to the capitalist world. The Soviets were not, however, bent on war or a climactic showdown. Joseph Stalin realized that America possessed superior overall power, Kennan wrote; he would back down when met with firm resistance. And while the Soviet Union looked formidable, its power was inherently fragile because of the absurdities of its command economy, the exhaustion of its population, and the inherent instabilities associated with totalitarian rule.

The best course for the United States, then, was a policy of "containment." By consistently denying Moscow the fruits of expansion, America could shatter the Kremlin's faith that communism would eventually overtake capitalism and intensify the internal strains on the Soviet system itself. If America held the line for ten to fifteen years, Kennan predicted, it might win a decisive strategic victory by causing the "break-up or gradual mellowing of Soviet power." Containment could eventually bring about the transformation of the Soviet regime.

Kennan's anonymity didn't last long after his article was published. And his arguments quickly came in for challenge, most prominently from Lippmann. Lippmann was no isolationist: he had made the case, during World War II, for a deeply engaged American role in global affairs. He agreed with Kennan that there was little hope "that our conflict with the Soviet government is imaginary or that it can be avoided, or ignored, or easily disposed of." Yet he believed that the "X Article" offered a dangerous prescription for a geopolitical malady.

For one thing, Lippmann argued that Kennan misjudged the nature of the Cold War. Kennan's article stressed the ideological roots of the antagonism: Communist dogma led the Soviet regime to expect the unalterable hostility and eventual collapse of the capitalist world. Lippmann, however, saw the conflict in geopolitical terms. Stalin was primarily a Russian imperialist, he argued; the basic problem was that World War II had ended with the Red Army occupying positions deep in Europe. It was to this challenge, "and not to ideologies, elections, forms of government... that a correctly conceived and soundly planned policy should be directed." If the United States instead embarked on an ideological crusade, he warned, it risked closing off any potential settlement with the Soviets--and taking on the impossible task of making "Jeffersonian Democrats out of the peasants of eastern Europe, the tribal chieftains, the feudal lords, the pashas, and the warlords of the Middle East and Asia."

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