Home › Features › Essays › The Conduct of American Foreign Policy: The Revitalization of Containment

The Conduct of American Foreign Policy: The Revitalization of Containment

By Robert E. Osgood
America and the World 1981
Article Summary and Author Biography

The Reagan Administration is repeating the first beat of a familiar rhythm of America's international and political life. Each newly elected Administration of the alternative political party launches its foreign relations with themes that were developed during the national campaign in opposition to the policies of its predecessor. But then comes the down beat: unexpected domestic and international conditions contradict (or appear to contradict) the underlying premises of the "new" foreign policy. Then either the Administration abandons or modifies its themes (in substance, if not in rhetoric) or it takes uncontested credit for the transformation. This phenomenon began with the Eisenhower Administration. It has deep roots in the American political system and the American approach to the outside world.

Robert E. Osgood is currently the Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He was formerly Dean of SAIS and served as a member of the Senior Staff of the National Security Council in 1969-70. He is the author of Ideals and Self-Interest in America's Foreign Relations, Limited War, Limited War Revisited and other works.

Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

The Reagan Administration is repeating the first beat of a familiar rhythm of America's international and political life. Each newly elected Administration of the alternative political party launches its foreign relations with themes that were developed during the national campaign in opposition to the policies of its predecessor. But then comes the down beat: unexpected domestic and international conditions contradict (or appear to contradict) the underlying premises of the "new" foreign policy. Then either the Administration abandons or modifies its themes (in substance, if not in rhetoric) or it takes uncontested credit for the transformation. This phenomenon began with the Eisenhower Administration. It has deep roots in the American political system and the American approach to the outside world.

Beneath this familiar rhythm the continuities of American foreign policy are always greater than the political claims to innovation would have one believe. The greatest discontinuities spring from responses to unanticipated events, not from changes of Administration. Moreover, the rhythm is itself one of the most notable continuities. It corresponds to the oft-noted oscillations in America's world role between assertion and retrenchment, between the affirmation and restraint of national power. And in the postwar period it has responded to the onset and aftermath of crises and wars. As the nation revises its estimate of the Soviet threat to its foreign security interests upward and downward there is an alternation between repeated efforts to close the chronic gap between ever-expanding interests and the available power to support them, and efforts to seek relief from the ardors of containment.

This is a premium article

You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access.

Related

Essay, Special 1985
Superpower Balancing Acts
Jeremy R. Azrael and Stephen Sestanovich

We met, as we had to meet," President Reagan told Congress in November on his return from Geneva. A week later General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev said to the Supreme Soviet, "A dialogue of top leaders is always a moment of truth in relations between states." 1985 became the year of the summit, of a faster tempo and a softer tone in U.S.-Soviet relations. The President's invitation to meet, issued in March, had been his very first message to the new Soviet leader and reflected a widespread hope that the passing of the Kremlin's "old men" might permit East-West conciliation. Yet the leaders' more direct involvement and even their apparently amiable personal relationship could hardly resolve the contentious issues between the two sides. For this purpose, the relative strength of their bargaining positions remained decisive. In the course of the year, each side therefore sought to overcome those problems that in the past had weakened it in the superpower competition.

Read
Essay, Summer 1985
The Postwar Era: The Eagle and the Bear
James Schlesinger

The linkup of American and Soviet forces at Torgau on the Elbe in April 1945 may be taken as the event symbolizing a new era in international relations--one largely dominated by the central relationship between two great powers, later known as the superpowers. The meeting at Torgau meant the splitting of Germany, the preeminent European power for three-quarters of a century. Germany's division was to be both a fixture of the postwar era and, additionally, a continuing source of unease. Also, the event dramatically initiated what was to become die Wacht an der Elbe, an American protection against the power of the East of what was to become a democratic Germany--and behind Germany an abiding American commitment to the security of Western Europe. Despite the misjudgments in the immediate aftermath of the war, the lessons of two world wars had been insinuated into American foreign policy. Finally, in the way of symbolism, perhaps the brief exchange of fire between Soviet and American forces on the Elbe provided an early harbinger of the tensions that were ultimately to emerge.

Read
Essay, Winter 1984
Living With the Soviets
Paul H. Nitze

In 1955, just after the summit meeting between President Eisenhower, General Secretary Khrushchev and Prime Minister Bulganin in Geneva, Chip Bohlen, then our ambassador to the Soviet Union, invited my family and me to stay at the American ambassador's residence in Moscow. At that time the British ambassador in Moscow was Sir William Hayter. There was a story that Hayter, when asked what it was like to negotiate with the Russians, had said it was rather like dealing with a defective vending machine. You put in a coin and nothing comes out. There may be some sense in shaking it, you may get your coin back; but there is no point in talking to it.

Read