Containment 2.0

George F Kennan (Wilson Center)

In July, 1947, Foreign Affairs published “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” by "X," the pseudonym for George F. Kennan, who was stationed in Moscow by the State Department from 1944 to 1946. The article became the basis for Soviet "containment," the U.S. policy throughout the Cold War:

It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time. To the extent that such an impression can be created and maintained, the aims of Russian Communism must appear sterile and quixotic, the hopes and enthusiasm of Moscow’s supporters must wane...

the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.

Containment was the guiding philosophy behind: 1) the Marshall Plan (1948-1951); 2) the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949; 3) the Korean War (1950-1953); and 4) the Vietnam War (1955-1975), with the U.S. taking the lead role from the French in 1964-1965.

Events that seemed to justify containment were 1) the Soviet atomic bomb (1949); 2) the creation of the People's Republic of China (1949); 3) the growth of communism in Latin America, of which the revolution in Cuba and the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 were the most important historically.

The point of the above is not to rehash the history of the Cold War, but to point out that the Trump Administration's seemingly endless foreign policy disputes over tariffs, Ukraine, energy, technology transfers, etc, may be clearing the decks for a Cold War 2.0 with China under Containment 2.0. [bold added]

Soon after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, Xi Jinping asked his aides to urgently analyze the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

His concern, according to people who consult with senior Chinese officials, was that as President Trump gears up for a showdown with Beijing, China could get isolated like Moscow during that era.

He’s not wrong to worry. Even though Trump may be the one who currently looks isolated on the world stage—picking trade fights with erstwhile allies like Mexico and Canada, alarming Europe over his handling of the war in Ukraine and vowing to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal—the truth is that China doesn’t hold a strong hand.

With a domestic economy in crisis, Xi is playing defense, hoping to salvage as much as possible of a global trade system that helped pull his country out of poverty. Across the Pacific, Trump is intent on rewiring that very trading system, which he and his advisers see as having benefited the rest of the world—and China most of all—at the U.S.’s expense.

It isn’t just trade. The competing agendas of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are poised to lead to precisely what China is trying to avoid: a superpower clash not seen since the Cold War, an all-encompassing rivalry over economic, technological and overall geopolitical supremacy.

Seen in that light, President Trump is willing to take the hit for being called Putin's stooge in the matter of Ukraine. The U.S. cannot afford to have Russia and China allied against it in a contemporary version of Monolithic Communism, now regarded, to be sure, as over-exaggeration by historians decades later.

His critics say that he is crazy, stupid, impulsive, and narcissistic. Perhaps the question should be: is Donald Trump that smart?