Abstract

Irony of Containment. A Policy Boomerangs

One of the most neglected, yet illuminating, aspects of the history of the cold war is the recent decline in the United States of British Statesman Winston Churchill's prestige as a strategist of foreign affairs. His coincident retirement from active politics has little causative relationship with this eclipse of his influence. Churchill was making a radically different point, of course. He was saying. in short, that the policies of containment and liberation have worked, but for reasons and by a logic exactly the opposite of those advanced by their originator and supporters. It means that a narrow and militant anti-Soviet policy works to increase the power influence and prestige of the Soviet Union throughout the world.