Was the Containment Doctrine suggested by George F. Kennan accurate in its assessment of the USSR?
Containment was coined by George Kennan, one of our few Russian experts and serves as an ambassador to Russia. He looks at the problem with the Soviet Union and writes the Long Telegram and said the soviets will only understand force, but we don’t have to go to war and we should focus on containing them. He stated that we have a vital and peripheral areas and that we just have to keep them from spreading to our vital areas of interest (Western and Eastern Hemisphere and Japan). In order to contain the Soviet Union, we needed military alliances, military preparedness and he recommends foreign aid.