If strategy is a calculated relationship between ends, ways, and means, then during the Cold War, American strategic ends — containment of the Soviet Union — remained unchanged.

Containment meant preventing Soviet expansion and military aggression, often through military deterrence. The strategy employed — be it the Truman Doctrine, New Look, Flexible Response, Détente, or the Reagan Doctrine — evolved with each decade, presidential administration, and economic situation in response to dynamic geopolitical condition. I

n a national strategy such as containment, means denote equipment, technology, and personnel, and money whereas ways include national plans, policy, and doctrine. In focusing on the evolution of ways, it becomes clear how containment strategy developed based upon prevailing economic conditions and geopolitical relations.

Origins

The basis for this successful long-term Cold War strategy emerged in a well-known 1946US State Department dispatch from Moscow, later called the “Long Telegram,” which proposed that the only way to defeat the Soviet Union was by containing its influence and spread.

The Long Telegram’s author, career State Department Foreign Service Officer George F. Kennan, also explained the need and efficacy of containment strategy to the public in a 1947 Foreign Affairs article entitled, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”

Writing under the pseudonym “Mr. X.,” he argued for “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Kennan believed that the economic and cultural power of the United States could defeat the Soviet Union; the Long Telegram and Mr. X article thus provided the theoretical justification for containment in tandem with the Marshall Plan for international economic development.

National Security Council Memorandum-68 (NSC-68) codified containment as a strategy in April 1950. Written by Kennan’s replacement and contemporary Paul Nitze, NSC-68 highlighted the gravity of the Communist threat while pressing for increased military spending. This spending was only made possible by an economy recovering from its 1949 recession.

NSC-68 served as the basis for the Truman Doctrine — which asserted America’s role in supporting “free peoples resisting attempted subjugation.” This document put Kennan’s ideas into a into a coherent national strategy by outlining the role that military deterrence and assistance to other nations had in containing the expansionist Soviet Union. Increased spending in a growing economy allowed for robust containment through strengthened military deterrence.

Eisenhower Administration

Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Kansas) campaigned on two significant interrelated promises: ending the Korean War and reducing government expenditures.

To cut the four billion dollars from the federal budget that he promised required reducing defense spending, which required ending the stagnant war in Korea and re-evaluating American strategy. Defense expenditures in 1953, the year he took office, reached their high watermark of the decade, totaling $43.8 billion, of which the Army enjoyed the highest budget of the four services.

By 1955 the Army’s portion was reduced to less than a quarter of the total defense budget while the Air Force and Navy battled for the top spot. Eisenhower articulated a national security strategy that avoided inclusive ground wars and placed a premium on atomic weapons. He believed in the power of technology, and more importantly, nuclear weapons to maintain stand-off from Soviet aggression, which the administration conceptualized in Massive Retaliation.

Responding to another recession in 1953, the Korean War, and Soviet atomic development, Eisenhower’s “New Look” sought to rein in spending by offering maximum containment at the lowest cost. Balancing the budget and economic growth was central to the administration in general but especially to their outlook on national security. Eisenhower was no economist, but he and his cabinet clung to the old belief that budget deficits were harmful to the country.

National Security Council Memorandum 149/2 (NSC 149/2) extolled the virtues of a robust American economy as crucial to the “long-term survival of the free world.” The administration further refined its strategy in NSC 162/2, which put forth the notion that the United States would “use its atomic capability and massive striking power” if attacked.

The Eisenhower administration accordingly predicated its idea of containment on “Massive Retaliation,” and in so doing made general nuclear war its only response. Massive Retaliation intended to compensate for numerical deficiencies and decreased spending by placing nuclear weapons at the forefront of national military means.

Eisenhower believed in the deterrent value of nuclear weapons, and that to avoid general nuclear war, it needed to become the only option, as the destructiveness of such a war should deter any rational actor from pursuing it. Introduced in 1954, and known colloquially as the New Look, Eisenhower’s defense policies sought to reduce overseas deployments, create a strategic reserve within a sustainable budget, all while fitting into his overall strategy of containing the Soviet Union through the threat of massive retaliation.

In short, the New Look military tried to replace people with technology and nuclear power. Despite its shortcomings, the New Look related its ways and means to its ends while reflecting the domestic economy and the geopolitical situation.

Kennedy Administration

The end of the 1950s witnessed increased Communist activity around the world — the Cuban Revolution, Sputnik, and most importantly, a stated Soviet interest in supporting Marxist revolutions throughout the world.

The changing geopolitical situation and growing U.S. economy encouraged many critics of the New Look, including two successive Army Chiefs of Staff, to pursue considerable changes to Eisenhower’s national defense strategy. Each cited concerns over the New Look’s unrealistic portrayal of future war — primarily its predication on annihilating civilian populations in order to save money while ignoring conventional Soviet capabilities and the realities of ground combat.

Taylor’s 1959 book, The Uncertain Trumpet, derided the New Look and proposed a new national strategy he called Flexible Response. Taylor proposed a menu of options, up to and including general nuclear war, that would enable flexibility in dealing with global crises. To do so, however, required a massive increase in defense spending — something only possible in the booming economy of the late 1950s.

In 1961, newly elected President John F. Kennedy Sr. (D-Massachusetts) advocated that containing Communist expansion meant supporting the independence of nations actively resisting, and therefore promoted an activist foreign policy.

Kennedy was so enamored by Taylor’s concept of Flexible Response that the President made the retired General his Military Representative to the President before recalling him to active duty as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. Taylor and Kennedy’s relationship represented an unusual change in civil-military norms — a far cry from the apolitical example of George C. Marshall.

Regardless, in Kennedy’s first message to Congress, he advocated a desire to deter all types of wars while disregarding the economic cost of such deterrence. In response to Khrushchev’s pledge to support Communist rebels around the world, the Kennedy administration emphasized unconventional warfare while assisting indigenous forces resisting Communist expansion throughout the world.

Nuclear threats remained valid, as evidenced by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but its de-escalation reinforced Kennedy’s reliance on the menu of options that Flexible Response provided. A booming economy and renewed focus on non-nuclear forces theoretically provided stronger deterrence. Nonetheless, the Kennedy administration changed the ways within the means in response to the situation.

Johnson Administration

After his assassination, and the ascension of Lyndon Baines Johnson (D-Texas) to the presidency in 1963, American strategy remained virtually unchanged.

The intent of deterring Soviet aggression by strengthening military capabilities through spending remained consistent. Later, as American involvement in Vietnam increased under the auspices of preventing communist expansion, the Johnson administration demonstrated a conviction that the United States possessed an unlimited amount of means.

As a result, the monumental Great Society program — the most extensive domestic welfare program the New Deal — suffered greatly. The idea that the country could afford both “guns” and “butter” was simply unrealistic as costs for the war in Vietnam grew.

Eventually, domestic programs suffered and the war in Vietnam thus became a devastating miscalculation both at home and abroad. To paraphrase John Lewis Gaddis, when the calculated relationship between ends and means that is strategy became overly focused on means without calculation, throwing the entire relationship off balance.

Nixon Administration

The 1970s, thanks in part to the Vietnam war, were characterized by “stagflation,” rising inflation and interest rates along with low economic growth to stagnate the national economy.

Communist revolutionary movements throughout the world had only served to exaggerate hopes in Moscow and fears in Washington engendering feelings of eternal conflict. In the national security sphere, increased defense spending on a hollowed military in the wake of the Vietnam war did little to prevent the shifting of the international balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union.

Because of these economic and geopolitical factors, President Richard M. Nixon (R-California) pursued a strategy of détente, or “relaxation,” in an attempt to ease tensions and bring the Soviet Union into the international order. The idea, according to Gaddis, was “to lower the risks of nuclear war and encourage a more predictable relationship among Cold War rivals.”

The Nixon administration sought to contain and deter without increasingmilitary expenditures. Détente, in essence, was supposed to “increase their stake in international stability and the status quo,” by bringing the Soviet Union back into the balance of power and global economy.

Détente and its counterpart, the Nixon doctrine, tried to project all aspects of American power within the original intent of NSC-68. Nixon his outlined thoughts in July 1969 when he declared that the United States would honor its treaties, provide a shield of nuclear power, and provide military and economic assistance as requested. Nixon believed capitalism and Communism could coexist, and détente might reduce tensions, military expenditures, and new nuclear weapons.

Nuclear arms control also became a key component of détente. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of 1972 (SALT I) limited the production of new ballistic missiles while also prohibiting the proliferation of anti-ballistic missile technology, which then reduced the benefit of launching a first strike.

Its successor, SALT II, banned new delivery vehicles while putting a cap on the total number of atomic weapons by type. Though never ratified by the U.S. congress, SALT II nevertheless helped stabilize the Cold War balance of power. Far from perfect, détente led to improved international relations throughout the 1970s and was an innovative response to a powerful enemy within the constraints of a “stagflation” economy.

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to assist a struggling pro-Soviet regime, thus invalidating and ending détente while increasing tensions with the United States. In response, President Jimmy Carter (D-Georgia) withdrew from the 1980 Summer Olympics set to be held in Moscow, effectively freezing relations.

Reagan Administration

President Ronald Reagan (R-California), elected on a strong anti-Communist campaign, wanted to “reverse Soviet expansionism by competing effectively on a sustained basis.”

This became the foundation for what became known as the Reagan Doctrine — which also included active support for anti-Communist movements around the world. The Reagan Doctrine pursued a strategy that emphasized conventional, non-nuclear innovation predicated on the procurement of expensive, technologically advanced equipment intended to offset Soviet quantitative advantages. Stripped to its core, Reagan wanted to outspend the Soviet Union.

After weathering an early economic recession, Reagan began a massive increase in defense spending. Unconvinced by previous administration’s belief in the deterrent value of nuclear weapons, Reagan sought “assured survival.”

New developments, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) met his criteria while bringing the Soviet Union into a new round of arms talks. The SDI was a far-fetched idea, but something the Soviet Union could not match. Expensive American defense programs reasserted American technological dominance and shifted the talks from limitation to reduction.

The perception of dominance, coupled with Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness) policies, hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Reagan’s administration, like those before him, pursued containment through a concept of containment through deterrence that changed as the economy and world situation allowed. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke apart, it seemed an inevitable albeit abrupt end to a four-decade-long struggle.

Conclusion

Throughout the Cold War, the United States continuously revised its strategy to contain the Soviet Union in response to fluctuating economic and geopolitical conditions.

Every iteration, while imperfect, met the unique challenges that each administration faced. When the domestic economy thrived, containment included increased spending such as seen in the Truman Doctrine, Flexible Response, and the Reagan Doctrine.

When the domestic economy recessed — decreasing available means — the various administrations found creative ways to achieve their ends through the New Look and Détente. Containment succeeded because it used a variety of ways in response to fluctuating means while providing a defined end-state — containment. In short, the strategy of containment worked because it was flexible.