The Reagan Strategy of Containment

Abstract

Ronald Reagan came into the Oval Office on a platform that rejected the previous three administrations' basic foreign policies. His criticisms of Jimmy Carter were unsurprising. Every president distances himself from his predecessor, especially one from the opposite party. But Reagan condemned just as unequivocally the detente policies that had been fashioned by his fellow Republicans, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This wholesale rejectionism led to speculation that President Reagan would move outside the evolved framework of postwar American foreign policy and adopt a radically different strategy of containment than had his predecessors. Some suggested that he might abandon containment altogether and move closer to James Burnham's prescription to rollback the Soviet Union. 1 Verdicts at the end of the Reagan years were mixed; some commentators felt vindicated in their fears of confrontation, while others saw Reagan's foreign policy as radical only in its rhetoric.2