How is the foreign policy of détente related to the strategy of containment? Be sure to define and describe each term in your answer. What developments in the 1960s and 1970s led policy makers to shift from the original strategy of containment to détente?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers should identify containment as the primary foreign policy strategy of preventing the spread of communism into new regions and countries. Answers should also identify George Kennan as the architect of containment in 1946. Answers should describe détente as the easing of tensions between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China by way of trade and arms negotiations. Détente should be identified as a foreign policy strategy developed by Henry Kissinger under the Nixon administration. Answers should discuss how détente represents a “middle ground” of containing communism, similar to containment, and does not call for military intervention. Examples of developments include the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, the Cuban Missile Crisis, changes within each state (such as Vietnam syndrome in the United States), a recognition by policy makers of the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, and the increasing gap between the economy of the Soviet Union and other major powers.