Containment policy originates from a foreign policy strategy pursued by the United States during the post World War era introduced by George F. Kennan. Kennan had been a diplomat and a US State Department advisor who worked on Soviet affairs. He introduced the concept of containment of expansion of the Soviet empire through a containment policy. The strategy was first implemented by Truman in 1947 and later on altered and adopted by other US administrations. The essence of the containment policy is to achieve three goals: "the restoration of the balance of power in Europe, the curtailment of Soviet power projection, and the modification of the Soviet conception of international relations.
[...] The examples and evidence provided by the author have been credible and provide a great support to his theoretical framework yet they evidently proved inadequate to understand why the Reagan felt the need to use different approaches for the same containment philosophy. Similarly, it does not help one to understand the efficacy of the Reagan Doctrine after the fall of the Soviet Union. Consequently, one assumes that Zakaria's interpretation of the containment strategy had been limited and bias as it only demonstrate the flaws in the Reagan's administration and does not address the external influences that made [...]
[...] Reagan's strategy adopted the asymmetrical - that is aggressive - method of defending interests, finding preferred means, places and times to respond; but it did not reduce any of its interests." Thus there had been little difference among the strategies adopted through the containment policy. Zakaria is of the opinion that the labeling and promotion of Reagan's containment strategy as the Reagan Doctrine had been superfluous. According to him the label had been unjustified as Reagan did not initiate anything new. [...]
[...] He hypothesize that the containment strategy adopted by the Reagan administration sadly did not make trade-offs between costs and risks. Instead it involved high costs and risks in returns which posed economic threats to the country. In the following analysis the researcher will analyze the issues surrounding Zakaria's analysis of the Reagan's containment strategy and explain how effective it had been. The researcher will also analyze how Zakaria proved his thesis through theoretical and pragmatic evidence. Furthermore the researcher will also analyze the potential problems and weaknesses inherent in Zakaria's propositions and analysis. [...]
[...] Zakaria uses this framework to analyze Reagan's motive of adopting the containment strategy and its success in achieving the purpose of formulating alliances with far fetched countries around the world in this age of anarchical international environment. In his analysis Zakaria hypothesize that the Reagan administration had not been interested in pursuing a different foreign policy yet had been compelled to formulate one to address the disappointment and rejection of his predecessors. For this reason, Reagan and his administration introduced a differentiated strategy albeit following the same path of containment. [...]
[...] However, at the same time at the international level Reagan changed his attitude and adopted a threatening and disincentive approach to deal with communism. Treaties were formed to restrain nuclear force and to forestall Soviet invasion into neighboring territories. The confrontational approach according to Zakaria's view had been the turning point in Reagan's administration which enabled the President to gain confidence from world leaders and the nation alike. From this point Zakaria used the asymmetric vs. symmetric approach to analyze the President's strategies. [...]
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