Much foreign policy language talks about “containing” some geopolitical threat, be it China, Iran, Militant Islamism, Russia, etc. When faced with a threat or rivalry that cannot be defeated or snuffed out quickly but cannot be accepted, policy makers look to contain that threat.
The term is a legacy of the Cold War, in which we followed a specific strategy, neither to try to “roll back” nor acquiesce in Soviet expansionary moves. Not only did we win that contest; the adversary collapsed, much as hypothesized by George Kennan. ,
But the successful containment of the USSR followed from specific analysis of Soviet conduct. Furthermore, the Soviets represented a new ideology, with an expansionary doctrine that threatened most existing regimes. They were at once radical and repressive enough to offend many populations. The image of containment resembles that of quarantine, implying a threat that is an unnatural, malevolent invasive thing, from which the normal world needs protection.
If American strategic thought reverts to containing rivals and threats as a habit, before specific analysis of a given threat and against a growing number of them, we fall into a strategic trap. Reacting to a range of threats, we lack the focus that allowed us to concert our efforts against the Soviets. So, first, we face a question of resources, i.e. do we need multiple systems of policy, weaponry, influence etc. to contain them all? Second, without clear focus, we confront a question of purpose – can we identify what we are defending at heart and why, or are we out to suppress any rival?
Finally, containment is a defensive, reactive posture. Against the Soviets, we held the position of defender of “normal” against the upstart, of a healthy body against a germ. The modern Western nations and the traditional societies in what we now call the Third World shared norms of conduct and ideology, which afforded us this narrative high ground. It was easier for us to assemble allies and friends from that world. than for the Soviets to conquer it. They lacked savvy, resources, and a sufficiently convincing ideology to overthrow the normal world.
If we aim to contain multiple rivals, our narrative becomes, with each new narrative we seek to contain, more and more isolated, defender against every foreign narrative, from anyone who has a different world view. If we see a common danger they all pose – autocracy, or corruption or socialism, as a few candidates – we need to show, first, that our commitment in fact opposes that particular danger, and, second, how its adherents form an identifiable adversary.
Most of the regimes we worry over, whether China’s, Islamists, or clan-based rulers, are generally more self-interested than revolutionary, sharing few common interests except of convenience. Soviet Communism threatened that type of regime, and many traditions that many peoples lived by, so that they would accept our defense from self-professed revolutionaries. Now that third world sees America and the West propagating new, disruptive, ideas and trends. Our influence often now comes across as disruptive. Environmentalism and trade sanctions over a range of concerns impede poor nations’ material development. Concerns of sexual equality somehow seem to come with lax sexual morality and other disruptive cultural novelties. Human rights, industrial subsidies, money laundering, and a host of other concerns seem to arise, drawing vilification and sanctions, without consistent rhyme or reason. Containing too many movements that arise from the bulk of the world’s population risks taking a posture of keeping that majority down.
The fact is that most societies are still defined by blood, clan, soil, church or tongue. Most economies are not affluent and most lives are less secure, compared to the modern West. America is defined by an idea, and a disruptive one at that, that individuals have unalienable rights and that governments exist to secure those rights. Our nationality directly contravenes the long history of rights as privileges granted by power, and government as natural authority over peoples. In this light, America is the disruptive influence in the world.
We cannot contain the many influences in the world that counter – or resist – our revolutionary development. Nor can we sit inside our own borders, living as a big modern anomaly in a traditional world – we hold that all personas are endowed with rights, not that we have somehow earned them where others haven’t. Such a founding identity requires proof that all persons will want, and benefit when the unalienable rights are respected.
Rather than contain the things that scare us in our affluent lifestyle, we need to make our free society attractive, avoid acting as a nuisance to others – and ensure that we exhibit the positive value of our commitment to rights. We need to protect strong systems of rights, self-government, rule of law, and free pursuit of happiness; we need to nurture the conditions for their growth where people have planted the seeds, and we need to make this way of life attractive, not mystifying and disruptive. We need, first of all, to recognize our overarching interest in our founding ethos, rather than act as though we are defending an imaginary consensus in the measures we devise from our developed condition.
Our mission, in short, cannot be to contain anything, but to validate our own revolutionary ethos. There will be true threats, not all fully intentional but threats nonetheless – China in particular has tangible heft and a sense of its own ethos that could undermine ours. But we need to outcompete them, to show overall that a narrative of personal rights is better for people and temporally viable. We need to protect free societies where they hold, nurture the development of societies that have started in that path, and conduct ourselves in a manner that shows the promise of freedom. No movement is completely clean cut, but if we commit to our own founding, our problems and messiness will show up as rough edges rather than essence. How we effect this new stance is a subject for extended reflection. But a reflex of containment shows us disapproving of and fearing what others do. We should instead be exhibiting the virtues of our ethos, that old regimes might worry about but liberate people to live as they choose..
Common Conviction 