The “containment” policy was created by the Truman’s administration; it had been formulated in 1947 by George Kennan. It meant blocking the expansion of the East but not attempting to roll back its borders, which was what the USA tried later on. Kennan believed therefore that containment would be sufficient because he argued that time was on the side of the West, and that the USSR would one day self-destruct and collapse. Many examples of the policy of Containment can be observed during the 1940’s, for instance the Truman Doctrine or the Marshall Plan. This meant that the Americans were providing financial and military assistance to the countries: this promised an efficient defense against communist countries and its spread. The United States actually feared the domino theory which consists in: “If you knock over the first domino in a line the rest will fall down too”. The USA thought this would happen if one country was knocked over by the Communist threat. Soon all nearby countries would turn Communist as well. Therefore, USA wanted to contain communism and felt that South Asia was dangerously drifting towards this ideology. Was the policy of containment in Southeast Asia successful between 1950 and 1975?

First of all, the Korean War is the first event to consider in order to assess the policy of containment in Southeast Asia. Truman realized that the USA was competing with the USSR for the role of world leader. Thus, the origins of this war lay in the fact that Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910. After the Second World War, Korea was divided in to two along the 38th parallel. The north was communist and the south was non-communist and backed by the USA. However, for the latter the division was not going to be permanent and as the UN they wanted free elections for the whole country. The issue was not the one they expected and South Korea was set up with Syngman Rhee as president and the following month the USSR created North Korea under the