The Economist March 26th 2022 33
United StatesGreat-power politics
Ukraine and the lessons of the cold war
J
oe bidenentered the White House last
year styling himself on Franklin Roose-
velt. The better model today might be Har-
ry Truman. His words to Congress 75 years
ago this month—“It must be the policy of
the United States to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation
by armed minorities or by outside pres-
sures”—girded America for the cold war.
Those words have a new resonance as Uk-
raine, helped by the West, battles to resist
Russia’s month-old invasion.
As in the 1940s and 50s, the world is
separating into distinct blocs. The Eur-
asian giants, Russia and China, are again
making common cause. America is seek-
ing to counter them by mustering allies
around their periphery, from Europe to Ja-
pan. Truman’s America was engaged in a
fight against communism; Mr Biden sees a
global contest against autocracy. The cold-
war strategy of “containment” is being
studied for the current age.
This arouses dread, but also hope.
Dread, because of the return of war in Eu-
rope, renewed big-power confrontation
and the increased risk of nuclear conflict.
Hope, because Russia’s military incompe-
tence, Ukraine’s valour and the West’s new-
found unity raise confidence that the
American-led liberal order can prevail.
Writing in American Purpose, an online
magazine, Francis Fukuyama of Stanford
University, who in an earlier bout of opti-
mism coined the notion of the “end of his-
tory” about the demise of the Soviet Union,
goes so far as to predict that Ukraine will
inflict “outright defeat” on Russia and
make possible a “new birth of freedom”.
Mr Biden’s strategy will become clearer
in the coming days. On March 24th he was
due to take part in a trio of summits in
Brussels with the leaders of nato, theEuropean Union and the g7. The signs are
he will steel the allies for a long struggle.
“This war will not end easily or rapidly,”
said Jake Sullivan, his national security ad-
viser, on March 22nd. The West would
stand by Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
Another signal will be the president’s
request for more defence spending in the
coming financial year, expected to be sent
to Congress next week. A succession of for-
mal strategy documents—for national se-
curity, defence and nuclear posture—will
follow after hurried redrafting. For Robert
Gates, a former American defence secre-
tary, the war “has ended Americans’ 30-
year holiday from history”. Ahead lies a
two-front contest, against both Russia and
China. “A new American strategy must re-
cognise that we face a global struggle of in-
determinate duration against two great
powers that share authoritarianism at
home and hostility to the United States,” he
wrote in the Washington Post.
Strategists are reaching for the annals
of the cold war. Is Vladimir Putin’s inva-
sion akin to the Soviet Union’s blockade of
Berlin in 1948, the start of the Korean war in
1950 or the Cuban missile crisis of 1962?
Some are re-reading George Kennan, the
American diplomat whose “long telegram”
from Moscow in 1946 set the intellectual
foundation for containment. American
“unalterable counterforce”, Kennan argued
in a later essay, could hasten “either the
break-up or the gradual mellowing of Sovi-
et power”. In practice containment in-
volved more than the high-minded meansWASHINGTON, DC
Like Harry Truman after 1945, Joe Biden must strive to curb both Russia and
China without blowing up the world
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