Containment in the Asia-Pacific
The doctrine of containment was fashioned primarily with the Soviet Union and Soviet communism in mind. Its origins were in Europe and indeed it was in Europe where its principlea were best applied and where its ultimate purpose of bringing about the collapse of the communist system was eventually achieved. But since containment was expressed in moral and universal terms it evoked a Manichean view of a world divided between two opposing systems, which soon became the reality in Europe, where a very real 'iron curtain' shaply demarcated borders separating the two camps
Being a universal doctrine, containment was extended from Europe to the Asia-Pacific, but with very different results. Being more diverse, the Asia-Pacific could not be divided by a tangible iron curtain that separated two tightly bound sets of military alliance systems buttressed by competing ideologies, socio-economic and political systems. Yet it was in Asia that the United States fought the two major wars of containment which ended by almost undermining the cohesion of American society. It was in Asia that the United States had to balance some of the contradictions of containment,