New Kids on the Bloc: Revisiting Kennan's Containment in a Pre-Emptive World. (Perspectives‪.‬

The publication of the US National Security Strategy in September 2002 and the consequent embrace by US President George Bush's administration of its most divisive aspect, pre-emption, has instigated a fundamental shift in tactical thinking, force deployment, and resource mobilization for the United States. Yet the most sweeping aspect of the document is its dismissal of containment as the backbone of US security thinking. First presented in George Kennan's 1947 Foreign Affairs article "Long Telegram," known as the "X Article," containment called for the United States "to hold the line" and firmly resist Soviet and Communist expansionism by providing a counterpoint to their "shifting geographical and political maneuvers." The success of this policy during the Cold War is widely recognized, but for the Bush administration, the new war, the "war on terror," makes such an apparently placid approach anachronistic. Despite the different contours of the Cold War and the war on terror, the new strategy fails to persuasively identify the differences between the two threats that mandate a change in defensive posture. In fact, using Kennan's rubric, a thorough analysis of Islamic Fundamentalism, or Jihadism, the ideological competitor to Western Liberalism in this conflict, reveals that 1940s Communism and today's ideology share central characteristics. Further, the aim of US engagement remains: regime change is important; real victory is derived via ideological change.