In 1947, George F Keenan, an American Foreign Service officer, formulated the policy of ‘containment’. The continuity that this policy represented may be appreciated by its longevity. It was the foundation of US strategy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the keystone of their foreign policy. It was toe-to-toe counter-force against the Soviet’s expansive strategies and the threat they posed towards the West. It is an awkward strategic irony that Keenan’s words should find an improbable echo 84 years later, in 2021, at the G7 and NATO summit declarations. The difference is that now it is China’s territorial ... (full story)