Containment
Description
Limiting an opposing force or viewpoint within geographical, or social boundaries.
Context
Containment as a strategy can be used both to hold an opposing force within defined boundaries, or to hold it out from within defined boundaries. NATO's protection of Norway, Greece and Turkey in the early 1950s represented the containment of the former USSR within eastern Europe and Eurasia. China's Great Wall or Japan's 19th century policy toward foreigners represent the latter form of containment. It is particularly of interest where the opposing force can in fact be geographically or socially isolated in some way. Containment would be less effective, for example, against ideas than against a land-based infantry.
Implementation
Commonly employed as a military strategy and often in times of peace to ward off future conflict. The Siegfried Line and the Atlantic Wall are recent European examples. The WHO has used containment along with other strategies such as inoculation, sanitation and medical care to isolate and eventually eliminate some diseases. Defensive trade barriers are an economic use of this strategy, and ghettos are a social example.
Claim
If the integrity and dynamism of an opposing force relies on expansion to survive and remain vital, then preventing that expansion can aid in an eventual victory, especially if any "break out" beyond the boundary lines of containment can be met with strong and decisive force, and if containment can be complete, that is, complete encirclement and the formation of boundaries impervious to all forms of infiltration.
Counter-claim
Containment is basically a defensive strategy which in itself depends on a relatively thin defensive boundary and does not deal with the weakness or susceptibility to adverse influence behind this line.
At its worst containment can lead to complacency, ignorance of the opposing forces strategy, and unpreparedness.
As a solution to problems, it does not resolve the underlying issues but in fact can breed a stronger opposition within the bounds of containment and greater susceptibility to the opposition outside these barriers. In contemporary times, mass communications and transportation (as well as the technology of warfare) make geographical containment out-moded and ineffective.
SDG
