In 1947, under President Truman, George F. Kennan formulated the “containment” policy of preventing any expansion of the Soviet Union or its influence. It became “the basic United States strategy for fighting the cold war … with the Soviet Union until 1989.” Truman served until early 1953. But containment remained US policy until 1989. That meant, in addition to Truman, it was the policy of Presidents Eisenhower (from 1953-61), Kennedy (from 1961-63), Johnson (from 1963-69), Nixon (from 1969-74), Ford (from 1974-77), Carter (from 1977-81), and Reagan (from 1981-89). In all, containment was the consistent policy of the U.S. though eight presidents across forty-two years. We can argue about some of the specific decisions. But American policy was consistent. It meant that our allies could rely on the United States without fearing that they would have a limb sawed off under them, and it also meant that those who feared America could not simply wait out a particularly unfriendly administration. Republicans like to claim that Reagan won the Cold War but Democrats could claim that honor for Truman as could any of the eight presidents of both parties whose teamwork was necessary to make containment work.
By contrast, American policy toward Iran has never been consistent, shifting from sanctions under Bush, to a treaty under Obama that included extensive surveillance and a promise of eventual relief, back to sanctions under Trump and another double reversal under Biden and Trump again. The result was that negotiations became impossible because, whatever we said about the untrustworthiness of Iran, so, quite clearly, were we.
Our policy toward Palestine has been consistently hypocritical – talking about a two-state solution while funding Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians out. That made American talk of a two-state solution meaningless except for the brief period when President Carter negotiated the Camp David Accords.
At least that was bipartisan hypocrisy and opened a path for respectful diplomacy. Trump’s invitation in his first term for Israel to move its capital to Jerusalem inflamed the Muslim world and led Israel to think they could get away with anything. Trump’s current shift to using the conflict to build up his family business by proposing to build private resorts in that area undermined everyone’s policy, pulls the US more deeply into the conflict, aggravates the ethnic cleansing of the region, likely reignites terrorist targeting of the US and certainly doesn’t contribute to peace in the Middle East or for our own country. It is worth remembering that the Muslim and Christian worlds have been at war for a millenium, nearly a thousand years. American refusal to work with Iran left it without friends in a Sunni Muslim world and drove them to use hostility toward Israel as their regional calling card. Some presidents understood that. Others don’t think they need to know.
We talk a great deal about the benefit of bipartisanship. Normally we just mean something more middle-of-the-road, but a policy that both parties and presidents of both parties can buy into creates a much greater chance of ultimate success.
An America that lurches back and forth – an America at war with itself, in which presidents don’t believe they need to learn anything from each other – is an America that cannot accomplish anything significant at home or abroad.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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