What these late events in Laos show, once more, is the impossibility of a policy of containment. Not containment’s mere undesirability or inferiority relative to other conceivable policies; but quite literally its impossibility. The policy of containment has two integral elements: positively, to halt the advance of the Communist enterprise; negatively, to renounce offensive operations, of whatever sort, inside the enemy sphere. It is this combination that cannot, repeat cannot, be carried out in practice.
It isn’t a question of what party is in power or what particular individual happens to be President. Containment has been the foreign policy of the United States government throughout the postwar period, and has failed, with nonpartisan inevitability. Under Truman’s containment, Communism took east Europe and mainland China. Under Eisenhower’s containment, it was granted North Korea, took North Vietnam and Tibet, entered the Middle East, got footholds in Africa and seized a beachhead in the Caribbean. Under Kennedy’s containment, Laos’ departure from the Western camp (at least as far as neutralism) has already been conceded; the Communists have established a “Yenan government” in Congo’s Oriental Province; Brazil has broken the solid South American diplomatic front.
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