Posted by Bob's World

Dealing with" and "containing" as a strategy for "dealing with" are two very different things. Certainly we were thinking about how to deal with a rising Japan then, and certainly we need to think about how to deal with a rising China in a post Cold War World now. No arguments.

My point is simply that your assessemnt of the history of Cold War containment runs counter to every serious coverage of the topic that I have ever read (and I have read several); and that our current efforts for the "pivot" build upon a family of plans, programs, postures and policies that were originally put in place to contain the "Sino" aspect of the Soviet-Sino pact. I think we should start fresh with a concept designed for the world we live in today, rather than building upon the remains of one that is long past.
Bob I think we are coming closer to general agreement. My point was our containment policy was formed before China fell to the communists, in fact the whole of issue of "allowing" China to fall to the communists led to extreme political views within our system and created an environment where political leaders were forced to take a much tougher stand against communist insurgencies even in locations where it didn't make sense because you didn't want your party to be blamed for another failure. Not unlike some of the unreasonable rhetoric associated with our former GWOT.

Second, the Soviet-Sino pact was relatively short lived (no more than two decades), and since the early 70s we formed some sort of relationship with China to keep them out of USSR's sphere of influence. We made deals with the devil back then quite frequently as you know.

Third, I still argue, but remain open to be convinced otherwise, so really I'm arguing to provoke counter-arguments, that our force posture in the Asia-Pacific was "mostly" directed at the Soviets. I found several documents from that era that focused on the Soviet threat in Asia (especially their Navy), very little that focused on China. If you have official historical policy documents, or strategy documents that state otherwise please post them. I'm eager to learn.