Hanrieders USA Politics "Double Containment" thesis and its Expressions in USA Foreign Policy in 1949-1989

After the Second World War Germany was divided both territorially and politically between the powers of occupation and one of the main such powers was USA, which had a great role in the postwar and Cold war era development of Germany and whole Europe. Quite long part of postwar era the United States was unchallengeable Western superpower; Washington’s political and strategic guidelines were generally followed by the Western alliance. The United States had created the military diction of the postwar world.1
The development of Germany after the Second World War can be divided in three main phases- first, from 1949 to late 1950s, which can be characterized as a contradictions between West German foreign policy goals in the West and the East; second, from late 1950s to the late 1960s, where the big influence on German policies had the nuclear parity of the Soviet Union with United States; and third phase, the 1970s and 1980s, where the contradictions and opportunities again affected German foreign policy goals and facilities.2 In all these phases United States led very influential role not only in German dimension, but in European.
Analyzing the first phase, it is easily feasible to find struggles between United States and the Soviet Union, which led to the situation, where divided Germany had a role being a boundary between American and Soviet spheres of influence in European postwar political, economic and military-strategic order.
In this situation United States had unusual and very significant policy- “policy of double containment: the containment of the Soviet Union at arm’s length and of West Germany with an embrace”. …