By Paul Weiser
As this is written, it is Memorial Day, 2008. This is an appropriate moment to ponder what was lost as well as what was gained in America's efforts to secure our liberty since the end of the Second World War - specifically, as it relates to the key strategies of containment and deterrence.
Liberty's enemy, from 1945 to the late 1980s, was the Communist enterprise with headquarters in the Soviet Union and branch offices elsewhere. Containment - a ring of anti-Communist alliances - hemmed in this enemy while deterrence kept it from breaking out by force. In the end - exactly as George Kennan had proposed and Ronald Reagan disposed - the Communist enterprise collapsed under its internal contradictions.
The success of deterrence as an overall strategy has led America to try and apply it to every opposing force from Chinese growing pains to Islamist retro-chauvinism to North Korean aggression-from-hunger. Like all militaries, we try to re-fight the last war (if, as in this case, we won). The only thing wrong with this comfortable recycling is that our enemies are neither fools nor asleep.
Yes, the Soviets lost to deterrence - because when the endgame was unexpectedly reached, the corner into which they'd been painted was neither fatal to them personally nor escapable. But there are no secrets about this: the Chinese, the North Koreans and the Islamists now know the checkmate that awaits after enough years of containment and deterrence. To evade it, they will lash out in desperation rather than peacefully resign and retire. Deterrence is a masterpiece, but like the blitzkrieg it only works once.
Those who died creating containment and maintaining deterrence in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere did not die in vain, for the fight availed. But those who expect it to work again forget that even villains remember.
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