ABSTRACT
An examination of the current state of limited-war strategy logically ends with speculation about the future of the foreign policy from which the strategy was derived. The success of containment, however, has not slowed the steady growth of Soviet military power or the projection of Soviet power and influence to weak and troubled areas of the Third World. In the more complicated structure of international relations , the methods of containment have naturally become more diversified and harder to coordinate in terms of an overarching strategic concept. The biggest problem for the United States is not how to give containment material support or how to reconcile containment with the larger framework of US policy, but when to implement containment with force. The US concept of security has always been active, outward-reaching, and somewhat missionary, even though oriented toward self-defense rather than aggrandizement.
