ABSTRACT
One person, a frail and insecure vessel, created the strategy that defeated and annihilated the Soviet Union and established the United States as the one global superpower, the American empire. The strategy is expressed in the word "containment", as George Frost Kennan conceived it. The long telegram had resulted in Kennan's return to the United States in 1946 and his becoming head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department from April 1947 through 1949. The complex of postwar actions, now denned by the theory and action of containment, meant perforcing the creation and expansion of the American global empire. Unlike the British Empire, which had succeeded, it was based on power alone and not territory. Few, including the experts, fully appreciated the logic of it: international power required a balancing responsibility. The American experienced had argued this logic negatively; the United States earlier wreaked vast damage when it failed to exercise its full power.
