ABSTRACT
The dominant goal of U.S. foreign policy from the late 1940s to the end of the Cold War was to contain Soviet power within the geographical boundaries established at the end of World War II. In an absolute sense, the policy of containment failed. Soviet power extended into Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean Sea, and Central America. Soviet naval power girded the major bodies of water on the globe. In a more limited sense, however, containment succeeded: the map of Europe was not altered in nearly forty-five years, nor was, in geopolitical terms, the map of Central Asia.
