ABSTRACT
In a few months between the end of 1947 and the middle of 1948 the ever-increasing tensions between the West and the Soviet Union broke out into flagrant confrontation. Surrogate conflicts for war erupted in Greece, in Italy, France and Germany. The ‘Cold War’ was authoritatively proclaimed by the journalist Walter Lippmann in July 1947 and defined by the French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron as ‘paix impossible, guerre improbable’. In the very same number of Foreign Affairs which Fish Armstrong had used to paint his fresco of European misery, George Kennan launched the concept of ‘containment’ on its fateful progress. It meant, he said: ‘the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points … wher[ever] they [the Soviets] show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world’. 1
