Final answer:
The Long Telegram was a pivotal document sent by US diplomat George Kennan in 1946, outlining the need for a containment policy towards the Soviet Union due to its expansionist aims. This approach became the cornerstone of US foreign policy during the Cold War.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Long Telegram and Its Impact on Cold War Politics
In February 1946, George Kennan, the US embassy's chargé d'affaires in Moscow, sent a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet Union's foreign policy and internal structure to the State Department. This dispatch would come to be known as the Long Telegram and it played a crucial role in shaping US foreign policy. Kennan's assessment painted the Soviet Union as a paranoid totalitarian regime that could not coexist peacefully with capitalist countries.
He argued that the Soviet Union was committed to the destruction of its rivals and expansion of its influence, thereby necessitating a containment strategy from the United States. The policy of containment sought to control Soviet expansion by limiting their influence to current borders with the belief that communism would eventually collapse under its own weight. The Long Telegram would influence American foreign policy and be echoed in subsequent policies like NSC-68 and the domino theory.
The Long Telegram became the foundational text for the Cold War strategy of containment, which defined US and Soviet relations for decades, and it was directly cited as the intellectual backdrop for the establishment of the strategy to restrict Soviet influence globally.