Question 4: “NSC 68 was written by Paul Nitze in the spring of 1950 and implemented during the year. How does the definition of containment policy in NSC 68 compare to George Kennan's original ideas? How does NSC 68 show continuity with previous policy and what is new?I. BACKGROUND “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, 1947, explains the difficulty of summarizing Soviet ideology. For over 50 years, the Soviet concept kept the Russian nations mesmerized, disaffected, unhappy and dispirited, confined within a very limited Tsarist political order. Hence the rebels' support for a bloody revolution, as a means of “social improvement” (Kennan, 567). Bolshevism was conceptualized as “ideological and moral, not geopolitical or strategic.” Hoover states that… “five or six great social philosophies were struggling for ascendancy” (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 20). Therefore, establishing anti-Bolshevism in the United States was Robert F. Kelley's mission. Kelley, an Irish Catholic educated by Russian refugees, headed the Eastern European Affairs Division within the State Department (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 19). Kelley's intense dislike of the Bolsheviks required his aides to actively join his views. One of his military officers was George F. Kennan who joined in closely observing the destabilizing and expansionist Bolshevik activities that caused unrest in Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Spain and Greece (Leffler, The Specter of communism, 19). Was Kennan's strategic containment thinking triggered by Kelley's training? Was Kennan's awareness of ongoing Russian communist activities the basis of his ideas? History proves that George Kennan's ideas on containment were the basis of NSC-68 and...... middle of paper ...... "our technical superiority" in repelling further Soviet invasions; only negotiate with the Soviet Union when it agrees with the intentions of the United States and its allies; and that President Harry Truman supported a massive buildup of conventional and nuclear weapons. NSC 68 wants to contain expansionism with a more aggressive military stance – be prepared to stop it immediately. NSC 68 does not consider “behavior modification” to be a simple action. Neither Kennan's containment strategy nor NSC-68 constitutes shoddy policy. Both met the needs of the United States at that time. However, Kennan's recommendations required time, not immediate action. NSC-68 demanded immediate action and without wasting time. By improving on Kennan's recommendations with Nitze's expertise, in my opinion, it made the Cold War containment policy valid for the era in which it was written..