The Policy of Containment and East-West Exchanges, 1955-75

1955年日内瓦峰会之后，艾森豪威尔政府开始将东西方交流作为遏制苏联扩张主义的重要手段。1958年签订的美苏文化协定应该在此背景下理解。艾森豪威尔总统认为，美国对苏联社会的文化渗透可以促进苏联体制内部朝着一个对美国不那么敌对和对抗的政权发展。历届政府都遵循这一方针。尽管肯尼迪和约翰逊政府在20世纪60年代面临的主要外交政策问题是古巴、柏林、核军备控制和越南。他们稳定地执行了美苏交流。美国在越南不断加深的军事介入激怒了勃列日涅夫政府，给交流项目蒙上了长长的阴影。苏联政府确实暂停了其中一些项目。尽管如此，约翰逊总统还是坚持了下来。他后来有充分的理由夸耀他在这一领域取得的令人印象深刻的成就。1964年的领事公约和1966年的民用航空协定尤其重要。到1968年夏天，两国之间的关系已经好到可以开始战略武器限制谈判。虽然很难判断这些交流在多大程度上达到了既定的目的，但它们确实在推动苏联走向缓和和逐步扩大与西方的交流方面发挥了次要但重要的作用。尽管如此，如果没有越南战争，约翰逊政府几乎肯定可以将更多的资源用于促进美苏交流，作为遏制的有用工具。在这个外交政策领域，美国也为其在越南犯下的可怕错误付出了代价。

Following the Geneva summit held in 1955, the Eisenhower Administration embarked on implementing East-West exchanges as an important means of containing Soviet expansionism The US-Soviet cultural agreement concluded in 1958 should be understood in this context. President Eisenhower assumed that America's cultural penetration of the Soviet society could promote evolution within the Soviet system toward a regime that would become less hostile and antagonistic against the US. The successive administrations followed this course.Although the major foreigu policy issues facing the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations in the 1960s were Cuba, Berlin, nuclear arms control, and Vietnam. they steadily executed the US-Soviet exchanges. The deepening military involvement of the US in Vietnam angered the Brezhnev Administration, casting a long shadow over the exchange programs. The Soviet government did suspend some of these programs. Still, President Johnson persisted. He had good reason to boast later of his impressive achievements in this field. The consular convention of 1964 and the civil air agreement of 1966 were especially significant. By the summer of 1968, the relationship between the two nations had become good enough to start the strategic arms limitation talks.While it is difficult to judge to what extent the exchanges attained the stated aim, they did play, a subordinate yet important part in moving the Soviets toward detente and gradual expansion of exchanges with the West. Nonetheless, without the Vietnam War, the Johnson Administmtion could have almost certainly channeled more resources to further the US-Soviet exchanges as a useful tool for containment. In this foreign policy area too, the US paid a price, for its terrible mistakes in Vietnam.