George Keenan first appeared on the political scene in a big in February of 1946. He was an ambassador for the United States to countries in Eastern Europe and Moscow. Keenan was in a position where he was able to see the true happenings in the Soviet Union and was the first person to alert officials in the United States that the plans for a Soviet, U.S. alliance was idealistic at best. Keenan was able to see the fundamental differences between the two super powers and knew that the United States would not be able to work with the Soviets, and they would not work with the U.S. It was not until after Churchill's "Iron curtain" speech that Keenan began to push for a "Hard-line" U.S. foreign policy in regards to the Soviet Union and Communism. Keenan believed that the Soviets would attempt to spread their influence throughout Europe and then the world and the only way to prevent them from gaining total world domination would be to suppress their expansion before they became too powerful. Keenan also thought that if faced with a power greater then their own, the Soviets would back down rather then fight. Keenan's plans to control the Soviet Union became known as "Containment" and would be the backbone of U.S. foreign policy for the next forty-five years. Keenan claimed that if the spread of Communism was contained it would do one of two things; self-destruct or it would become a non-threat. .
The idea of "Containment" was not a hard plan to sell to most people at home in the United States. As with any major policy however, there were those that did not believe it would work. Henry Wallace, for example, thought that the U.S. was making a major mistake by attempting to use force as a deterrent to the Soviets. This is another area that has come under much political debate and will be discussed later in this essay. It would not be long until the U.S. was given a chance to prove its "Containment" theory to the world, and skeptics at home.