Which diplomat articulated the policy of containment and served as US ambassador to the USSR in 1952?

• A. Dean Acheson
• B. Henry Kissinger
• C. Richard Nixon
• D. George Kennan

Answer: (D)

Containment is a strategy built on resisting Soviet expansion without provoking a direct war, using steady political, economic, and military pressure over time. George Kennan is the figure most associated with shaping this approach. He sent the Long Telegram from Moscow in 1946, then wrote the influential Foreign Affairs article under the pseudonym “X” in 1947, arguing that the Soviet system would stabilize only if offset by a strong, patient U.S. response abroad. Those analyses laid out the rationale and framework for U.S. Cold War policy.

He also served as the United States ambassador to the Soviet Union beginning in 1952, bringing his policy ideas into direct diplomacy with the USSR during that period. That combination—articulating containment and holding a key diplomatic post in Moscow—fits the question precisely.