Diplomacy
French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is credited with the first use of the phrase as a metaphor for ideological containment. In March 1919, he urged the newly independent border states (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from Russian Empire and Soviet Russia to form a defensive union and thus quarantine the spread of communism to Western Europe; he called such an alliance a cordon sanitaire. This is still probably the most famous use of the phrase, though it is sometimes used more generally to describe a set of buffer states that form a barrier against a larger, ideologically hostile state. According to historian André Fontaine, Clemenceau's cordon sanitaire marked the real beginning of the Cold War: thus, it would have started in 1919 and not in 1947 as most historians contend it did.
Read more about this topic: Cordon Sanitaire
Famous quotes containing the word diplomacy:
“The policy of dollar diplomacy is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to dictates of sound policy, and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to the modern idea of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)