Adjustment marked the aftermath of World War II. The war had destroyed the European balance of power and fractured the pillars upon which it rested. Alien armies occupied Germany. Clement Attlee's Labour government edged Britain away from empire, dramatized by India's 1947 independence. France proved immune to resuscitation as a major force, despite Charles de Gaulle's efforts and mannered dignity. This debility in the three states created a vacuum. The two extra-European powers, residing hitherto on the sides, filled the void. They established a new balance of power with distinctive spheres of influence. Therein the Americans and Soviets arranged political–social–economic life according to their respective desiderata. Soviet–US rivalry centered in Europe extended elsewhere. Ideological differences between Washington and Moscow compounded the intensity of Cold War confrontation.

Containment as it evolved during Truman's presidency became the organizing axiom of US foreign policy, so remaining until dissolution of the Cold War order in 1989–1991. The main object was to prevent Stalin, then his successors, from expanding the USSR's territorial–political influence past lines reached by the Red Army in 1945. Zones deemed vital by Washington encompassed not only liberal-industrial Western Europe, but also Japan and Mideastern oil producers. Not all peripheral areas were ignored by post-1945 administrations, evidenced by US actions in Korea and Vietnam. Containment's second objective was to make Soviet power recede from its East European tract, a buffer against intrusion but also antipathetic to Anglo–US interests (economic, security) and sensibility (anticommunism).