Rollback was a term used by American foreign policy thinkers during the Cold War. It was defined as using military force to "roll back" communism in countries where it had taken root.

Western intervention in Russian Civil War

The western intervention in the Russian Civil War can be considered an attempt at rollback, but it was before this term came to be used.

Rollback during Cold War

The most important rollback period was during the Cold War when many Americans felt that they were in a life or death struggle against world communism. After the devastation of the Second World War, only a small minority of Americans were prepared to attempt to roll back communism throughout the world, by direct force of arms. Many Americans were shocked by Winston Churchill's 1946 address at Westminster College in Missouri and by extension the American people warning of "an iron curtain" descending across Europe. They still remembered the Soviets as being their friends and allies from the war years, and many believed that socialism was a successful economic system, beneficial to civilization.

A compromise to military intervention was to use intelligence services and other such efforts to achieve these ends. These attempts began as early as 1945 with attempts in Eastern Europe, including efforts to provide weapons to independence fighters in the Baltic States and Ukraine. The most elaborate effort was against Albania in 1948, following the defeat of Communist forces in the Greek Civil War that year. A force of agents was landed by the British and Americans to try to provoke a guerilla war. The operation had already been betrayed to the Soviets by the British traitor, Kim Philby and failed leading to the immediate capture or killing of the agents.

Through the adoption of National Security Council document NSC 162/2 in October 1953, the Eisenhower Administration effectively abandoned these uniformly unsuccessful efforts in Europe after only a few years. Later efforts at rollback would be confined to the developing world. There were advocates of a rollback approach to Cuba especially at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Advocated by U.S. conservatives

The "rollback" movement gained significant ground, however, in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration, urged on by the conservative Heritage Foundation and other influential conservatives, began to channel weapons to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua and other nations.

This effort came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine. Critics argued that the Reagan Doctrine led to so-called blowback and an unnecessary intensification of Third World conflict, but in the various rollback battlefields, the Soviet Union made major concessions, and eventually had to retreat from Afghanistan.

As the retreat from the Soviet-Afghan war got under way, the subject nations of the Soviet Union started to prepare for their own independence, though critics of rollback interpret this not as the domino effect of the retreat, but rather as a consequence of Gorbachev's liberalization. Violence broke out as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic sought control of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Two years later, numerous Soviet Socialist Republics declared their laws superior to those of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union collapsed, and in some ways was already collapsing as the retreat got under way. The retreat from Afghanistan was directly caused by American Stinger missiles, and many would argue indirectly caused by similar military pressures on many battlegrounds throughout the world, though Afghanistan was the only battleground where significant numbers of Russian soldiers were directly being killed by American weapons supplied for that purpose.

Related to Civil Rights

The 1980s in the United States also marked the beginning of what some have called the "rollback" period in civil rights. Over the past 20 years, a well-funded and well-organized movement made up of people and groups uncomfortable with the federal government's role in protecting civil rights formed groups such as the Federalist Society to make change on the federal courts. The groups have been successful at influencing judicial nominations and public opinion. And the courts, as demonstrated by a range of key cases, have become less protective of civil rights.

See also

• Containment

•  • [ e] The Cold War
Participants: NATO Warsaw Pact Non-Aligned Movement People's Republic of China
1940s	Yalta Conference • Potsdam Conference • Gouzenko Affair • Iran crisis • Chinese Civil War • Greek Civil War • Restatement of Policy on Germany • Truman Doctrine • Marshall Plan • Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia • Tito-Stalin split • Berlin Blockade
1950s	Korean War • First Indochina War • Iranian Coup • Guatemalan Coup • Uprising of 1953 in East Germany • First Taiwan Strait Crisis • Poznań 1956 protests • Hungarian Revolution of 1956 • Suez Crisis • Sputnik crisis • Second Taiwan Strait Crisis • Cuban Revolution
1960s	Congo Crisis • Sino-Soviet split • U-2 Crisis of 1960 • Bay of Pigs Invasion • Cuban Missile Crisis • Berlin Wall • Vietnam War • U.S. Invasion of Dominican Republic • South African Border War • Overthrow of Sukarno • Bangkok Declaration • Laotian Civil War • Greek military junta of 1967-1974 • Prague Spring • Dtente • Sino-Soviet border conflict
1970s	Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty • Cambodian Civil War • Ping Pong Diplomacy • Four Power Agreement on Berlin • 1972 Nixon visit to China • Chilean coup of 1973 • Yom Kippur War • Strategic Arms Limitation Talks • Angolan Civil War • Mozambican Civil War • Ogaden War • Sino-Vietnamese War • Iranian Revolution
1980s	Soviet war in Afghanistan • Polish Solidarity Movement • Central American Crisis • Able Archer 83 • Strategic Defense Initiative • Invasion of Grenada • Fall of the Berlin Wall • Revolutions of 1989
1990s	Dissolution of the USSR
See also	Bricker Amendment • Glasnost • Iron Curtain • McCarthyism • Operation Condor • Operation Gladio • Perestroika • Soviet espionage in US
Establishments	Central Intelligence Agency • Comecon • European Community • KGB • Stasi
Races	Arms race • Nuclear arms race • Space Race
Ideologies	Capitalism • Communism • Stalinism • Maoism
Foreign policy	Brezhnev Doctrine • Ulbricht Doctrine • Carter Doctrine • Containment • Domino Theory • Eisenhower Doctrine • Johnson Doctrine • Kennedy Doctrine • Nixon Doctrine • Ostpolitik • Peaceful coexistence • Reagan Doctrine • Rollback • Truman Doctrine • Marshall Plan
Timeline of events

•  • [ e] United States Foreign Policy
Doctrines	Presidential Proclamation of Neutrality Monroe Doctrine Roosevelt Corollary Truman Doctrine Eisenhower Doctrine Kennedy Doctrine Johnson Doctrine Nixon Doctrine Carter Doctrine Reagan Doctrine Clinton Doctrine Bush Doctrine Other Lodge Corollary Containment Domino theory Rollback Stimson Doctrine Kirkpatrick Doctrine Weinberger Doctrine Powell Doctrine Rumsfeld Doctrine Wolfowitz Doctrine
Bilateral relations	Transatlantic Czech Republic European Union France Germany Greece Poland Sweden TurkeyUnited Kingdom ANZUS Australia New Zealand Latin American Brazil Colombia Cuba Ecuador Mexico Venezuela CIS Belarus Kazakhstan Russia East Asian China Japan North Korea South Korea Taiwan South Asian Afghanistan India Pakistan Middle Eastern Iran Israel Sub-Saharan African Angola Cte d'Ivoire Other Canada United Nations Former Russian Empire Soviet Union