Cordon sanitaire (international relations)

The seminal use of cordon sanitaire (or "sanitary cordon") as a metaphor for ideological containment referred to "the system of alliances instituted by France in post-World War I Europe that stretched from Finland to the Balkans" and which "completely ringed Germany and sealed off Russia from Western Europe, thereby isolating the two politically 'diseased' nations of Europe."[1]

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is credited with coining the usage, when in March 1919 he urged the newly independent border states (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from the Russian Empire and its successor the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 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.[2]

References
  1. Gilchrist, Stanley (1995) [1st. pub. 1982]. "Chapter 10: The Cordon Sanitaire – Is It Useful? Is It Practical?". In Moore, John Norton; Turner, Robert F. (eds.). Readings on International Law from the Naval War College Review, 1978–1994. 68. Naval War College. pp. 131–145.
  2. Saul, Norman E. (2014). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Foreign Policy. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 90. ISBN 978-1442244375.

Further reading
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