The seminal use of ''cordon sanitaire'' (or "sanitary cordon") as a metaphor for ideological

containment Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term '' cordon sanitaire'', which ...

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." French Prime Minister

Georges Clemenceau Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (, also , ; 28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he was a ...

is credited with coining the usage, when, in March 1919, he urged the newly independent border states (also called ''

limitrophe states Limitrophe states are territories situated on a border or frontier. In a broad sense, it means border countries, any group of neighbors of a given nation which border each other thus forming a rim around that country. The English term derives from ...

'') that had formed in Eastern Europe after World War I to form a defensive union. Such a system would both isolate the Soviet Union from Western Europe, and thus quarantine the spread of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...

, while simultaneously threatening Germany's eastern border in the event of war, guaranteeing French security. He called such an alliance a ''cordon sanitaire.'' France subsequently put this policy into practice by creating an alliance with Poland in 1921, followed by alliances with each member of the French-backed

Little Entente The Little Entente was an alliance formed in 1920 and 1921 by Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 Yugoslavia) with the purpose of common defense against Hungarian revanchism and the prospect of a ...

alliance (

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

, and

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

) starting in 1924. The alliance was further reinforced by bilateral treaties among Eastern European states such as the Polish–Romanian alliance. 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 A buffer state is a country geographically lying between two rival or potentially hostile great powers. Its existence can sometimes be thought to prevent conflict between them. A buffer state is sometimes a mutually agreed upon area lying between ...

that form a barrier against a larger, ideologically hostile state.

See also

References

Further reading