Two words and two thinkers roughly captured the divide over strategy during the Cold War: “containment” and “rollback,” and George Kennan and James Burnham.

Kennan, the legendary State Department official whose so-called Long Telegram and subsequent “X” article in Foreign Affairs did so much to catalyze thinking at the outset of the Cold War, is, of course, associated with containment.

Burnham, the former Trotskyite and National Review editor and columnist, championed rollback as the only strategy commensurate with the nature of the Soviet threat.

This debate is relevant in today’s domestic politics because in the culture war, especially on campus, Florida governor Ron DeSantis is an advocate of rollback. That has helped make him such an object of interest for Republican voters around the country, and such a lightning rod for the Left and the media.