The seminal use of cordon sanitaire ( French: [k??d?? sanit??] ; lit.   ' sanitary cordon ' ) as a metaphor for ideological containment referred to "the system of alliances instituted by France in interwar 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 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 , 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 alliance ( Czechoslovakia , Yugoslavia , and Romania ) 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 that form a barrier against a larger, ideologically hostile state. ^[2]

See also [ edit ]

• Locarno Treaties
• Germany?Soviet Union relations, 1918?1941
• Georgian?Polish alliance
• Intermarium
• Prometheism

References [ edit ]

Further reading [ edit ]

• Soutou, Georges (1974). "La politique economique de la France en Pologne (1920-1924)" . Revue Historique . 251 (1 (509)): 85?116. ISSN   0035-3264 . JSTOR   40952983 .
• Stoker, Donald J. Undermining the Cordon Sanitaire: Naval Arms Sales, Naval Building, and Anglo-French Competition in the Baltic, 1918-1940: Poland-Finland-the Baltic States. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Florida State University 1997.
• Vilks-Battaia, Sophie (2004). "La politique etrangere de la France envers la Lettonie dans les annees vingt : d'une politique generale a une politique bilaterale" . Valahian Journal of Historical Studies (in French) (2): 95?108. ISSN   1584-2525 .
• Gueslin, Julien (2003). "Un nouveau Drang nach Osten ? La France face a la menace des corps francs allemands dans les pays baltes, 1919" . Revue internationale d'histoire militaire (83).