Containment and Engagement as Middle-Range Theories

In the studies of international relations containment and engagement are often understood as strategies of foreign policy. This article seeks to explore containment and engagement through a less frequently applied theoretical perspective: to find out what features of containment and engagement allow them to be called middle-range theories.

The article presents the main features of meta- and middle-range theories, draws attention to realism as meta-theory and then distinguishes the most characteristic features of containment and engagement in order to find their matches in the attributes of middle-range theories.

The article concludes that containment and engagement can be called middle-range theories, since they are power balancing theories that analyze the phenomenon from a specific point of view (individual approaches to the instruments, regions, targets), they are comprehensive, and they stay within the field of power balancing analysis.