68 of 1950. In the 1950s, a number of other less successful regional alliances were developed by the United States, such as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Economic and propaganda warfare against the communist world was part of the American toolbox. The United States operated a worldwide network of bases for its Army, Navy and Air Force, with large contingents stationed in Germany, Japan and South Korea. Most nations aligned with either the Western or Eastern camp, but after 1960 the Soviets broke with China as the Communist movement worldwide became divided. Some countries, such as India and Yugoslavia, tried to be neutral. Rejecting the rollback of Communism by force because it risked nuclear war, Washington developed a new strategy called containment to oppose the spread of communism. The containment policy was developed by U.S. diplomat George Kennan in 1947. Kennan characterized the Soviet Union as an aggressive, anti-Western power that necessitated containment, a characterization which would shape US foreign policy for decades to come. The idea of containment was to match Soviet aggression with force wherever it occurred while not using nuclear weapons. The policy of containment created a bipolar, zero-sum world where the ideological conflicts between the Soviet Union and the United States dominated geopolitics. Due to the antagonism on both sides and each countries' search for security, a tense worldwide contest developed between the two states as the two nations' governments vied for global supremacy militarily, culturally, and influentially. The Cold War was characterized by a lack of global wars but a persistence of regional proxy wars, often fought between client states and proxies of the United States and Soviet Union. The US also intervened in the affairs of other countries through a number of secret operations. During the Cold War, the Containment policy seeking to stop Soviet expansion, involved the United States and its allies in the Korean War (1950–1953), a stalemate. Even longer and more disastrous was the Vietnam War (1963–75). Under Jimmy Carter, the U.S. and its Arab allies Succeeded in creating a Vietnamese -like disaster for the Soviet Union by supporting anti-Soviet Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan (Operation Cyclone). Kennedy and Johnson 1961–1969 The Cold War reached its most dangerous point during the Kennedy administration in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis began