Dual containment was an official United States foreign policy aimed at containing Iraq and Iran, Israel's and America's two most important strategic adversaries in the Middle East. It was first outlined in May 1993 by Martin Indyk at WINEP and officially announced on February 24, 1994 at a symposium of the Middle East Policy Council by Martin Indyk, then the senior director for Middle East Affairs of the National Security Council (NSC).

The idea was inspired by George F. Kennan's ideas of containment of the USSR during the Cold War; critics have argued, however, that it did not respect Kennan's key demand for containment to succeed: the principle of power-balancing. Kennan argued that the Soviet Union and the United States, as both were superpowers, had everything to lose and nothing to gain by going to war with each other. On the other hand, both states had global interests which they clearly felt they had to maintain.

According to Kennan, the United States and Russia should respect the other's spheres of interest. That way the two could get along, building themselves up and developing their societies. However, they must, under no circumstances, go to war with each other. To be sure, with two such diametrically opposed systems, relations would never be warm, or even cooperative. However, as long as the two did not try to destroy each other, catastrophe could be avoided. What Kennan was expressing was the concept of balancing - the idea that, in the world of international politics, a proper balance could be struck between potential adversaries and this would produce a stable situation which could be prolonged for an indefinite period.