Cordon sanitaire

Cordon sanitaire (French pronunciation: ​[kɔʁdɔ̃ sanitɛʁ]) is a French phrase that, literally translated, means "sanitary cordon". It originally denoted a barrier implemented to stop the spread of disease, such as the Black Death. The term is also oft-used metaphorically, in English, to refer to attempts to prevent the spread of an ideology deemed unwanted or dangerous, such as the containment policy adopted by George F. Kennan against the Soviet Union.

A cordon sanitaire is generally created around an area experiencing an epidemic of disease. Once the cordon is established, people from the infected area are no longer allowed to leave or enter it. In the most extreme form, the cordon is not lifted until the infection is extinguished, forcing everyone inside to either die or survive. The first actual use of the term cordon sanitaire was in 1821, when French troops were deployed to the border between France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains, in order to prevent a deadly fever from spreading from Spain into France. The tactic was also used, for instance, during the Black Death during the Great Northern War plague outbreak. Since the twentieth century, the tactic has been rarely used; prior to August 2014, when a cordon sanitaire was established around some of the most affected areas of the 2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak, the last time the tactic was used was in 1918, when the Polish-Russian border was closed to stop the spread of typhus.

A cordon sanitaire was used as a plot device by Albert Camus in The Plague and in the television limited series Containment.

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