George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of
containment
Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term ''cordon sanitaire'', which was ...
of Soviet expansion during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "
The Wise Men
Wise men or wise man may refer to:
* Biblical Magi, who follow the Star of Bethlehem in the New Testament
* Sage (philosophy), a person who attained wisdom
* Sanxing (deities), personified deities of good fortune, prosperity, and longevity in Chin ...
".
During the late 1940s, his writings inspired the
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledged American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." The doctrine originated with the primary goal of containing Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was ...
and the
U.S. foreign policy
The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...
of "containing" the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. His "
Long Telegram
The "X Article" is an article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", written by George F. Kennan and published under the pseudonym "X" in the July 1947 issue of ''Foreign Affairs'' magazine. The article widely introduced the term " ...
" from Moscow during 1946 and the subsequent 1947 article ''
The Sources of Soviet Conduct
The "X Article" is an article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", written by George F. Kennan and published under the pseudonym "X" in the July 1947 issue of '' Foreign Affairs'' magazine. The article widely introduced the term ...
'' argued that the Soviet regime was inherently
expansionist
Expansionism refers to states obtaining greater territory through military empire-building or colonialism.
In the classical age of conquest moral justification for territorial expansion at the direct expense of another established polity (who of ...
and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts provided justification for the
Truman administration
Harry S. Truman's tenure as the 33rd president of the United States began on April 12, 1945, upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ended on January 20, 1953. He had been vice president for only days. A Democrat from Missouri, he ran fo ...
's new anti-Soviet policy. Kennan played a major role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, notably the
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...
.
Soon after his concepts had become U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the
foreign policies
A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through mu ...
that he had helped articulate. By late 1948, Kennan became confident that positive dialogue could commence with the Soviet government. His proposals were discounted by the Truman administration and Kennan's influence was marginalized, particularly after
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...
was appointed
Secretary of State in 1949. Soon thereafter, U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more assertive and militaristic quality, causing Kennan to lament what he believed was an abrogation of his previous assessments.
In 1950, Kennan left the
State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
—except for a brief ambassadorial stint in Moscow and a longer one in
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
—and became a
realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to analyze international affairs as a faculty member of the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
from 1956 until his death in 2005 at age 101.
Early life
Kennan was born in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
, to Kossuth Kent Kennan, a lawyer specializing in tax law, a descendant of impoverished Scotch-Irish settlers from 18th-century
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
and Massachusetts, who was named after the Hungarian patriot
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva (, hu, udvardi és kossuthfalvi Kossuth Lajos, sk, Ľudovít Košút, anglicised as Louis Kossuth; 19 September 1802 – 20 March 1894) was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, poli ...
(1802–94),
and Florence James Kennan. Mrs. Kennan died two months later due to
peritonitis
Peritonitis is inflammation of the localized or generalized peritoneum, the lining of the inner wall of the abdomen and cover of the abdominal organs. Symptoms may include severe pain, swelling of the abdomen, fever, or weight loss. One part or ...
from a ruptured appendix, though Kennan long believed that she died after giving birth to him.
The boy always lamented not having a mother. He was never close to his father or stepmother; however, he was close to his older sisters.
At the age of eight, he went to Germany to stay with his stepmother in order to learn German.
He attended
St. John's Military Academy in
Delafield, Wisconsin, and arrived at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
in the second half of 1921. Unaccustomed to the elite atmosphere of the
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
, the shy and introverted Kennan found his undergraduate years difficult and lonely.
Diplomatic career
First steps
After receiving his
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in History in 1925, Kennan considered applying to law school, but decided it was too expensive and instead opted to apply to the newly-formed
United States Foreign Service
The United States Foreign Service is the primary personnel system used by the diplomatic service of the United States federal government, under the aegis of the United States Department of State. It consists of over 13,000 professionals carryi ...
.
[.][.] He passed the qualifying examination and after seven months of study at the Foreign Service School in Washington, he gained his first job as a
vice consul
A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, as well as to facilitate trade and friendship between the people ...
in
Geneva, Switzerland
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
. Within a year he was transferred to a post in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
, Germany. During 1928, Kennan considered quitting the Foreign Service to return to a university for graduate studies. Instead, he was selected for a
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
training program that would give him three years of graduate-level study without having to quit the service.
In 1929 Kennan began his program on history, politics, culture, and the Russian language at the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
's Oriental Institute. In doing so, he would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather's younger cousin,
George Kennan
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...
(1845–1924), a major 19th century expert on
Imperial Russia
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...
and author of ''Siberia and the Exile System'', a well-received 1891 account of the Czarist prison system. During the course of his diplomatic career, Kennan would master a number of other languages, including German, French, Polish, Czech, Portuguese, and Norwegian.
In 1931 Kennan was stationed at the
legation
A legation was a diplomatic representative office of lower rank than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, minister. Ambassadors diplomatic rank, out ...
in
Riga, Latvia
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Bal ...
, where, as
third secretary
Diplomatic rank is a system of professional and social rank used in the world of diplomacy and international relations. A diplomat's rank determines many ceremonial details, such as the order of precedence at official processions, table seatings ...
, he worked on Soviet economic affairs. From his job, Kennan "grew to mature interest in Russian affairs".
[.] When the U.S. began formal diplomacy with the Soviet government during 1933 after the election of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, Kennan accompanied Ambassador
William C. Bullitt
William Christian Bullitt Jr. (January 25, 1891 – February 15, 1967) was an American diplomat, journalist, and novelist. He is known for his special mission to negotiate with Lenin on behalf of the Paris Peace Conference, often recalled as a mi ...
to Moscow. By the mid-1930s, Kennan was among the professionally trained Russian experts of the staff of the
United States Embassy in Moscow
The Embassy of the United States of America in Moscow is the diplomatic mission of the United States of America in the Russian Federation. The current embassy compound is in the Presnensky District of Moscow, across the street from the White House ...
, along with
Charles E. Bohlen
Charles "Chip" Eustis Bohlen (August 30, 1904 – January 1, 1974) was an American diplomat, ambassador, and expert on the Soviet Union. He helped shape US foreign policy during World War II and the Cold War and helped develop the Marshall Plan ...
and
Loy W. Henderson
Loy Wesley Henderson (June 28, 1892 – March 24, 1986) was a United States Foreign Service Officer and diplomat.
Background
Loy Wesley Henderson was born on June 28, 1892, in Rogers, Arkansas, to a poor Methodist preacher. He attended college ...
. These officials had been influenced by the long-time director of the State Department's division of East European Affairs,
Robert F. Kelley ''For a list of other people named Robert Kelley see Robert Kelley (disambiguation)''
Robert F. Kelley (1894 February 13, Somerville, Massachusetts – 1976) was an adamantly anticommunist official of the US State Department who influenced a gene ...
. They believed that there was little basis for cooperation with the Soviet Union, even against potential adversaries. Meanwhile, Kennan studied Stalin's
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
, which would affect his opinion of the internal dynamics of the Soviet regime for the rest of his life.
At the Soviet Embassy
Kennan found himself in strong disagreement with
Joseph E. Davies
Joseph Edward Davies (November 29, 1876 – May 9, 1958) was an American lawyer and diplomat. He was appointed by President Wilson to be Commissioner of Corporations in 1912, and First Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1915. He was t ...
, Bullitt's successor as ambassador to the Soviet Union, who defended the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
and other aspects of Stalin's rule. Kennan did not have any influence on Davies's decisions, and the latter even suggested that Kennan be transferred out of Moscow for "his health".
Kennan again contemplated resigning from the service, but instead decided to accept the Russian desk at the State Department in Washington. A man with a high opinion of himself, Kennan began writing the first draft of his memoirs at the age of 34 when he was still a relatively junior diplomat. In a letter to his sister Jeannette in 1935, Kennan expressed his disenchantment with American life, writing: “I hate the rough and tumble of our political life. I hate democracy; I hate the press....I hate the ‘peepul’; I have become clearly un-American” Kennan has been criticized recently for some views contained in an essay he wrote titled "The Prerequisites."
Prague and Berlin
By September 1938, Kennan had been reassigned to a job at the legation in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
. After the occupation of the
Czechoslovak Republic
Czechoslovak Republic (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá republika, ČSR''), was the official name of Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1939 and between 1945 and 1960. See:
*First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)
*Second Czechoslovak Republic ...
by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
at the beginning of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Kennan was assigned to Berlin. There, he endorsed the United States'
Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (), was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, ...
policy, but warned against any notion of American endorsement of the Soviets, whom he considered unfit allies. He was interned in Germany for six months after Germany, followed by the other
Axis states,
declared war on the United States in December 1941.
Lisbon calls
In September 1942 Kennan was assigned to the legation in
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
, Portugal, where he begrudgingly performed a job administering intelligence and base operations. In July 1943
Bert Fish
Bert Fish (October 8, 1875July 21, 1943) was an American lawyer, judge, philanthropist, and ambassador.
Early life
Fish originally hailed from Bedford, Indiana, but moved to Volusia County, Florida in 1881. He became the Superintendent of the V ...
, the American Ambassador in Lisbon, suddenly died, and Kennan became
chargé d'affaires
A ''chargé d'affaires'' (), plural ''chargés d'affaires'', often shortened to ''chargé'' (French) and sometimes in colloquial English to ''charge-D'', is a diplomat who serves as an embassy's chief of mission in the absence of the ambassador ...
and the head of the American Embassy in Portugal. While in Lisbon Kennan played a decisive role in getting Portugal's approval for the use of the Azores Islands by American naval and air forces during World War II. Initially confronted with clumsy instructions and lack of coordination from Washington, Kennan took the initiative by personally talking to President Roosevelt and obtained from the President a letter to the Portuguese premier,
Salazar, that unlocked the concession of facilities in the
Azores
)
, motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace")
, anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores")
, image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg
, map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union
, map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...
.
Second Soviet posting
In January 1944 he was sent to London, where he served as counselor of the American delegation to the
European Advisory Commission The formation of the European Advisory Commission (EAC) was agreed on at the Moscow Conference on 30 October 1943 between the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Anthony Eden, the United States, Cordell Hull, and the Soviet Union, Vyache ...
, which worked to prepare
Allied
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
policy in Europe. There, Kennan became even more disenchanted with the State Department, which he believed was ignoring his qualifications as a trained specialist. However, within months of beginning the job, he was appointed deputy chief of the mission in Moscow upon request of
W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986), better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce un ...
, the ambassador to the USSR.
The "Long Telegram"
In Moscow, Kennan again felt that his opinions were being ignored by
President Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
and policymakers in Washington. Kennan tried repeatedly to persuade policymakers to abandon plans for cooperation with the Soviet government in favor of a
sphere of influence
In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military or political exclusivity.
While there may be a formal al ...
policy in Europe to reduce the Soviets' power there. Kennan believed that a federation needed to be established in western Europe to counter Soviet influence in the region and to compete against the Soviet stronghold in eastern Europe.
[.]
Kennan served as deputy head of the mission in Moscow until April 1946. Near the end of that term, the
Treasury Department requested that the State Department explain recent Soviet behavior, such as its disinclination to endorse the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
and the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
.
Kennan responded on February 22, 1946, by sending a lengthy 5,363-word telegram (sometimes cited as being more than 8,000 words), commonly called "
The Long Telegram", from Moscow to Secretary of State
James Byrnes outlining a new strategy for
diplomatic relations
Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.Ronald Peter Barston, ''Modern diplomacy'', Pearson Education, 2006, p. 1 ...
with the Soviet Union.
The ideas Kennan expressed in the Long Telegram were not new but the argument he made and the vivid language he used in making it came at an opportune moment. At the "bottom of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity". After the Russian Revolution, this sense of insecurity became mixed with communist ideology and "Oriental secretiveness and conspiracy".
Soviet international behavior depended mainly on the internal necessities of
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
's regime; according to Kennan, Stalin needed a hostile world in order to legitimize his autocratic rule. Stalin thus used
Marxism-Leninism as a "justification for the Soviet Union's instinctive fear of the outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifice they felt bound to demand ... Today they cannot dispense with it. It is the fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability".
The solution was to strengthen Western institutions in order to render them invulnerable to the Soviet challenge while awaiting the mellowing of the Soviet regime.
Kennan's new policy of
containment
Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term ''cordon sanitaire'', which was ...
, in the words of his later 'X' article, was that Soviet pressure had to "be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points".
[Nash, Gary B. "Containment Defined." The American People. Creating a Nation and a Society. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Education, 2008. 825.]
At the National War College
The long telegram dispatch brought Kennan to the attention of
Secretary of the Navy
The secretary of the Navy (or SECNAV) is a statutory officer () and the head (chief executive officer) of the Department of the Navy, a military department (component organization) within the United States Department of Defense.
By law, the se ...
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal (February 15, 1892 – May 22, 1949) was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense.
Forrestal came from a very strict middle-class Irish Catholic fami ...
, a major advocate of a confrontational policy with regard to the Soviets, the United States' former wartime ally. Forrestal helped bring Kennan back to Washington, where he served as the first deputy for foreign affairs at the
National War College
The National War College (NWC) of the United States is a school in the National Defense University. It is housed in Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., the third-oldest Army post still active.
History
The National War Colle ...
and then strongly influenced his decision to publish the
"X" article.
The goal of his policy was to withdraw all the U.S. forces from Europe. The settlement reached would give the Kremlin sufficient reassurance against the establishment of regimes in Eastern Europe hostile to the Soviet Union, tempering the degree of control over that area that the Soviet leaders felt it necessary to exercise.
[Grodzins, Morton, and Eugene Rabinowitch. The Atomic Age; Scientists in National and World Affairs. Articles from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 1945–1962. Vol. 43. New York: Basic, 1963. Ser. 9. 17–18.]
Meanwhile, in March 1947, Truman appeared before Congress to request funding for the
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledged American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." The doctrine originated with the primary goal of containing Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was ...
to fight Communism in Greece. "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
"X"
![George F](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/George_F._Kennan_1947.jpg)
Unlike the "long telegram," Kennan's well-timed article appearing in the July 1947 issue of ''
Foreign Affairs
''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...
'' under the pseudonym "X", titled "
The Sources of Soviet Conduct
The "X Article" is an article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", written by George F. Kennan and published under the pseudonym "X" in the July 1947 issue of '' Foreign Affairs'' magazine. The article widely introduced the term ...
", did not begin by emphasizing "traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity";
instead, it asserted that Stalin's policy was shaped by a combination of Marxist–Leninist ideology, which advocated revolution to defeat the capitalist forces in the outside world and Stalin's determination to use the notion of "capitalist encirclement" in order to legitimize his regimentation of Soviet society so that he could consolidate his political power. Kennan argued that Stalin would not (and moreover could not) moderate the supposed Soviet determination to overthrow Western governments. Thus,
the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies ... Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.
His new policy of containment declared that Soviet pressure had to "be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points."
The goal of his policy was to withdraw all the U.S. forces from Europe. "The settlement reached would give the Kremlin sufficient reassurance against the establishment of regimes in Eastern Europe hostile to the Soviet Union, tempering the degree of control over that area that the Soviet leaders felt it necessary to exercise".
Kennan further argued that the United States would have to perform this containment alone, but if it could do so without undermining its own economic health and political stability, the Soviet party structure would undergo a period of immense strain eventually resulting in "either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power."
The publication of the "X" article soon began one of the more intense debates of the Cold War.
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the te ...
, a leading American commentator on international affairs, strongly criticized the "X" article. Lippmann argued that Kennan's strategy of containment was "a strategic monstrosity" that could "be implemented only by recruiting, subsidizing, and supporting a heterogeneous array of satellites, clients, dependents, and puppets". Lippmann argued that diplomacy should be the basis of relations with the Soviets; he suggested that the U.S. withdraw its forces from Europe and reunify and demilitarize Germany. Meanwhile, it was soon revealed informally that "X" was indeed Kennan. This information seemed to give the "X" article the status of an official document expressing the Truman administration's new policy toward Moscow.
Kennan had not intended the "X" article as a prescription for policy. For the rest of his life, Kennan continued to reiterate that the article did not imply an automatic commitment to resist Soviet "expansionism" wherever it occurred, with little distinction of primary and secondary interests. The article did not make it obvious that Kennan favored employing political and economic rather than military methods as the chief agent of containment. "My thoughts about containment," said Kennan in a 1996 interview to
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
, "were of course distorted by the people who understood it and pursued it exclusively as a military concept; and I think that that, as much as any other cause, led to
he40 years of unnecessary, fearfully expensive and disoriented process of the Cold War".
Additionally, the administration made few attempts to explain the distinction between Soviet influence and international Communism to the U.S. public. "In part, this failure reflected the belief of many in Washington," writes historian
John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is an American international relations scholar, military historian, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War an ...
, "that only the prospect of an undifferentiated global threat could shake Americans out of their isolationist tendencies that remained latent among them."
In a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
television interview with
David Gergen
David Richmond Gergen (born May 9, 1942) is an American political commentator and former presidential adviser who served during the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He is currently a senior political ...
in 1996, Kennan again reiterated that he did not regard the Soviets as primarily a military threat, noting that "they were not like
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
." Kennan's opinion was that this misunderstanding:
all came down to one sentence in the "X" article where I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.
The "X" article meant sudden fame for Kennan. After the long telegram, he recalled later, "My official loneliness came in fact to an end ... My reputation was made. My voice now carried."
Influence under Marshall
Between April 1947 and December 1948, when
George C. Marshall
George Catlett Marshall Jr. (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Chief of Staff of the US Army under Pre ...
was Secretary of State, Kennan was more influential than he was at any other period in his career. Marshall valued his strategic sense and had him create and direct what is now named the
Policy Planning Staff, the State Department's internal think tank. Kennan became the first
Director of Policy Planning
The Director of Policy Planning is the United States Department of State official in charge of the department's internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff. In the department, the Director of Policy Planning has a rank equivalent to Assistant ...
. Marshall relied heavily on him to prepare policy recommendations. Kennan played a central role in the drafting of the Marshall Plan.
Although Kennan regarded the Soviet Union as too weak to risk war, he nonetheless considered it an enemy capable of expanding into Western Europe through subversion, given the popular support for
Communist parties
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
in Western Europe, which remained demoralized by the devastation of the Second World War. To counter this potential source of Soviet influence, Kennan's solution was to direct economic aid and covert political help to Japan and Western Europe to revive Western governments and assist international capitalism; by doing so, the United States would help to rebuild the balance of power. In June 1948, Kennan proposed covert assistance to left-wing parties not oriented toward Moscow and to labor unions in Western Europe in order to engineer a rift between Moscow and working-class movements in Western Europe.
[.] In 1947, Kennan supported Truman's decision to extend economic aid to the Greek government fighting a civil war against Communist guerrillas, though he argued against military aid. The historian John Iatrides argued that Kennan's claim that the Soviet Union would go to war if the United States gave military aid to Greece is hard to square with his claim that the Soviet Union was too weak to risk war, and the real reason for his opposition to military aid was that he did not regard Greece as very important.
As the United States was initiating the Marshall Plan, Kennan and the Truman administration hoped that the Soviet Union's rejection of Marshall aid would strain its relations with its Communist allies in Eastern Europe.
Kennan initiated a series of efforts to exploit the schism between the Soviets and
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
's Yugoslavia. Kennan proposed conducting covert action in the Balkans to further decrease Moscow's influence.
The administration's new vigorously anti-Soviet policy also became evident when, at Kennan's suggestion, the U.S. changed its hostility to
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
's anti-communist regime in Spain in order to secure U.S. influence in the Mediterranean. Kennan had observed during 1947 that the Truman Doctrine implied a new consideration of Franco. His suggestion soon helped begin a new phase of U.S.–Spanish relations, which ended with military cooperation after 1950. Kennan played an important role in devising the plans for American economic aid to Greece, insisting upon a capitalist mode of development and upon economic integration with the rest of Europe. In the case of Greece, most of the Marshall Plan aid went towards rebuilding a war-devastated country that was already very poor even before World War II. Though Marshall Plan aid to Greece was successful in building or rebuilding ports, railroads, paved roads, a hydro-electricity transmission system, and a nationwide telephone system, the attempt to impose "good government" on Greece was less successful. The Greek economy was traditionally dominated by a ''rentier'' system in which a few wealthy families, a highly politicized officer corps and the royal family controlled the economy for their own benefit. Kennan's advice to open up the Greek economy was completely ignored by the Greek elite. Kennan supported France's war to regain control of Vietnam as he argued that control of Southeast Asia with its raw materials was critical to the economic recovery of Western Europe and Japan, but by 1949, he changed his views, becoming convinced that the French would never defeat the Communist Viet Minh guerrillas.
In 1949, Kennan suggested what became known as "Program A" or "Plan A" for the reunification of Germany, stating the partition of Germany was unsustainable in the long run. Kennan argued that the American people would sooner or later grow tired of occupying their zone in Germany and would inevitably demand the pull-out of U.S troops. Or alternatively Kennan predicated the Soviets would pull their forces out of East Germany, knowing full well that they could easily return from their bases in Poland, forcing the United States to do likewise, but as the Americans lacked bases in other Western European nations, this would hand the advantage to the Soviets. Finally, Kennan argued that the German people were very proud and would not stand having their nation occupied by foreigners for ever, making a solution to the "German question" imperative. Kennan's solution was for the reunification and neutralization of Germany; the withdrawal of most of the British, American, French and Soviet forces from Germany with the exception of small enclaves near the border that would be supplied by sea; and a four-power commission from the four occupying powers would have the ultimate say while allowing the Germans to mostly govern themselves.
Differences with Acheson
Kennan's influence rapidly decreased when
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...
became Secretary of State, succeeding the ailing George Marshall during 1949 and 1950. Acheson did not regard the Soviet "threat" as chiefly political, and he saw the
Berlin blockade
The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road ...
starting in June 1948, the first Soviet test of a nuclear weapon in August 1949, the Communist revolution in China a month later, and the beginning of the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
in June 1950, as evidence. Truman and Acheson decided to delineate the Western sphere of influence and to create a system of alliances. Kennan argued in a paper that the mainland of Asia be excluded from the "containment" policies, writing that the United States was "greatly overextended in its whole thinking about what we can accomplish and should try to accomplish" in Asia. Instead, he argued that Japan and the Philippines should serve as the "cornerstone of a Pacific security system".
Acheson approved Program A shortly after he took up office as Secretary of State, writing on the margin of Kennan's paper that the "...division of Germany was not an end onto itself". However, Plan A encountered massive objections from the Pentagon, who saw it as abandoning West Germany to the Soviet Union, and from within the State Department, with the diplomat Robert Murphy arguing that the mere existence of a prosperous and democratic West Germany would be destabilizing to East Germany, and hence the Soviet Union. More important, Plan A required the approval of the British and French governments, but neither was in favor of Program A, complaining it was far too early to end the occupation of Germany. Both public opinion in Britain and even more so in France were afraid of what might happen if the Allies loosened their control over Germany just four years after the end of World War II, and for reasons of geography and history, did not share Kennan's assurance that a reunified Germany would cause difficulties only for the Soviets. In May 1949, a distorted version of Plan A was leaked to the French press with the principal distortion being that the United States was willing to pull out of all of Europe in exchange for a reunified and neutral Germany. In the ensuing uproar, Acheson disallowed Plan A.
Kennan lost influence with Acheson, who in any case relied much less on his staff than Marshall had. Kennan resigned as director of policy planning in December 1949 but stayed in the department as counselor until June 1950.
[.] In January 1950, Acheson replaced Kennan with Nitze, who was much more comfortable with the calculus of military power. Afterwards, Kennan accepted an appointment as Visitor to the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
from fellow moderate
Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...
, Director of the Institute. In October 1949, the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong won the Chinese Civil War and proclaimed the People's Republic of China. The "
Loss of China In American political discourse, the "loss of China" is the unexpected Chinese Communist Party Chinese Communist Revolution, takeover of mainland China from the U.S.-backed Chinese Kuomintang government in 1949 and therefore the "loss of China to co ...
", as it has become known in the United States, prompted a fierce right-wing backlash led by Republican politicians such as
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...
, who used the "loss of China" as a convenient club with which to beat the Democratic Truman administration. Truman, Acheson, and other high officials such as Kennan were all accused of being criminally negligent at best in permitting the supposed loss. One of Kennan's closest friends, the diplomat
John Paton Davies Jr.
John Paton Davies Jr. (April 6, 1908 – December 23, 1999) was an American diplomat and Medal of Freedom recipient. He was one of the China Hands, whose careers in the Foreign Service were ended by McCarthyism and the reaction to the loss ...
found himself under investigation in November 1949 as a Soviet spy for his role in the process, an allegation that would destroy his career and which horrified Kennan. What especially disturbed Kennan was that Paton Davies was accused of treason for predicting in a report that Mao would win the Chinese Civil War, which in the climate of hysteria caused by the "loss of China" was enough to lead the FBI to begin investigating him as a Soviet spy. Speaking of the Paton Davies case, Kennan warned that "We have no protection against this happening again", leading him to wonder what diplomat would be investigated next for treason.
Kennan found the atmosphere of hysteria, which was labelled as "McCarthyism" in March 1950 by the cartoonist Herbert Block, to be deeply uncomfortable.
Acheson's policy was realized as
NSC 68 United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC68, was a 66-page top secret National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry ...
, a classified report issued by the United States National Security Council in April 1950 and written by
Paul Nitze
Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 – October 19, 2004) was an American politician who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is best k ...
, Kennan's successor as Director of Policy Planning. Kennan and
Charles Bohlen
Charles "Chip" Eustis Bohlen (August 30, 1904 – January 1, 1974) was an American diplomat, ambassador, and expert on the Soviet Union. He helped shape US foreign policy during World War II and the Cold War and helped develop the Marshall Plan ...
, another State Department expert on Russia, argued about the wording of NSC68, which became the basis of Cold War policy. Kennan rejected the idea that Stalin had a grand design for world conquest implicit in Nitze's report and argued that he actually feared overextending Russian power. Kennan even argued that NSC68 should not have been drafted at all, as it would make U.S. policies too rigid, simplistic, and militaristic. Acheson overruled Kennan and Bohlen, endorsing the assumption of Soviet menace implied by NSC68.
Kennan opposed the building of the hydrogen bomb and the rearmament of Germany, which were policies encouraged by the assumptions of NSC68. During the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
(which began when
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...
invaded South Korea in June 1950), when rumors started circulating in the State Department that plans were being made to advance beyond the 38th parallel into North Korea, an act that Kennan considered dangerous, he engaged in intense arguments with Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East
Dean Rusk
David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909December 20, 1994) was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving Secretary of State after Cordell Hull from the F ...
, who apparently endorsed Acheson's goal to forcibly unite the Koreas.
Memo to Dulles
On 21 August 1950, Kennan submitted a long memo to
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (, ; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959 and was briefly ...
who at the time was engaged in working on the U.S-Japanese peace treaty in which he went beyond American-Japanese relations to offer an outline of his thinking about Asia in general. He called U.S policy thinking about Asia as "little promising" and "fraught with danger". About the Korean War, Kennan wrote that American policies were based upon what he called "emotional, moralistic attitudes" which "unless corrected, can easily carry us toward real conflict with the Russians and inhibit us from making a realistic agreement about that area". He supported the decision to intervene in Korea, but wrote that "it is not essential to us to see an anti-Soviet Korean regime extended to all of Korea." Kennan expressed much fear about what General
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
might do, saying he had "wide and relatively uncontrolled latitude...in determining our policy in the north Asian and western Pacific areas", which Kennan viewed as a problem as he felt MacArthur's judgement was poor.
Criticism of American diplomacy
Kennan's 1951 book ''American Diplomacy, 1900-1950'', strongly criticized American foreign policy of the last 50 years.
He warned against U.S. participation and reliance on multilateral, legalistic and moralistic organizations such as the United Nations.
Despite his influence, Kennan was never really comfortable in government. He always regarded himself as an outsider and had little patience with critics.
W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow when Kennan was deputy between 1944 and 1946, remarked that Kennan was "a man who understood Russia but not the United States".
[.]
Ambassador to the Soviet Union
In December 1951, President Truman nominated Kennan to be the next United States ambassador to the USSR. His appointment was endorsed strongly by the Senate.
[.]
In many respects (to Kennan's consternation) the priorities of the administration emphasized creating alliances against the Soviets more than negotiating differences with them.
In his memoirs, Kennan recalled, "So far as I could see, we were expecting to be able to gain our objectives ... without making any concessions though, only 'if we were really all-powerful, and could hope to get away with it.' I very much doubted that this was the case."
At Moscow, Kennan found the atmosphere even more regimented than on his previous trips, with police guards following him everywhere, discouraging contact with Soviet citizens. At the time, Soviet propaganda charged the U.S. with preparing for war, which Kennan did not wholly dismiss. "I began to ask myself whether ... we had not contributed ... by the overmilitarization of our policies and statements ... to a belief in Moscow that it was war we were after, that we had settled for its inevitability, that it was only a matter of time before we would unleash it."
In September 1952, Kennan made a statement that cost him his ambassadorship. In an answer to a question at a press conference, Kennan compared his conditions at the ambassador's residence in Moscow to those he had encountered while interned in Berlin during the first few months of hostilities between the United States and Germany. While his statement was not unfounded, the Soviets interpreted it as an implied analogy with
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. The Soviets then declared Kennan ''
persona non grata
In diplomacy, a ' (Latin: "person not welcome", plural: ') is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and other types of prosecution.
Diplomacy
Under Article 9 of the ...
'' and refused to allow him to re-enter the USSR. Kennan acknowledged retrospectively that it was a "foolish thing for me to have said".
Criticism of diplomacy under Truman
Kennan was very critical of the Truman administration's policy of supporting
France in Vietnam, writing that the French were fighting a "hopeless" war, "which neither they nor we, nor both of us together, can win.” About what he called the "rival Chinese regimes" (i.e. the People's Republic of China on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan), Kennan predicated that the U.S. policy of supporting the
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
government in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
would "strengthen Peiping
eijingMoscow solidarity rather than weaken it". Anticipating playing the "China card" strategy, Kennan argued that the United States should work to divide the Sino-Soviet bloc which had the potential to dominate Eurasia, and to this end should give China's seat on the UN Security Council to the People's Republic of China. In the atmosphere of rage and fury caused by the "loss of China" in 1950, it was politically impossible for the Truman administration to recognize the government in Beijing, and giving China's United Nations seat to the People's Republic was the closest the United States could go in building a relationship with the new government. About the ostensible subject of his paper, Kennan called Japan the "most important single factor in Asia". Kennan advocated a deal with the Soviet Union where in exchange for ending the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
the United States would ensure that Japan would remain a demilitarized and neutral state in the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
.
Kennan's basic concept governing his thinking on foreign policy was that of the "five industrialized zones", the control of majority of which would make for the dominant world power. The "five industrialized zones" were the United States; Great Britain; the area around the Rhine river valley, namely the
Rhineland
The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Term
Historically, the Rhinelands ...
and the
Ruhr
The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...
regions of Germany, eastern France, and the Low Countries; the Soviet Union and Japan. Kennan argued that if the "industrialized zones" except for the Soviet Union were aligned with the United States, then his country would be the world's dominant power. As such, "containment" applied only to the control of the "industrialized zones" of the world. Kennan had considerable disdain for the peoples of the
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
, and he viewed European rule over much of Asia and Africa as natural and normal. These views were typical of American officials in the late 1940s, but Kennan was unusual in retaining these views for the rest of his life; by the 1950s, many officials such as the Dulles had come to feel that the perception that the average white American disliked non-white peoples was hurting America's image in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and this in turn was giving the advantage to the Soviet Union. Kennan felt that the United States should in general not be involved in the Third World as he felt there was nothing worth having there. There were some exceptions as Kennan regarded Latin America as being in the American sphere of influence as he felt that Washington should inform the leaders of the Latin American republics that they should "be careful not to wander too far from our side". Acheson was so offended by a report Kennan wrote in March 1950 in which he suggested that miscegenation between Europeans, Indians and African slaves was the root cause of Latin America's economic backwardness that he refused to have it distributed to the rest of the State Department. Kennan felt that both the oil of
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
and the
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...
were important to the West, and he recommended the United States should support Britain against the demands of
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Mosaddegh ( fa, محمد مصدق, ; 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was an Iranian politician, author, and lawyer who served as the 35th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, after appointment by the 16th Majlis. He was a member of ...
and
Mostafa El-Nahas
Mostafa el-Nahhas Pasha or Mostafa Nahas ( ar, مصطفى النحاس باشا; June 15, 1879 – August 23, 1965) was an Egyptian politician who served as the Prime Minister for five terms.
Early life, education and exile
He was born in ...
to respectively take control of the Iranian oil industry and the Suez Canal. Kennan wrote that
Abadan
Abadan ( fa, آبادان ''Ābādān'', ) is a city and capital of Abadan County, Khuzestan Province, which is located in the southwest of Iran. It lies on Abadan Island ( long, 3–19 km or 2–12 miles wide). The island is bounded ...
(the center of the Iranian oil industry) and the Suez Canal were crucial for the West for economic reasons, which justified the use of "military strength" by the Western powers to keep control of these places.
Kennan and the Eisenhower administration
Kennan returned to Washington, where he became embroiled in disagreements with
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
's hawkish Secretary of State,
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (, ; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959 and was briefly ...
. Even so, he was able to work constructively with the new administration. During the summer of 1953 President Eisenhower asked Kennan to manage the first of a series of top-secret teams, dubbed
Operation Solarium
Project Solarium was an American national-level exercise in strategy and foreign policy design convened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the summer of 1953. It was intended to produce consensus among senior officials in the national security c ...
, examining the advantages and disadvantages of continuing the Truman administration's policy of containment and of seeking to "
roll back" existing areas of Soviet influence. Upon completion of the project, the president seemed to endorse the group's recommendations.
By lending his prestige to Kennan's position, the president tacitly signaled his intention to formulate the strategy of his administration within the framework of its predecessor's, despite the misgivings of some within the
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
. The critical difference between the Truman and Eisenhower policies of containment had to do with Eisenhower's concerns that the United States could not indefinitely afford great military spending. The new president thus sought to minimize costs not by acting whenever and wherever the Soviets acted (a strategy designed to avoid risk) but rather whenever and wherever the United States could afford to act.
In 1954, Kennan appeared as a character witness for
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...
during the government's efforts to revoke his security clearance. Despite his departure from government service, Kennan was frequently still consulted by the officials of the Eisenhower administration. When the CIA obtained the transcript of Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" attacking Stalin in May 1956, Kennan was one of the first people whom the text of the "Secret Speech" was shown to.
On 11 October 1956, Kennan testified to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs about the massive protests going on in Poland that Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was "eroding more rapidly than I ever anticipated". The fact that a nationalist faction of the Polish Communist Party led by
Władysław Gomułka
Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the ''de facto'' leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948. Following the Polish October he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. Go ...
overthrew the Stalinist leadership in Warsaw over the objections of Khrushchev, who was forced to reluctantly accept the change in leadership, led Kennan to predicate that Poland was moving in a "Titoist" direction as Gomułka for his all commitment to Communism also made it clear that he wanted Poland to be more independent of Moscow. In 1957, Kennan departed the United States to work as the George Eastman Professor at Balliol College at Oxford. Sir
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...
wrote that Kennan expected the Fellows of Balliol College to be engaged in conversation "polished by deep tradition, refinement, moral quality" and was instead disgusted to find that Fellows were engrossed in "a lot of idle gossip about local affairs, academic titles. He was horrified about that. Profound disappointment. England was not as he thought. An idealised image has been shattered". Kennan wrote about the Fellows of Balliol College in a letter to Oppenheimer: "I've never seen such back-biting, such fury, such fractions in all my life". In the same letter, Kennan wrote that the only Fellow with whom he could have a "serious conversation" with was Berlin, and the rest were all obsessed with spreading malicious gossip about each other. However, Kennan was popular with the students at Balliol College as his twice weekly lectures on international relations were as he put it "tremendously successful", indeed to such an extent that he had to be assigned a larger lecture hall as hundreds of students lined up to hear him speak.
In October 1957, Kennan delivered the Reith lectures on the BBC under the title ''Russia, the Atom and the West'', stating that if the partition of Germany continued, then "the chances for peace are very slender indeed". Kennan defended the partition of Germany in 1945 as necessary, but went on to say:
"But there is a danger in permitting it to harden into a permanent attitude. It expects too much and for too long of a time of the United States, which is not a European power. It does less than justice to the strength and abilities of the European themselves. It leaves unsolved the extremely precarious and unsound arrangements which now govern the status of Berlin-the least disturbance of which could easily produce a new world crisis. It takes no account of the present dangerous situation in the satellite area. It renders permanent what was meant to be temporary. It assigns half of Europe by implication to the Russians...The future of Berlin is vital to the future of Germany as a whole: the needs of its people and the extreme insecurity of the Western position there alone would constitute reasons why no one in the West should view the present division of Germany as a satisfactory permanent solution even if no other factors are involved".
To resolve the "German question", Kennan advocated a version of his "program A" of 1949 calling for the complete withdraw of most of the British, French, American and Soviet forces from Germany as a prelude to German reunification and for the neutralization of Germany. Besides his call to a solution to the "German question", Kennan also predicated that Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was "shaky", and the best thing the Western powers could do was to pursue a firm, but essentially non-confrontational policy towards the Soviet Union to persuade Khrushchev it would not be dangerous for him to let Eastern Europe go. The Reith lectures caused much controversy, and involved Kennan in a very public war of words with Acheson and the vice president Richard Nixon about the correct solution to the "German question". The West German foreign minister, Heinrich von Brentano, stated about Kennan's Reith lectures: "Whoever says these things is no friend of the German people".
Ambassador to Yugoslavia
During
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
's 1960 presidential election campaign Kennan wrote to the future president to offer some suggestions on how his administration should improve the country's foreign affairs. Kennan wrote, "What is needed is a succession of ... calculated steps, timed in such a way as not only to throw the adversary off balance but to keep him off it, and prepared with sufficient privacy so that the advantage of surprise can be retained." He also urged the administration to "assure a divergence of outlook and policy between the Russians and Chinese," which could be accomplished by improving relations with Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
who had wanted to distance himself from the Communist Chinese.
[.] He wrote: "We should ... without deceiving ourselves about Khrushchev's political personality and without nurturing any unreal hopes, be concerned to keep him politically in the running and to encourage the survival in Moscow of the tendencies he personifies". Additionally, he recommended that the United States work toward creating divisions within the Soviet bloc by undermining its power in Eastern Europe and encouraging the independent propensities of satellite governments.
Although Kennan had not been considered for a job by Kennedy's advisers, the president himself offered Kennan the choice of ambassadorship in either
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
or
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
. Kennan was more interested in
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
, so he accepted Kennedy's offer and began his job in Yugoslavia during May 1961.
Kennan was tasked with trying to strengthen Yugoslavia's policy against the Soviets and to encourage other states in the
Eastern bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
to pursue
autonomy
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ...
from the Soviets. Kennan found his ambassadorship in Belgrade to be much improved from his experiences in Moscow a decade earlier. He commented, "I was favored in being surrounded with a group of exceptionally able and loyal assistants, whose abilities I myself admired, whose judgment I valued, and whose attitude toward myself was at all times ... enthusiastically cooperative ... Who was I to complain?"
Kennan found the Yugoslav government treated the American diplomats politely, in contrast from the way in which the Russians treated him in Moscow. He wrote that the Yugoslavs "considered me, rightly or wrongly, a distinguished person in the U.S., and they were pleased that someone whose name they had heard before was being sent to Belgrade".
[.]
Kennan found it difficult to perform his job in Belgrade. President
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
and his
foreign minister
A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between cou ...
,
Koča Popović
Konstantin "Koča" Popović ( sr-cyrl, Константин "Коча" Поповић; 14 March 1908 – 20 October 1992) was a Yugoslav politician and communist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, 1937–1939 and Divisional Commander of the Fir ...
, began to suspect that Kennedy would adopt an anti-Yugoslav policy during his term. Tito and Popović considered Kennedy's decision to observe
Captive Nations Week
Captive Nations Week is an annual official observance in the United States aimed at demonstrating solidarity with "captive nations" under the control of authoritarian governments.
Background
Initially, the week was aimed at raising public awarene ...
as an indication that the United States would assist anticommunist liberation efforts in Yugoslavia. Tito also believed that the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
and
the Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
were the true directors of American foreign policy. Kennan attempted to restore Tito's confidence in the American foreign policy establishment but his efforts were compromised by a pair of diplomatic blunders, the
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fina ...
, and the
U-2 spy incident.
Relations between Yugoslavia and the United States quickly began to worsen. In September 1961, Tito held a conference of nonaligned nations, where he delivered speeches that the U.S. government interpreted as being pro-Soviet. According to historian David Mayers, Kennan argued that Tito's perceived pro-Soviet policy was in fact a ploy to "buttress Khrushchev's position within the Politburo against hardliners opposed to improving relations with the West and against China, which was pushing for a major Soviet–U.S. showdown". This policy also earned Tito "credit in the Kremlin to be drawn upon against future Chinese attacks on his communist credentials".
[.] While politicians and government officials expressed growing concern about Yugoslavia's relationship with the Soviets, Kennan believed that the country had an "anomalous position in the Cold War that objectively suited U.S. purposes".
[.] Kennan also believed that within a few years, Yugoslavia's example would cause states in the Eastern bloc to demand more social and economic autonomy from the Soviets.
By 1962, Congress had passed legislation to deny financial aid grants to Yugoslavia, to withdraw the sale of spare parts for Yugoslav warplanes, and to revoke the country's
most favored nation status. Kennan strongly protested the legislation, arguing that it would only result in a straining of relations between Yugoslavia and the U.S.
[.] Kennan came to Washington during the summer of 1962 to lobby against the legislation but was unable to elicit a change from Congress. President Kennedy endorsed Kennan privately but remained noncommittal publicly, as he did not want to jeopardize his slim majority support in Congress on a potentially contentious issue.
In a lecture to the staff of the U.S embassy in Belgrade on 27 October 1962, Kennan came out very strongly in support of Kennedy's policies in the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
, saying that Cuba was still in the American sphere of influence and as such the Soviets had no right to place missiles in Cuba. In his speech, Kennan called Fidel Castro's regime "one of the bloodiest dictatorships the world has seen in the entire postwar period", which justified Kennedy's efforts to overthrow the Communist Cuban government. Against Khrushchev's demand that American missiles be pulled out of Turkey as the price for pulling Soviet missiles out of Cuba, Kennan stated Turkey was never in the Soviet sphere of influence whereas Cuba was in the American sphere of influence, which for him made it legitimate for the United States to place missiles in Turkey and illegitimate for the Soviet Union to place missiles in Cuba.
In December 1962 when Tito visited Moscow to meet with Khrushchev, Kennan reported to Washington that Tito was a Russophile as he lived in Russia between 1915–20, and still had sentimental memories of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which had converted him to Communism. However, Kennan observed from his dealings with Tito that he was very firmly committed to keeping Yugoslavia neutral in the Cold War, and his expressions of affection for Russian culture during his visit to Moscow did not mean that he wanted Yugoslavia back into the Soviet bloc. Accordingly, to Kennan, the Sino-Soviet split had caused Khrushchev to want a reconciliation with Tito to counter the Chinese charge that the Soviet Union was a bullying imperialist power, and Tito was willing to accept better relations with the Soviet Union to improve his bargaining power with the West. Kennan also described Tito's championing of the non-aligned movement as a way of improving Yugoslavia's bargaining power with both West and East, as it allowed him to cast himself as a world leader who spoke for an important bloc of nations instead of being based on the "intrinsic value" of the non-aligned movement (which was actually little as most of the non-aligned nations were poor Third World nations). In this regard, Kennan reported to Washington that senior Yugoslav officials had told him that Tito's speeches praising the non-aligned movement were just diplomatic posturing that should not be taken too seriously.
However, many in Congress did take Tito's speeches seriously, and reached the conclusion that Yugoslavia was an anti-Western nation, much to Kennan's chagrin. Kennan argued that since Tito wanted Yugoslavia to be neutral in the Cold War, that there was no point in expecting Yugoslavia to align itself with the West, but Yugoslav neutrality did serve American interests as it ensured that Yugoslavia's powerful army was not at the disposal of the Soviets and the Soviet Union had no air or naval bases in Yugoslavia that could be used to threaten Italy and Greece, both members of NATO. More importantly, Kennan noted that Yugoslavia's policy of "market socialism" gave it a higher standard of living than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, that there was greater freedom of expression there than in other Communist nations, and the very existence of a Communist nation in Eastern Europe that was not under the control of the Kremlin was very destabilizing to the Soviet bloc as it inspired other communist leaders with the desire for greater independence. With U.S.–Yugoslav relations getting progressively worse, Kennan tendered his resignation as ambassador during late July 1963.
Academic career and later life
In 1957 Kennan was invited by the BBC to give the annual
Reith Lectures
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...
, a series of six radio lectures which were titled ''Russia, the Atom and the West''. These covered the history, effect, and possible consequences of relations between Russia and the West.
After the end of his brief ambassadorial post in Yugoslavia during 1963, Kennan spent the rest of his life in academe, becoming a major
realist critic of U.S. foreign policy.
Having spent 18 months as a scholar at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
(IAS) between 1950 and 1952, Kennan joined the faculty of the Institute's School of Historical Studies in 1956, and spent the rest of his life there.
Opposition to the Vietnam War
During the 1960s, Kennan criticized
U.S. involvement in Vietnam, arguing that the United States had little vital interest in the region.
In February 1966, Kennan testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the request of the committee's chairman, Senator
J. William Fulbright
James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. , Fulbright is the longest serving chair ...
, where he stated that the "preoccupation" with Vietnam was undermining U.S. global leadership. He accused the administration of
Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
of distorting his policies into a purely military approach. President Johnson was so annoyed by the hearings called by his friend-turned-foe Fulbright that he tried to upstage them by holding a sudden and unannounced
summit in Honolulu starting on 5 February 1966 with Chief of State
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (; 5 April 1923 – 29 September 2001) was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. He was a general in the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, Republic o ...
and Prime Minister
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (; 8 September 1930 – 23 July 2011) was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who served as the chief of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force in the 1960s, before leading the nation as the prime minister of South V ...
of South Vietnam, where he declared that the United States was making excellent progress in Vietnam and was committed to social and economic reforms.
Kennan testified that were the United States not already fighting in Vietnam that: "I would know of no reason why we should wish to become so involved, and I could think of several reasons why we should wish not to". He was opposed to an immediate pull-out from Vietnam, saying "A precipitate and disorderly withdrawal could represent in present circumstances a disservice to our own interests, and even to world peace", but added that he felt "there is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives." In his testimony, Kennan argued that
Ho Chi Minh
(: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime ...
was "not Hitler" and everything he had read about him suggested that Ho was a Communist, but also a Vietnamese nationalist who did not want his country to be subservient to either the Soviet Union or China. He further testified that to defeat North Vietnam would mean a cost in human life "for which I would not like to see this country be responsible for". Kennan compared the Johnson administration's policy towards Vietnam as being like that of "an elephant frightened by a mouse".
Kennan ended his testimony by quoting a remark made by John Quincy Adams: "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." Kennan then stated: "Now, gentlemen, I don't know exactly what John Quincy Adams had in mind when he spoke those words. But I think that, without knowing it, he spoke very directly and very pertinently to us here today." The hearings were aired live on television (at the time a rare occurrence), and Kennan's reputation as the "Father of Containment" ensured that his testimony attracted much media attention, all the more so as the Johnson administration professed to be carrying out in Vietnam "containment" policies. Thus Johnson pressured the main television networks not to air Kennan's testimony, and as a result, the CBS network aired reruns of ''I Love Lucy'' while Kennan was before the Senate, provoking the CBS director of television programming,
Fred Friendly
Fred W. Friendly (born Ferdinand Friendly Wachenheimer, October 30, 1915 – March 3, 1998) was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program ''See It Now''. He originated the concept ...
, to resign in protest . By contrast, the NBC network resisted the presidential pressure and did air the proceedings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. To counter Kennan's testimony, Johnson sent Secretary of State
Dean Rusk
David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909December 20, 1994) was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving Secretary of State after Cordell Hull from the F ...
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he testified that the war in Vietnam was a morally just struggle to stop "...the steady extension of Communist power through force and threat."
Despite expectations, Kennan's testimony before the Senate attracted high ratings on television. Kennan himself recalled that in the month afterward he received a flood of letters, which led him to write about the public response: "It was perfectly tremendous. I haven't expected anything remotely like this." The columnist
Art Buchwald
Arthur Buchwald (October 20, 1925 – January 17, 2007) was an American humorist best known for his column in ''The Washington Post''. At the height of his popularity, it was published nationwide as a syndicated column in more than 500 newspaper ...
described being stunned to see that his wife and her friends had spent the day watching Kennan testify instead of the standard soap operas, saying that he did not realize that American housewives were interested in such matters. Fulbright's biographer wrote that testimony of Kennan together with General James Gavin was important because they were not "irresponsible students or a wild-eyed radicals," which made it possible for "respectable people" to oppose the Vietnam War. Kennan's testimony in February 1966 was the most successful of his various bids to influence public opinion after leaving the State Department. Before he appeared before the Senate, 63% of the American public approved of Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War; after his testimony, 49% did.
Critic of the counterculture
Kennan's opposition to the Vietnam War did not mean any sympathy for the student protests against the Vietnam War. In his 1968 book ''Democracy and the Student Left'', Kennan attacked the left-wing university students demonstrating against the Vietnam War as violent and intolerant. Kennan compared the "
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
" students of the 1960s with the ''
Narodnik
The Narodniks (russian: народники, ) were a politically conscious movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, ...
'' student radicals of 19th century Russia, accusing both of being an arrogant group of elitists whose ideas were fundamentally undemocratic and dangerous. Kennan wrote that most of the demands of the student radicals were "gobbledygook" and he charged that their political style was marked by a complete lack of humor, extremist tendencies and mindless destructive urges. Kennan conceded that the student radicals were right to oppose the Vietnam War, but he complained that they were confusing policy with institutions as he argued that just because an institution executed a misguided policy did not make it evil and worthy of destruction.
Kennan blamed the student radicalism of the late 1960s on what he called the "sickly secularism" of American life, which he charged was too materialistic and shallow to allow understanding of the "slow powerful process of organic growth" which had made America great. Kennan wrote that what he regarded as the spiritual malaise of America had created a generation of young Americans with an "extreme disbalance in emotional and intellectual growth." Kennan ended his book with a lament that the America of his youth no longer existed as he complained that most Americans were seduced by advertising into a consumerist lifestyle that left them indifferent to the environmental degradation all around them and to the gross corruption of their politicians. Kennan argued that he was the real radical as: "They haven't seen anything yet. Not only do my apprehensions outclass theirs, but my ideas of what would have to be done to put things right are far more radical than theirs."
In a speech delivered in Williamsburg on 1 June 1968, Kennan criticized the authorities for an "excess of tolerance" in dealing with student protests and rioting by Afro-Americans. Kennan called for the suppression of the New Left and Black Power movements in a way that would be "answerable to the voters only at the next election, but not to the press or even the courts". Kennan argued for "special political courts" be created to try New Left and Black Power activists as he stated that this was the only way to save the United States from chaos. At the same time, Kennan stated that based upon his visits to South Africa: "I have a soft spot in my mind for ''
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
'', not as practiced in South Africa, but as a concept." Through Kennan disliked the petty, humiliating aspects of ''apartheid'', he had much praise for the "deep religious sincerity" of the
Afrikaners
Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from Free Burghers, predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: ...
whose
Calvinist
Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Ca ...
faith he shared while he dismissed the capacity of South African blacks to run their country. Kennan argued in 1968 that a system similar to ''apartheid'' was needed for the United States as he doubted the ability of average black American male to operate "in a system he neither understands nor respects," leading him to advocate the
Bantustan
A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now N ...
s of South Africa to be used as a model with areas of the United States to be set aside for Afro-Americans. Kennan did not approve of the social changes of the 1960s. During a visit to Denmark in 1970, he came across a youth festival, which he described with disgust as "swarming with hippies—motorbikes, girl-friends, drugs, pornography, drunkenness, noise. I looked at this mob and thought how one company of robust Russian infantry would drive it out of town.”
Establishment of Kennan Institute
Always a student of Russian affairs Kennan, together with
Wilson Center
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (or Wilson Center) is a quasi-government entity and think tank which conducts research to inform public policy. Located in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washi ...
Director
James Billington and historian
S. Frederick Starr
Stephen Frederick Starr (born March 24, 1940) is an American expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs, a musician, and a former president of Oberlin College.
Founder and chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, he is fluent in Russian a ...
, initiated the establishment of the
Kennan Institute
The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to carry out studies of the Soviet Union (Sovietology), and subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states. The institute is widely ...
at the academic institution named for
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
. The Institute is named to honour the American
George Kennan (explorer)
George Kennan (February 16, 1845 – May 10, 1924) was an Americans, American explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka Peninsula, Kamchatka and Caucasus regions of the Russian Empire. He was a cousin twice removed of the American dip ...
of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, a relation of the subject of this article. Scholars at the Institute are meant to study Russia, Ukraine and the Eurasian region.
Critic of the arms race
Containment, when he published the first volume of his memoirs in 1967, involved something other than the use of military "counterforce". He was never pleased that the policy he influenced was associated with the
arms build-up of the Cold War. In his memoirs, Kennan argued that containment did not demand a militarized U.S. foreign policy. "Counterforce" implied the political and economic defense of Western Europe against the disruptive effect of the war on European society. According to him, the Soviet Union exhausted by war posed no serious military threat to the US or its allies at the beginning of the Cold War but was rather an ideological and political rival.
Kennan believed that the USSR, Britain, Germany, Japan, and North America remained the areas of vital U.S. interests. During the 1970s and 1980s as
détente
Détente (, French: "relaxation") is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The term, in diplomacy, originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduc ...
was ended particularly under
President Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
, he was a major critic of the renewed arms race.
Politics of silence
In 1989 President
George H. W. Bush awarded Kennan the
Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merito ...
, the nation's greatest civilian honor. Yet he remained a realist critic of recent U.S. presidents, urging in a 1999 interview with the ''
New York Review of Books
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
'' the U.S. government to "withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights," saying that the "tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable".
These ideas were particularly applicable to U.S. relations with China and Russia.
Opposition to NATO enlargement
A key inspiration for American containment policies during the Cold War, Kennan would later describe NATO's enlargement as a "strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions".
Kennan opposed
the Clinton administration's war in Kosovo and its
expansion of NATO
NATO is a military alliance of Member states of NATO, twenty-eight European and two North American countries that constitutes a system of collective defense. The process of joining the alliance is governed by Article 10 of the North Atlantic ...
(the establishment of which he had also opposed half a century earlier), expressing fears that both policies would worsen relations with Russia.
[.]
During a 1998 interview with ''The New York Times'' after the U.S. Senate had just ratified NATO's first round of expansion, he said "there was no reason for this whatsoever". He was concerned that it would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic" opinions in Russia. "The Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies," he said. Kennan was also bothered by talks that Russia was "dying to attack Western Europe", explaining that, on the contrary, the Russian people had revolted to "remove that Soviet regime" and that their "democracy was as far advanced" as the other countries that had just signed up for NATO then.
Last years
Kennan remained vigorous and alert during the last years of his life, although
arthritis
Arthritis is a term often used to mean any disorder that affects joints. Symptoms generally include joint pain and stiffness. Other symptoms may include redness, warmth, swelling, and decreased range of motion of the affected joints. In som ...
had him using a wheelchair. During his later years, Kennan concluded that "the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union". At age 98 he warned of the unforeseen consequences of waging war against Iraq. He warned that
attacking Iraq would amount to waging a second war that "bears no relation to
the first war against terrorism" and declared efforts by the
Bush administration to associate
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...
with
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
"pathetically unsupportive and unreliable". Kennan went on to warn:
Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
In his final years, Kennan embraced the ideals of the
Second Vermont Republic
The Second Vermont Republic (SVR, 2VR) is a secessionist group within the U.S. state of Vermont which seeks to restore the formerly independent status of the Vermont Republic (1777–91). It describes itself as "a nonviolent citizens' network and ...
, a
secession
Secession is the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity, but also from any organization, union or military alliance. Some of the most famous and significant secessions have been: the former Soviet republics le ...
ist movement incorporated in 2003. Noting the large-scale Mexican immigration to the Southwestern United States, Kennan said in 2002 there were "unmistakable evidences of a growing differentiation between the cultures, respectively, of large southern and southwestern regions of this country, on the one hand", and those of "some northern regions". In the former, "the very culture of the bulk of the population of these regions will tend to be primarily Latin American in nature rather than what is inherited from earlier American traditions ... Could it really be that there was so little of merit
n America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
that it deserves to be recklessly trashed in favor of a polyglot mix-mash?" It's argued that Kennan represented throughout his career the "tradition of militant
nativism" that resembled or even exceeded the
Know Nothings
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...
of the 1850s. Kennan also believed American women had too much power.
In February 2004 scholars, diplomats, and Princeton alumni gathered at the university's campus to celebrate Kennan's 100th birthday. Among those in attendance were Secretary of State
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...
,
international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as ...
theorist
John Mearsheimer
John Joseph Mearsheimer (; born December 14, 1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the Univers ...
, journalist
Chris Hedges
Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author, and commentator.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for ''The Christian Science Mon ...
, former ambassador and career
Foreign Service officer
A Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is a commissioned member of the United States Foreign Service. Foreign Service Officers formulate and implement the foreign policy of the United States. FSOs spend most of their careers overseas as members of U ...
Jack F. Matlock, Jr., and Kennan's biographer,
John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is an American international relations scholar, military historian, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War an ...
.
Kennan died on March 17, 2005, at his home in
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...
, New Jersey, aged 101. He was survived by his Norwegian wife Annelise, whom he married in 1931, and his four children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
Annelise died in 2008 at the age of 98.
In an obituary in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Kennan was described as "the American diplomat who did more than any other envoy of his generation to shape United States policy during the cold war" to whom "the White House and the Pentagon turned when they sought to understand the Soviet Union after World War II".
Of Kennan, historian
Wilson D. Miscamble remarked "
e can only hope that present and future makers of foreign policy might share something of his integrity and intelligence".
''
Foreign Policy
A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...
'' described Kennan as "the most influential diplomat of the 20th century".
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
said that Kennan "came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history", while
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...
called Kennan "our best tutor" in dealing with the foreign policy issues of the 21st century.
Published works
During his career at the IAS, Kennan wrote seventeen books and scores of articles on international relations. He won the
Pulitzer Prize for History
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history ...
,
["History"]
. ''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-17. the
National Book Award for Nonfiction
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists ...
,
["National Book Awards – 1957"]
. National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved 2012-03-17. (With acceptance speech by Kennan.) the
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas.
It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, ...
, and the
Francis Parkman Prize
The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American ...
for ''Russia Leaves the War'', published in 1956.
He again won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award
["National Book Awards – 1968"]
. National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved 2012-03-17. in 1968 for ''Memoirs, 1925–1950''. A second volume, taking his reminiscences up to 1963 was published in 1972. Among his other works were ''American Diplomacy 1900–1950'', ''Sketches from a Life'', published in 1989, and ''Around the Cragged Hill'' in 1993.
His properly historical works amount to a six-volume account of the relations between Russia and the West from 1875 to his own time; the period from 1894 to 1914 was planned but not completed. He was chiefly concerned with:
* The folly of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
as a choice of policy; he argues that the costs of modern war, direct and indirect, predictably exceeded the benefits of eliminating the
Hohenzollern
The House of Hohenzollern (, also , german: Haus Hohenzollern, , ro, Casa de Hohenzollern) is a German royal (and from 1871 to 1918, imperial) dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenb ...
s.
* The ineffectiveness of summit diplomacy, with the
Conference of Versailles
A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic.
Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...
as a type-case. National leaders have too much to do to give any single matter the constant and flexible attention which diplomatic problems require.
* The
Allied intervention in Russia
Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War or Allied Powers intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions which began in 1918. The Allies first had the goal of helping the Czechoslovak Legio ...
in 1918–19. He was indignant with Soviet accounts of a vast capitalist conspiracy against the world's first worker's state, some of which do not even mention the First World War; he was equally indignant with the decision to intervene as costly and harmful. He argues that the interventions, by arousing Russian nationalism, may have ensured the survival of the Bolshevik state.
Kennan had a low opinion of
President Roosevelt, arguing in 1975: "For all his charm, political skill, and able wartime leadership, when it came to foreign policy Roosevelt was a superficial, ignorant dilettante, a man with a severely limited intellectual horizon."
*
*
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* Kennan, George F. (1956), "The Sisson Documents," ''Journal of Modern History'' v. 28 (June, 1956), 130–154
*
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*
* .
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Correspondence
*
John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs (; Hungarian: ''Lukács János Albert''; 31 January 1924 – 6 May 2019) was a Hungarian-born American historian and author of more than thirty books. Lukacs was Roman Catholic. Lukacs described himself as a reactionary.
...
(ed.), ''George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944–1946: The Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence'' (University of Missouri Press, 1997).
Awards, honors and legacy
During his career, Kennan received a number of awards and honors. As a scholar and writer, Kennan was a two-time recipient of both the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
s and the
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
, and had also received the
Francis Parkman Prize
The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American ...
, the
Ambassador Book Award
The Ambassador Book Award (1986–2011) was presented annually by the English-Speaking Union. It recognized important literary and non-fiction works that contributed to the understanding and interpretation of American life and culture. Winners of ...
and the
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas.
It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, ...
.
Among Kennan's numerous other awards and distinctions were the Testimonial of Loyal and Meritorious Service from the Department of State (1953), Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Nation's Service (1976), the Order of the
Pour le Mérite
The ' (; , ) is an order of merit (german: Verdienstorden) established in 1740 by Frederick the Great, King Frederick II of Prussia. The was awarded as both a military and civil honour and ranked, along with the Order of the Black Eagle, the Or ...
(1976), the
Albert Einstein Peace Prize
The Albert Einstein Peace Prize was a peace prize awarded annually since 1980 by the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. The Foundation dates from 1979, the centenary of the birth of Albert Einstein, and evokes the Russell–Einstein Manifesto ...
(1981), the
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
is an international peace prize awarded annually by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (English: ''German Publishers and Booksellers Association''), which runs the Frankfurt Book Fair. The award ceremony is held in the Paulskirche in ...
(1982), the
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal
Two American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals are awarded each year by the academy for distinguished achievement. The two awards are taken in rotation from these categories:
*Belles Lettres and Criticism, and Painting;
*Biography and Mus ...
(1984), the
American Whig-Cliosophic Society
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
's
James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
(1985), the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation Freedom from Fear Medal (1987), the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merito ...
(1989), the Distinguished Service Award from the Department of State (1994), and the
Library of Congress Living Legend
A Library of Congress Living Legend was someone recognized by the Library of Congress for creative contributions to American life. Those honored include artists, writers, activists, film makers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures, and public ...
(2000).
Kennan had also received 29 honorary degrees and was honored in his name with the George F. Kennan Chair in National Security Strategy at the
National War College
The National War College (NWC) of the United States is a school in the National Defense University. It is housed in Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., the third-oldest Army post still active.
History
The National War Colle ...
and the George F. Kennan Professorship at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
.
In June 2022, a memorial plaque honoring Kenan was unveiled in
Belgrade
Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...
,
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
at the site of the former U.S. embassy. Kenan had served in the country when it was part of
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
, from 1961 to 1963.
Academic criticism
Russell argues that a school of thought known as
political realism
Realism is one of the dominant schools of thought in international relations theory, theoretically formalising the Realpolitik statesmanship of early modern Europe. Although a highly diverse body of thought, it is unified by the belief that wor ...
formed the basis of Kennan's work as a diplomat and historian and remains relevant to the debate over
American foreign policy
The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...
, which since the 19th century has been characterized by a shift from the
Founding Fathers
The following list of national founding figures is a record, by country, of people who were credited with establishing a state. National founders are typically those who played an influential role in setting up the systems of governance, (i.e. ...
' realist school to the idealistic or
Wilsonian
Wilsonianism, or Wilsonian idealism, is a certain type of foreign policy advice. The term comes from the ideas and proposals of President Woodrow Wilson. He issued his famous Fourteen Points in January 1918 as a basis for ending World War I and pr ...
school of international relations. According to the realist tradition, security is based on the principle of a balance of power, whereas Wilsonianism (considered impractical by realists) relies on morality as the sole determining factor in statecraft. According to the Wilsonians the spread of democracy abroad as a foreign policy is important and morals are valid universally. During the
Presidency of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...
, American diplomacy represented the Wilsonian school to such a degree that those instead in favor of realism likened President Clinton's policies to social work. According to Kennan, whose concept of American diplomacy was based on the realist approach, such moralism without regard to the realities of power and the national interest is self-defeating and will result in the decrease of American power.
In his historical writings and memoirs, Kennan laments in great detail the failings of democratic foreign policy makers and those of the United States in particular. According to Kennan, when American policymakers suddenly confronted the Cold War, they had inherited little more than rationale and rhetoric "utopian in expectations, legalistic in concept, moralistic in
hedemand it seemed to place on others, and self-righteous in the degree of high-mindedness and rectitude ... to ourselves". The source of the problem is the force of public opinion, a force that is inevitably unstable, unserious, subjective, emotional, and simplistic. Kennan has insisted that the U.S. public can only be united behind a foreign policy goal on the "primitive level of slogans and jingoistic ideological inspiration".
Miscamble argues that Kennan played a critical role in developing the foreign policies of the Truman administration. He also states that Kennan did not hold a vision for either global or strongpoint containment; he simply wanted to restore the
balance of power between the United States and the Soviets. Like historian
John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is an American international relations scholar, military historian, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War an ...
, Miscamble concedes that although Kennan personally preferred political containment, his recommendations ultimately resulted in a policy directed more toward strongpoint than to global containment.
See also
*
Cold War (1947–1953)
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because th ...
* ''
George F. Kennan: An American Life'' (2011 biography)
*
Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to carry out studies of the Soviet Union (Sovietology), and subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states. The institute is widely ...
*
Origins of the Cold War
Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Comics and manga
* ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002
* ''The Origin'' (Buffy comic), a 1999 ''Buffy the Vampire Sl ...
References
Notes
Bibliography
* Congdon, Lee. ''George Kennan: A Writing Life'' (2008)
* .
* Felix, David (2015) ''Kennan and the Cold War: An Unauthorized Biography.'' Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
* .
* . (see
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
)
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alternative link.
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Further reading
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External links
George F. Kennan Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton Universityfrom ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''
Obituaryfrom ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennan, George F.
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