Cold Warrior: George Kennan’s reputation and his actual thinking

On Friday, the man the Boston Globe called America's "greatest living diplomat" died at age 101. George Kennan was the last survivor of the group of so-called Wise Men who guided American foreign policy at the onset of the Cold War, along with Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, Robert Lovett, Charles Bohlen, and Jack McCloy. Kennan also became the most celebrated, including winning a Pulitzer Prize and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. These accolades came despite, or perhaps because of, the seemingly huge reversal Kennan's views underwent in the past three decades on virtually everything, from the Cold War and the Soviet Union to nuclear weapons and democracy.

Kennan authored the Cold War doctrine of containment in his famous "X-Telegram" published in Foreign Affairs in 1946, but he was also the first major American public figure to disavow it. A severe critic of Stalin and the Soviet system, he became a resolute anti-anti-Communist. The original architect of the Marshall Plan, he opposed American entry into NATO. He condemned the Vietnam War, even though it flowed from the very foreign policy he had helped to set in motion. As the original Cold Warrior, he lived long enough to blast Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, and to push for a nuclear-weapons ban. At the end, he was a bitter opponent of the Bush doctrine and the war in Iraq, even though members of that administration cited him as one of their inspirations.

Yet, looking closely at Kennan the man, there were no inconsistencies at all. Everything he did or said as a diplomat, historian, Sovietologist, and foreign-policy sage over eight decades arose from his belief that democracies are inherently weak and unstable; that the American people can't be trusted; that only an authoritarian elite can save the people from themselves, and that power is the only reality in a world devoid of principles or morality or hope. Although Kennan despised the Soviet system and its makers, and rightly warned Americans of their menace, he shared their bleak outlook more than anyone dares to admit.

"The trouble with this country," he once told columnist Joseph Alsop, "is that it is a democracy and should be ruled by an aristocracy." Kennan believed all his life that America's elected leaders were ignorant boobs at best or dangerous demagogues at worst, like his fellow Wisconsinite Joe McCarthy (McCarthy from Appleton, Kennan from Milwaukee) and, later, Ronald Reagan. In neither case were they capable of understanding America's true interests on the global chessboard, where in Kennan's view, sovereign states blindly obeyed the dictates of history and geography, not ideas or ideology.

Kennan was a determinist, as well as a fervent believer in realpolitik. "Nations, like individuals, are products of their environment," he wrote, and they could not escape their destiny. Although Kennan became the State Department's leading Kremlinologist, he never took the Kremlin's Communism seriously. He convinced himself that Stalin was just another authoritarian Russian czar, just as in the Thirties he argued Hitler was just another German nationalist, and both would act accordingly if prodded in the right direction. His whole notion of containment rested on that assumption: He was quite prepared to cede Stalin all of Eastern Europe to gratify what he saw as an ancient Russian appetite for empire, if it meant preventing a larger Soviet breakout in the West, and he scoffed all his life at the notion of "rolling back" the Communist tide. The fate of the millions who lived under the regimes the Soviets set up there, or Russia's allies in China and North Korea, mattered little to him. Nor did the Third World. The interaction and strategic interests of the great powers were the only reality for Kennan.

The human factor left him unmoved. When he served in the embassy in Berlin in 1940, he complained bitterly about how keeping track of the fate of German Jewish refugees was adding to his workload. He blamed it on "powerful congressional circles at home," who had been spurred into action by Jewish interest groups. In fact, Kennan believed America's foreign policy was far too vulnerable to the demands of "vocal minorities," and he had his solution for it.

Two years earlier, he had begun writing a book about how to guide America "along the road which leads through constitutional change to the authoritarian state." The first step, he argued, was to create an enlightened elite pre-selected "on the basis of individual fitness for authority." The second was to deny the vote to certain segments of American society: to blacks, whom Kennan believed would be happiest becoming wards of the state; to women; and to immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, including presumably Jews from Poland and Russia. After all, Kennan asked, would not the Founding Fathers "turn over in their graves at the mere thought of the democratic principle being applied to a population containing over ten million Negroes and many more millions of southern Europeans to whom the democratic principle is completely strange?"

Kennan never finished his book or published the chapters he wrote. But they were more than just an indiscreet youthful outburst; he was 34. In just eight years he would write the article for Foreign Affairs that would make him the most influential theorist in the State Department. Later, General Marshall would make him head of the policy-planning staff, where his words would provide background and perspective on policy for thousands of American diplomats. Kennan would do the same later at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study for thousands of enthusiasts for a "realistic" American foreign policy that had no room for "simplistic" notions like rollback or reflexive anti-Communism — or spreading democracy in places like the Middle East.

In the end, Kennan was never comfortable with America's "moral leadership of the planet," in Robert Kennedy's phrase, because he never believed it had any moral leadership to offer. In his eyes, it remained a fickle, dissolute democracy, unworthy of the awesome power fate had thrust upon it. In an interview in 1976, he was still yearning for a single "panel or pool of outstanding people" appointed by the Supreme Court or some other such body, from whom the rulers of the country would be selected.

By the 1980s, his pessimism — which had grown gloomier during the Vietnam years (the people of Vietnam and Cambodia who lived under Communism should expect America's "deep sympathy," he told Congress, but certainly not its help) — became almost total. Every day, he expected nuclear annihilation. "For a country to be ruled this way," he told an interviewer as Reagan was about to be reelected, "disqualifies it from active participation in the world."

Reagan, of course, disagreed. Today the Soviet Union is gone, as is the menace of nuclear warfare. A new era has dawned in Eastern Europe, and a new one is about to begin in the Middle East — all without Kennan's help. In 1946, most Americans had the good sense to pay attention to Kennan's advice. Since then, they have generally had the good sense to ignore it.

— Arthur Herman is the author, most recently, of To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World.

Today the Soviet Union is gone, as is the menace of nuclear warfare.

Whatever one thinks of Kennan, this author is neither intelligent enough or wise enough to pass judgement. The threat of nuclear warfare is certainly not gone...and Russia has replaced one authoritarian regime with another, consistant with their long history and Kennan's assessment of them.

Kennan's analysis of the human condition is part of a long tradition stretching from the Greeks of antiquity through Machiavelli to our day and including the Founding Fathers.

It's weakness lies in his high assessment of the elite. They're only a bit stronger, smarter, tougher than those they rule. Not enough to remedy the short-comings Kennan attributes to democratic rule...and he underestimates the difficulty of finding truly qualified rules as opposed to those who are just rich and powerful. Plato's philosopher king remains as elusive as ever.

The threat of nuclear warfare is certainly not gone

A true, but not really complete statement. At present the chance of a true nuclear holocaust, with thousands of bombs going off, is in the slim to none range. This is very different from the situation from the 1950s through 80s, when it was always a distinct possibility.

OTOH, the chance of somebody firing off one or a few is probably greater than ever, as there are people out there who have a decent chance of getting hold of some and who will not hesitate to use them. That will be terrible for those living in the cities hit, but falls infinitely short of the idea that "nuclear war" brings up for most people who lived during the Cold War.

Losing NYC, Washington and London will not be the end of civilization or even of the US or Britain. It will, however, be shortly followed by the utter destruction of Islamism.

The containment policy was nothing of the kind. Communism was never contained. It took over nation after nation while we sought worthless agreement after worthless agreement. McCarthy and Goldwater and Reagan were right. They wanted to vanquish Communism, not "contain" it or accomodate it.

From about 1950 when we started to take containment seriously, through 1970 when the policy started to fall apart, how many countries did the Communists take over? Cuba, to be sure, but where else? It looks like the policy did work, at least when we were serious about it.

McCarthy and Goldwater and Reagan were right. They wanted to vanquish Communism, not "contain" it or accomodate it.

"Contain" and "accomodate" are two different things. Reagan was fortunate being on the scene when he was. Twenty or thirty years earlier his policies wouldn't have worked. Ten years earlier, Americans wouldn't have accepted them. Containment, to the extent that we practiced it and to the extent that it worked, held the line on things until Reagan and Gorbachev came along. A lot of what Reagan was doing, in Central America, Central Asia and elsewhere, was pretty close to what we had done in the classic era of containment.

As for Goldwater, it's not clear what he would have done or could have achieved if he'd been elected. We like to think now that America is all powerful, but forty years ago most people thought America couldn't go it alone, but needed to work closely with allies to keep the Soviets in check.

We like to think now that America is all powerful, but forty years ago most people thought America couldn't go it alone, but needed to work closely with allies to keep the Soviets in check

This is exactly the type of consensus thinking that Goldwater and Reagan shattered. They rejected the silly idea of containment. The 50's through the 70's when we were "containment seriously" was exactly the time when the Soviets were organizing and inspiring uprisings in Central America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Because we did nothing to halt their advance, nations like Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Nicaragua, Yemen, Ethiopia, etc. fell like ripened fruit into their hands.

Reagan was not lucky to come on the scene when he did. He enacted the very policies that he'd been advocating for thirty years. He chose to starve the Soviets of money, technology, materials and food where before we had enacted policies like the feed grain program. We fed the people while the governments built weapons. Goldwater in '64 or Reagan in '68 or '76 would have done exactly what Reagan did when he finally got in. It's true he met his moment in history in 1980, but in the meantime, millions were murdered.

Reagan was not lucky to come on the scene when he did. He enacted the very policies that he'd been advocating for thirty years. He chose to starve the Soviets of money, technology, materials and food where before we had enacted policies like the feed grain program.

Nonsense. Carter suspended grain shipments to the Soviet Union. Reagan restored them.

The 50's through the 70's when we were "containment seriously" was exactly the time when the Soviets were organizing and inspiring uprisings in Central America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Because we did nothing to halt their advance, nations like Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Nicaragua, Yemen, Ethiopia, etc. fell like ripened fruit into their hands.

It's not surprising that "the Soviets were organizing and inspiring uprisings" during those years. It was a given that they'd try such things That's why we were committed to preventing them from suceeding, and when we stopped countering their measures, they did take over various countries -- not when we were trying to contain the Soviets and their allies, but after we stopped trying.

Reagan was an admirable man and leader, but he was very much in the tradition of containment that Truman and Acheson had developed. By the 1980s, one could take things a little further, since the internal decay that Kennan predicted for the Soviet Union had already set in, but Reagan was very much in the tradition of Truman and Eisenhower. His policies were not a radical departure from our early Cold War policies, but a return to them.

Part of the problem here is that "containment" didn't mean acceptance or "detente" or "peaceful coexistence." It was a means to deal with Soviet power and overcome it, not an end in itself. If we could "contain" Soviet agression, Kennan thought in the 1940s it would weaken the USSR and give more confidence to pro-American forces in the world. Then we could plan our next move.

Reagan was critical of containment as he understood it, and Kennan opposed Reagan's policies, as he understood them, but containment was a large part of Reagan's program. There was a shift in policy from Nixon, Ford and Carter to Reagan, but the difference between Reagan and earlier Cold War presidents, like Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, is often exaggerated.

When I say that Reagan was fortunate to come on the scene when he did, I don't mean that he doesn't deserve the credit for pursuing the right policies. It's just that those policies may not have worked at an earlier time. And there's all the difference in the world between "rollback" as people thought of it in the 1950s and the blend of policies Reagan applied in the 1980s.

More here and here

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