If you want to understand American post-war foreign policy, there is one person you should definitely know:George F. Kennan, diplomat, historian and geostrategist. His insights shaped America's anti-communist policies like no other. But Kennan's ideas were misused for an aggressive arms race. Despite his influence, he felt lonely and misunderstood.
If you want to pinpoint a moment when the Cold War — the long period of tension and arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union — actually began, it could very well be February 22, 1946. Then George Kennan, head of the American embassy in Moscow, dictated a long telegram from his sickbed to the State Department in Washington.
In nearly 8,000 words, which is unusually long for a telegram—Kennan gave a somewhat irritated answer to that question so often asked from Washington. Why are the Russians the way they are? How should we deal with them?
Kennan had worked for the United States Department of State in various Russian and Eastern European posts since 1931. He had studied political science and Russian history and culture in Berlin. Kennan became one of the first American specialists in the field of the Soviet Union. But he was a specialist with an opinion that differed from the elitist club of diplomats in Washington about the Soviet Union.
Crying in the desert
That club of diplomats around the new president Harry Truman tried to build an equal relationship with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin after the Second World War, just as it had been during the war. Countless diplomats were sent to Moscow in the hope of convincing Stalin to hold free elections in Eastern Europe occupied by him. Kennan rightly recognized early on that this was hopeless. Stalin had very different plans. He tried to convince Truman from the beginning of his presidency that he had to accept a divided Europe.
But despite his visionary look, Kennan felt ignored and therefore lonely in Moscow, like a voice crying in the desert. When in February 1946 the question came from Washington why the Soviets would not cooperate in the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he was annoyed at how naive the diplomats were in his eyes. But it was an opportunity to explain once again what he thought Russian politics really was.
In the "long telegram" (read in full here), Kennan writes why it is impossible to build a post-war relationship with the Soviet Union. “Russian policy is not based on an objective analysis of the outside world (…). Their neurotic worldview of the Kremlin stems from the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity." Their policies, according to Kennan, were calculated and aimed at countering this insecurity through constant expansion of power and influence. Stalin also needed a hostile outside world to legitimize his domestic dictatorship.
'Malicious parasite'
Because the Kremlin has such a paranoid worldview, collaboration was virtually impossible. But Kennan also wrote that the Soviet system was internally weak and would soon collapse on its own. In the meantime, America had to accept the Russian spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. Because "Communism is an evil parasite that only eats rotten meat," America must ensure that Western democratic institutions remain strong. Only through strong resistance from the West can the Russian expansionism contain ('contained').
The telegram spoke clear and strong language. Moreover, a language that the policymakers in Washington understood. Senior officials and ministers read it. Reportedly, it even ended up on President Truman's own desk. It gave Kennan what he had been looking for for much of his life:recognition and an end to his loneliness. Kennan was brought back to America from Moscow to give a series of lectures at the prestigious National War College. He was given an official high position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Truman Doctrine
Kennan's lengthy telegram was the basis for a speech Truman gave to Congress on March 12. Truman argued that the US was willing to come to the economic and military aid of Greece and Turkey, where (although that was an exaggeration in Turkey's case) communist guerrillas had unleashed a civil war. He extended this commitment to the entire 'free world'.
“I believe the US should support free peoples who resist attempts to subjugate them by armed minorities or by outside pressure. Our aid must first be economic and financial, in order to promote economic stability and balanced political development.” This later became known as the Truman Doctrine or “Containment Doctrine.”
Kennan's star would rise even further. In December 1946, James Forrestal, the then Secretary of the Navy, asked Kennan for comment on an article his staff had drafted on communism. A month later, Kennan wrote a detailed commentary. Forrestal was so impressed that he nominated Kennan to give a presentation to the Council of Foreign Relations, an independent think tank.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Affairs , the influential and widely read magazine of the Council, asked Kennan if he wanted to publish his story for a wider audience.
'X'
Kennan's article, The sources of Soviet conduct , was published in June 1947. Because he was employed by the Ministry, Kennan published under the pseudonym 'X'. But he was criticized by a New York Times . columnist quickly exposed, turning his article into a government document.
In Foreign Affairs Kennan no longer explains Russian politics from a 'traditional sense of insecurity', but completely from the communist ideology. It was inherently expansionist and aimed at defeating capitalism.
The US had to "contain this," Kennan repeated, and "counteract" any time the Soviet Union jeopardizes the interests of the free world. Not just passively, by holding back and waiting, but also actively, by destabilizing the Soviet world from within. That was one of the motives for establishing a central intelligence service (the CIA) in 1947.
Kennan's lengthy telegram, the ensuing containment doctrine, and the "X" article together formed the basis for the rather aggressive US Cold War policy into the 1970s. But while Kennan's language sometimes sounded quite aggressive, he never meant that the US should contain the Soviet Union by military means.
He was aiming at keeping the Western world economically and socially healthy, so that communism would not gain a foothold there. The Marshall Plan, the large-scale economic aid to Western Europe between 1948 and 1952, of which Kennan was one of the creators, is an example of how it should be done according to Kennan.
Arms Race
But when Marshall was replaced as Secretary of State by Dean Acheson in 1949, Kennan's influence also waned. Acheson was of the hawk type and did not see the "containing" of the Soviet Union as just a political process. This became clear to him from the blockade of Berlin, the communist revolution in China and the first nuclear test by the Soviets.
A policy document that Archeson had drafted even stated that Stalin had a secret plan to dominate the world, something that sounded ridiculous to Kennan. Truman switched to a policy of "active containment" and deterrence, which involved arming friendly states, building an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and supporting violent anti-Communist resistance groups.
For the rest of his life, Kennan would resist the military arms race that was the direct result of the containment doctrine. He therefore wholeheartedly supported it when Henry Kissinger sought relaxation and dialogue with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. As a professor at various American universities, Kennan continued to follow international politics into old age. He passed away in Princeton in 2005, aged 101.