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At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995

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At the turn of the twentieth century, a Russian general negotiating the Franco-Russian alliance wrote that "when it comes to fighting, when it gets near to it, we want all the diplomats to shut up; they mustn't interfere in any way when we get anywhere near to mobilization; they mustn't try to stop it."

George Kennan is the diplomat who wouldn't shut up. Since that "Long Telegram" he sent from Moscow in February 1946, followed by the famous article on The Sources of Soviet Conduct that he published under the pseudonym "X" in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, he has been an independent voice in foreign policy circles, admonishing the United States government to take a more enlightened course of action in relation to Cold War challenges.

George Kennan spent twenty-six years in the American Foreign Service before moving to academia and teaching history at Princeton. He was ten years old when the First World War erupted, eighty-five in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell down, and he lived to be a centenarian. As he remarked in an acceptance speech, paraphrasing Chekhov, history has been his professional wife, whereas disagreeing publicly with his own government about foreign policy has been his professional mistress. This book is composed of notes and articles he penned in the intercourse with his mistress: even when they address historical issues, such as the last years of the Cold War and the downfall of the Soviet empire, they should not be regarded as historical material, and will be of little use to professional historians.

But Kennan's reflections, spanning the period from 1982 to 1995, can still teach us many lessons. He was a virulent critic of the renewed arms race that put America and the Soviet Union at loggerheads in the mid-1980s. He was highly conscious of the profound scars that the First and Second World Wars had left over participating countries, and was convinced that Western civilization could not survive another such catastrophe, let alone a nuclear engagement. The thought that war planners could envision a nuclear conflict where one side would win over the other filled him with terror and anger. Likewise, chronicling the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he strongly rejected the idea that one side had "won" the Cold War: for him, the militarization of American discussion and policy that was promoted by hard-lines circles in the Reagan administration had the countering effect of delaying rather than hastening the disintegration of the socialist block. This may be a point of controversy among historians.

The name of George Kennan is associated with the word and doctrine of containment. This, he explains, is based on a giant misunderstanding. Here is how he sets the record straight: "When, many years ago, I lightheartedly used the word 'containment' in a manner that attracted much attention then and later, what I had in mind was, as many of you know, not a response to a military danger (I saw in fact no such danger), but a response to what I saw as a political danger, flowing from the abnormal conditions that then prevailed in Europe. I did not expect that the need for this sort of 'containment' would last forever. Last of all did it occur to me that it could serve as the rationale for a weapons race of unlimited duration and unprecedented danger." In other words, Kennan envisioned the need to prevent Communists to establish a dominant influence in Western Europe and in Japan, and this was best done through economic development and support provided through the Marshall Plan. As for the doctrine of military containment, he notes in 1985 that "what most needs to be contained is not so much the Soviet Union as the weapons race itself". And he adds, somewhat provocatively, that "the first thing we Americans need to learn to contain is, in some ways, ourselves."

Also controversial are his views on state sovereignty. According to Kennan, the theoretical status of unlimited sovereignty, even as an attribute of the larger and better-qualified states, is becoming more and more unreal and absurd. The rush toward independence and secession has created states that are theoretically sovereign but not self-sustaining or valid by any other criteria. The problem stems from the lack of any suitable intermediary status between complete formal subservience as a minority or administrative unit within a larger state and a total independence an equality with all other states as a member of the universal UN community. Kennan sees membership to the UN as a condition that gives rights but also imposes obligations. States that fall short of these requirements should not be granted equal status. But the inadequacy between institutional order and international challenges is not limited to the UN system: as Kennan notes, "our political system is in many ways poorly designed for the conduct of the foreign policies of a great power aspiring to world leadership."

Although his arguments were developed in a different context, some of his remarks still ring singularly true today: "Just because the leaders of another country do not share our political ideals and do not appear to be nice people, that does not mean that one has to fight a war with them." Or to end with a last quote, "There seems to be a curious American tendency to search, at all times, for a single external center of evil to which all our troubles can be attributed."

George F. Kennan is most widely known as the man who first articulated the policy of containment of communism. In one of the most widely cited articles ever to appear in the magazine "Foreign Affairs", ironically signed by "X", Kennan argued in 1947 that the policy of the United States should be to prevent the spread of communism. No attempt was to be made to roll it back, he believed, and history has proven him correct, that the inherent absurdities of communism would eventually lead to its collapse. However, he never advocated an aggressive military posture, believing that the real struggle was a political one.

This book contains a series of reflections rather than memoirs. Written in the years 1982-1995, they are now somewhat dated, as subsequent events have rendered some of his opinions obsolete. However, his opinions regarding the structure of the Russian heir to the Soviet Union are still very valid. His father was considered the leading American expert on Russia in his time and Kennan followed in his footsteps. Kennan the son also spent a great deal of time in the Soviet Union and his knowledge of how it operated was invaluable. His comments on the true intentions of Stalin at the end of World War II should be taken very seriously and they also point out how simple-minded and naïve American foreign policy often is.

He also argues very strongly for the establishment of a professional Foreign Service division that is independent of political winds. Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen and the current trends are in the opposite direction. It takes decades of accumulated knowledge before you can begin to understand the nature of another country and that can only happen if it is left to professionals. In his reflections, Kennan points out some of the absurdity of the bellicose rhetoric and how both sides in the cold war were often loose with the truth.

One other interesting point is when Kennan cites a mission to the Balkans by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that took place immediately after the two Balkan wars in 1912-1913. The members of the mission had a difficult time getting around the area, but they were determined and eventually succeeded in conducting an on sight review of the results of the war. Their report mentioned the complete destruction of villages occupied by members of another ethnic group and mass rape as a tool for terror and eviction. In other words the actions that were described as "ethnic cleansing" when they took place in the last decade.

One of the most knowledgeable men in foreign affairs in the twentieth century, Kennan is often overlooked because some of his opinions do not coincide with those who advocated a "tough line" against the Soviets. Whether you agree with him or not, his opinions are well thought out and backed by decades of experience studying and dealing with the Soviets. I strongly recommend this book if you are interested in obtaining expert opinions about the past conduct of American foreign policy.

This book is a bit of an anachronism as the century in question has ended and an entire new set of problems face American foreign policy. George Kennan remains, though, more of a sage than one who can offer practical foreign policy advice. His knowledge of US-Soviet relations remains nearly unparalleled, but it is not really that important any longer.

Kennan writes and speaks with pragmatism, though one does not have to read far into the book to know that he is warning of what he feared would be a US-Soviet military clash if the war hawks of the Reagan administration had their way. Time and again he elaborates on how the Soviet Union is (was) not the enemy. He feared that somehow the seeds he first planted as containment of a political philosophy would spell doom in the military arena.

This book is a collection of speeches, editorials, book reviews, and other public appearances that focuses on the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kennan is nearly a century old, and if the reader goes between the lines one gets the image of a wise old man attempting to spread his message of peace to a world that doesn't seem to hear.

Kennan remains one of the most remarkable figures of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, we no longer live in that time.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND linking this KENNAN volume [c. 1996] with JOHN LUKACS "The End of the 20th Century" [c. 1993] as companion volumes. Lukacs is mentioned with a citation on page 7 in Kennan's marvelous volume herein cited.