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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Civilized Man, June 5, 2008
This review is from: George Kennan: A Study of Character (Hardcover)
This remarkable book is both an act of filial piety and a reference point for future historians: Kennan must be taken seriously, must endure, and must be seen at least as one of the important ships in a small--and not growing-- flotilla of great American statesmen. Lukacs performs a service of recovery amidst the detritus of current American policies, in showing with great subtlety how men of wisdom once took a considered if not pure approach to diplomatic relations, and how the amorphous beast of public opinion, embodied in Congressional representatives more than ever subject to the vicissitudes of polls and "focus groups", influenced and continue to influence--and frustrate--statecraft.
Kennan represented a rare strain in the American character, a man deeply immersed in European civilization, history, and languages, aware of America's profound European roots, who put the sum of his knowledge to use in addressing deep questions going to the heart of the American experience, teasing out the tensions inherent in the various strands of the American outlook. Remarkably, Kennan's greatest enduring influence came perhaps in the second fifty years of his life through his writings and lectures, a massive outpouring before which even a historian of Lukacs's extraordinary capabilities stands in awe.
Kennan was remarkably consistent throughout his life in maintaining that America does not represent a Chosen Nation destined to lead mankind from darkness, that, in John Adams's words, "we are friends of liberty all over the world; but we do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy". If this saying has been too-oft quoted by opponents of the invasion of Iraq who, despite their unqualified support for JFK's abstract principles of intervention, which I have not heard repudiated by a single self-styled liberal, then we must understand it in the context of Kennan's views: he advocated firmness when called for, in responding to the North Korean incursion into South Korea, in providing detailed proposals to create demilitarized and denuclearized zones in Western Europe and to end the partition of Germany, not to say his firmness in standing up to "anti anticommunism" during the witch hunts of Senator McCarthy, while recognizing that communists and their sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the US government to a degree. In short, he did not hesitate to assert American interests nor shrink from recommending the judicious deployment of American military power. While his famous "X" article described a political strategy, he was also aware that the ability to apply force is a necessary, if not sufficient condition of any containment policy.
As Lukacs makes clear, Kennan recognized the duality running through American politics, itself drawing at its source from the very New England qualities that Kennan professed to admire and of which he himself was partly a product. If his soul and intellect were haunted by an older, deeper Scots and European pessimism, he was also a product of the Middle West, and possessed very American traits, although a progressivist instinct may not have been among these despite his Wisconsin provenance. This grounding led him to be unafraid to criticize excessiveness or the "legalistic moralistic" character of much of American foreign policy. In the current atmosphere of conservative triumphalism where the history of the Cold War is interpreted through the lens of an American "victory", Kennan punctures these reprehensible pretentions by pointing out that, "The suggestion that any American administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous political upheaval, in another great country on another side of the globe is intrinsically silly and childish" (all quotation are drawn from the Lukacs book).
Amidst the theme and variations of post-war US policy toward the Soviet Union, apparently formed from reading Dr. Benjamin Spock on child-rearing, Kennan saw clearly and consistently that the Soviet Union was not a "fit ally or associate, actual or potential, for [the United States]", a pronouncement he made at the outset of WWII and which he repeated for many years after. Thus, détente, the "Evil Empire", and other variations of US policy had, despite the best efforts of neoconservative writers to lead us to believe otherwise, little impact on a Soviet Union that Kennan recognized early on had, by Stalin's time, fundamentally shifted course from Marxism-Leninism to despotism and lacked the resources or will to endure as a Communist state. Early evidence of this came in the post-war period as the USSR pulled back from Finland and Austria, and demonstrated its weakness through interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, among other actions.
Kennan was equally sceptical of what is now called "global governance", including the formation of the United Nations; viewed the Yalta "Declaration of Liberated Europe" as "deplorable, [a] sham, and useless" (Lukacs's words) because Eastern Europe fell within Russia's sphere of influence; and was highly critical of the "American (and neo-Wilsonian) belief that a new international institution such as the United Nations was of paramount importance" (p. 65). He remained persuaded throughout his lifetime that "national and state interests were and would remain more powerful than any international organization dedicated to assure some kind of unchanging peace". Later, he opposed the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, referring to it as a disastrous mistake.
At the same time, he saw a consistent thread running through the policies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush, and Clinton, and continued in the current Bush presidency: a naive liberal interventionist mentality to secure questionable gains, usually at a high cost. It is useful to ponder Kennan's perspective when insisting too acutely on major differences in Democratic and Republican approaches to foreign policy, remembering that restraint, moderation, and measured analysis, all qualities that Kennan exemplified in his life as a practitioner and a historian, do not appear to be embedded in either party's approach to the world.
As an undergraduate I read the first volume of Kennan's Memoirs in a summer course in diplomatic history, ably taught by Professor Clifford Egan at the University of Houston. Among hundreds of books read in college, the vividness of some of Kennan's prose continued to recur in my mind for years after, despite not having picked up the book since 1973. Lukacs insists throughout his study on Kennan's qualities as a writer as well as his brilliance as an historian and researcher, and Lukacs's own prose is the equal of Kennan's. His concentrated "character study" in fact points the way to further serious research for historians, though this research is not likely to be undertaken as waves of fads sweep through the profession, if not the practice of historical scholarship and writing, obviating the need to "do" history in favour of constructing frameworks and "theories" whose theoretical underpinnings are of the weakest sort.
Kennan's life and work span the twentieth century, a remarkable life, yet leaving us with a legacy that must be accounted for and drawn upon if America is to achieve its promise. This is not likely to happen, of course, given the midgets who now propose to lead us. They possess the most detailed knowledge of the opinions of voters in each and every county across the country, now represented in a colouring book cartoon of America with red, purple, and blue, yet lack the slightest insight into foreign affairs, history, or the lives of other peoples far away, not to say any mastery of other languages or cultures. More distressingly, they are not unrepresentative of America at this moment in history, when many of the most civilized have put aside judgment in favour of passion, wisdom in favour of ideology. In so doing, our putative and potential leaders and their supporters have no claim upon our loyalties and deserve to be held to the high standard of accountability upon which Kennan insisted. As Kennan might have agreed, the foreign policy questions that are most vital and of most immediate moment are questions about America, not about our enemies and rivals.
Even with Kennan's constant global travels, capacity for research (and his love of library culture, which he saw as one of America's distinctive contributions to civilization), and seemingly unlimited energy for writing, his lectures, speeches, and even a later role under Kennedy as ambassador to Yugoslavia, he maintained a small farm in Pennsylvania, and regularly sailed the Norwegian fjords around his family's summer home, indulging in his nostalgie du Nord, and his love of the Baltic area. Throughout his life he was accompanied and supported by his Norwegian wife, with whom he celebrated a 70th wedding anniversary before his own passing at the age of one hundred. Even in his 90s he continued to produce books, articles, and memoirs at an astounding rate, and received accolades and recognition that would not have been predicted upon his leaving government service in the 1950s. Yet neither Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, nor neoconservatives attempted to lay claim to him as one of their own, which speaks to the complexity of his intellect and the resistance of his thought to simplification.
As Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, "The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation". Kennan's work and the exemplary nature of his life both bear close study, but there is no evidence that American leadership is any more prepared now than previously to learn the lessons offered by this distinctive patriot who often acted as Cassandra during America's most self-congratulatory and misguided episodes. Perhaps there will arise among us another such man who will exercise more influence over wise leaders, but I'm not holding my breath.
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