The Kennan Diaries Hardcover – February 16, 2014

George F. Kennan is on the very short list of those famous as diplomats and equally well-known as historians. His name is permanently linked to the Cold War strategy of “containment.” And yet, he saw himself as a failure as a diplomat, his writing as a poor alternative to the public influence he sought, and the renown of the containment doctrine itself as based on a disastrous misunderstanding.

The Kennan Diaries, edited by Frank Costigliola, is a belated masterpiece of a Calvinist genre, the examination of actions and intentions for evidence of personal worth. It contains accounts of Kennan’s careers, his diplomatic postings about Europe, most notably in what was then the Soviet Union, his advisory roles, formal and informal, to the high officials and the Presidents of the day, his books and lectures. However, the great bulk of the diaries, and, arguably, their significance, is in the often daily, occasionally hourly, examination of that delicate mechanism, the conscience of George F. Kennan.

The story of Kennan’s outer life can be easily summarized. Born in Milwaukee in 1904 of what he would call “old American stock,” that is, the descendents of eighteenth-century British immigrants, he attended Princeton University, joined the Foreign Service, married the Norwegian Annelise Sorensen, with whom he had four children, retired from the Foreign Service in 1953 after serving as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, took a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, wrote and lectured, and died in 2005, still a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton.

Kennan had a life-long love affair with Russia (as distinguished from the Soviet Union), with the Russian people, their language, culture and land. His love for Russia had an erotic charge absent from his relationships with women, other than his mother, who died when Kennan was an infant, but who, ghost-like, visited him in dreams. It was the frustration of his desire for intimate relations with Russian society by the restrictions placed on diplomats by Stalin that underlay the otherwise inexplicable outburst that led to his being declared persona non grata as Ambassador. And one of the few moments of pure happiness in the diaries is the account of his last visit to Russia, during the time of Gorbachev, when he was received with great honors and even allowed into the rooms of the Central Committee itself, for Kennan a hitherto undreamed of level of intimacy with Russia.

Again and again in the diaries Kennan conducts a dialogue with himself about his outer life, on the one hand, and his inner life, on the other. Many of his accounts of his speeches, lectures and conversations focus on their inadequacy or on what can only be called the sinfulness of his performance—egotism, the desire for fame, talking too much. Again and again he judges himself in matters great and small, finds himself wanting, resolves not to sin again. This is quite extraordinary to read in pages written, for the most part, in the second half of the twentieth century. One recalls Edmund Wilson’s comment about John Jay Chapman: “Perhaps our most vivid impression . . . is that we have encountered a personality who does not belong in his time and place and who by contrast makes us aware of the commonness, the provinciality and the timidity of most of his contemporaries.”

Kennan felt, as did Edmund Wilson, as it happens, that America was a country that had lost its way, sacrificing the ideals of the eighteenth century for the waste and vanity of consumer capitalism. This is epitomized in the diaries by observations about the automobile, the waste of resources, especially oil, that it required, the way that it made the landscape ugly with badly designed highways, strip malls, noise and noxious fumes. Kennan, being Kennan, linked this with an analysis of how the combination of the automobile and petroleum industries had the effect of making the United States dependent on the antithetical societies of the Middle East.

The legendary “long telegram” from Moscow analyzed the structures of the Soviet government in the context of Russian history. He concluded, in a Russianism he often used, that “no good would come of it.” While acknowledging that Stalin would take advantage of such opportunities that arose, Kennan thought that Stalin would pursue the same goals after the Second World War as before: to re-establish the borders of the Empire as they were in 1905, with a collection of small buffer states beyond them. Kennan thought that Soviet power was a temporary phenomenon, as it was, and that the proper policy to be followed by the government of the United States was to wait it out. He used the word “containment.”

The policy actually adopted by the American government, although it was also called containment, was its virtual opposite: the attempt to utilize military power, and, in particular, the possession of atomic weapons, to “roll back” Soviet influence, first from the Eastern European buffer states and then in the post-colonial world. Kennan thought this policy was mistaken, in principle, and in practice, with its reliance on nuclear weapons, something that could well lead to the end of civilization itself. This policy, and the irony of its association with his name, caused Kennan anguish and increasing apprehension during much of the second half of his adult life.

Kennan, as he knew all too well, was not without flaws. Rather surprisingly, one of those flaws was a sexual promiscuity in thought if not in practice, which he knew was hurtful to his wife. Another was the habit of thinking of people as national, ethnic and racial collectives. This now reads almost always as deprecatory. It is not clear that Kennan always meant it so, but he sometimes did. He valued his own group, that old American stock, above others, and lamented its diminishing role in American life.

The Kennan Diaries, carefully edited by University of Connecticut historian Frank Costigliola from 8,000 typed and handwritten pages, gives us a selection of the private thoughts of a man who tried both to do and to be good. He failed, as he knew that he had, but the attempt, and what he actually in fact did accomplish, provide us with an illustration of an exemplary life.

This was my favorite book of 2014. Kennan is a member of a social class which no longer exists in America. People have described him as "WASP elite," but he came from fairly humble circumstances, and only matriculated to Princeton on his own merits. He was a deeply cultured and learned man who attempted to serve his country as best he could through troubled times. He was at the center of many important historical events: he was stationed in Berlin when Germany declared war on the US, and was interned for six months as a result; the passages of this part of his life made for fascinating reading. He is most famous for the "long telegram" where he outlined the US strategy of containment of the Soviets.

There are two things which are remarkable about Kennan and his diaries. For those interested in international affairs, it is quite fascinating to me how Kennan was correct about everything he saw fit to opine upon in the course of his duties as a civil servant. He was right about the Nazis; easy enough in hindsight, but those with a passing interest in history will note that there were many great men who were wrong about them at some point in their careers. He was right about the nature of the Soviet government under Stalin. In this, he was also completely correct, and very many men in his position were wrong. He was acutely aware of the Stalinist purges. He was correct in his views of how to handle the Soviet Union under Stalin, and more importantly, in the Cold War period. He was correct that crossing the 38th parallel was a mistake. He was correct that the Vietnam war was a mistake. He was correct that the Gulf Wars were a mistake. He was almost certainly correct that the expansion of NATO into former Soviet states is a disaster waiting to happen. And he was correct that our present trajectory of basing foreign policy on some nebulous concept of "democracy and human rights" rather than national interest is a complete disaster. Kennan is one of the godfathers of the unpopular but generally correct "foreign policy realism" school. The fact that he is despised and ignored by modern US diplomats is a tragedy for the entire world.

The other remarkable thing about his diaries: his emotional depth. He isn't holding back in his diaries. He was disgusted by the direction America took in his lifespan: automobiles, vulgarity, ignorance; pretty much everything we consider modern, he considered horrific. I don't exactly agree with him, though I don't strongly disagree either, and can relate to his dismay about the direction the country has taken in my lifetime. Kennan was a gloomy, lonely and relentlessly self-critical man. Much of his diary concerns the types of internal struggles and psychological difficulties all sensitive and self reflective people go through. Reading the doubts of such a great man, well, I find this particularly charming, considering the great life he managed to lead, for all his faults. Who wants to read yet another memoir by a sociopath who thinks he is god's gift to the universe? Kennan lived life properly, and while I feel sorry for the unhappiness displayed in his diaries, it makes me like the man better.

Reading this alone may not do the man justice. I suggest the biography "George F Kennan" by Geddis and "The Hawk and the Dove" by Thompson. His diaries hold little back and point to a more troubled person than I had previously understood and may not portray his stronger side. I was surprised by his almost Jeffersonian view of the country and his self doubt. But if the man had been listened to and acted upon by our otherwise militaristic leadership, the so called "Cold War" would probably have been shorter and far less contentious.

The great classic chronicling the life and works of the author of the "containment" doctrine that constituted U.S. policy toward the "Soviet Union".This is especiallty significant today as wtiness the recent events in Ukraine.Kennan was AGHAST at the U.S. policy that led to the war in Vietnam.,We somehow avoided a direct clash with the U.S.S. R.,particularly dangerous after The Soviets exploded their own a bomb in 1949.
Kennan warned against an over militarization of U.S. policy toward the U.S.S. R. because he felt that his words in the long telegram were misconstrued.This is a vitally important book that will help us understand U.S. policy and the cold war and why it remained cold!

This is an unvarnished insight into the thinking and being of a remarkable man, who lived 101 years, and was an expert on Russia, but more importantly, a macroview thinker whose advice was too seldom followed. Many observations of 20th century leaders too.

Good