GEORGE F. KENNAN passed away last night at the age of 101. In 1946, as American policymakers were groping for a strategy to restrain Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Kennan authored the famous “Long Telegram” from his diplomatic post in Moscow. That this diplomatic cable had any effect at all on the course of American foreign policy (it had a tremendous effect) reflects a bygone era of diplomacy and statecraft. American embassies, which were once viewed by Washington as a great resource for both expertise and intelligence gathering, have since become little more than PR shops, limited to putting a good face on policies conceived and shaped thousands of miles away.
Kennan grew up in Milwaukee and attended St. John’s Military Academy before studying at Princeton, where he graduated with a rather lackluster record in 1925. Kennan went immediately into the foreign service, where he began his study of Russian language and politics. His first posting to Moscow came shortly after the Soviet Union was officially recognized by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. He served there until 1937, and was a witness to many of the horrors of Stalin’s regime. While many of his contemporaries in the United States may have viewed Stalin’s purges and show-trials as necessary to that nation’s economic and social progress, Kennan was no apologist.
Though Kennan was a marginal figure in the events of World War II, having served a brief stint in Prague in the months leading up to the outbreak of war, he wound up working at the American embassy in Berlin. He served there until the Nazis declared war on the United States in the aftermath of Peal Harbor. He then spent 5 months as a German prisoner.
In 1944, Ambassador Averell Harriman selected Kennan to serve as deputy chief of mission in Moscow. It was from this post that he lobbied American policymakers to dispel the illusion of alliance with Uncle Joe. By the time he sat down to write the Long Telegram, he had long been convinced of the nefarious influence of Communism and was committed to preventing any further expansion of Soviet influence. He proposed to confront the Soviets, whom he believed “impervious to the logic of reason,” but “highly sensitive to the logic of force.”
It was Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, another Princeton alumnus with an even less distinguished record (he failed to actually graduate), who immediately recognized the wisdom of Kennan’s thinking. Forrestal had been appointed Undersecretary of the Navy not long before the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl. He had spent those months before that infamous attack scrambling to increase the size of the U.S. Navy. In the wake of the Second World War, he feared the Navy would once again face drastic cuts, but were an aggressive policy adopted in Washington, Forrestal would be able to save his fleet from peace time budgetary reductions. Thus it was Forrestal who latched on to Kennan’s work, pushing him to publish in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947 under the pseudonym “X”. It was from this seminal work that “containment” first began to gain traction as national policy for dealing with Russian expansion. Forrestal’s influence over the content of the piece cannot be overestimated, especially in light of the regrets Kennan had in the years following its publication.
Kennan’s contribution to American foreign policy did not end there. He went on to support Secretary of State Marshall’s endeavors in rebuilding Europe. But Kennan was always a diplomat with a dovish world view–he opposed the creation of NATO, the development of the hydrogen bomb, and America’s guarantee of Japan’s security. He viewed the threat from communism as primarily political, and did not wish to see American arms as the primary, or even secondary, tool of containment, instead preferring the use of “soft power,” a mix of economic and political pressure and incentives.
Kennan’s contribution to American foreign policy in Europe was profound, but no less significant than his impact on American policy in Asia. He played a critical role in crafting the policies of America’s occupation of Japan. He lobbied hard for intervention in Korea to be limited to containing the North, rather than eliminating it (a prescient position in comparison to MacArthur’s poorly conceived attempt to push American forces all the way to the Chinese border). The election of Eisenhower in 1952 marked the end of the road for Kennan, as he was forced out of the service, returning only for a few rather inconsequential stints over the next decade.
Kennan spent much of the second half of the century back in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study, in the company of men like Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. His role in forming America’s policy of containment gave him a position of great prominence in the debate over Vietnam. He offered eloquent and reasoned opposition to America’s military engagement there, ever insistent that containment needn’t prevent America from picking its battles. But ultimately, his ideas were no longer his to interpret.
With Kennan’s passing, America should mourn the loss of a great public servant. Kennan was a man of conviction. He knew right from wrong and good from evil. Though conservatives and liberals alike may disagree with this or that aspect of his work, his legacy can be recognized by all. He made a great contribution to his country.
Michael Goldfarb is an editorial assistant with The Weekly Standard.
