The Republican Challenge

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George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:

Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin’s challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implac­able challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.

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