succession of Kennan’s superiors—Bullitt, Davies, Harriman, Byrnes, and Roosevelt himself—all of whom had assumed, at one time or another, that if offered friendship the Soviet Union would reciprocate. If Wallace believed, like “many vain people” before him, “that the golden touch of his particular personality and the warmth of his sympathy for the cause of Russian Communism would modify in some important degree the actions of the Soviet Government,” then he was not only ignoring the way states worked, but he was also “flying in the face of some of the most basic and unshakeable of Russian realities.”
Stalin and his associates would not thank Wallace for implying that “they, the guardians of the Revolution, are a group of neurotic, wistful intellectuals, to be swept off their feet and won over from their holiest articles of faith by an engaging smile, [and] a few kind words.” They had committed acts that, in the absence of an ideology to justify them, would have to be considered among “the most stupendous crimes in the history of mankind.” They had built a regime in the image of that ideology. They had corrupted a generation:
The official who wields the disciplinary power of the Communist Party; the worker of the secret police who has sacrificed his family relationships to the grim dictates of his profession; the army officer whose wife has become accustomed to the new fur coat, the larger apartment and the war-booty Mercedes; the economic administrator whose one talent is to force the pace of armaments developments; all these, and many others besides, have sold their souls to the theory that the outside world is threatening and hostile.
They resembled the village misfits Dostoyevsky had described in
It was clear, then, that the fears and suspicions so prevalent in Moscow related not to the Truman administration’s policies but “to the character of the Soviet regime itself.” They would not be dispelled by “fatuous gestures of appeasement,” which could only lead “to the capitulation of the United States as a great power in the world and as the guardian of its own security.” There was, however, no reason to despair: Americans should see the situation instead “as a narrow and stony defile through which we must pass before we can emerge into more promising vistas.”
That promise resided in the Russian national character, more deeply rooted even than the Stalinist state or the ideology that animated it, yet visible in Russian literature. Kennan cited, as an example, the provincial governor in Gogol’s
“Don’t be offended, Mistress,” said Rodion. . . . “Wait a couple of years and you can have the school, and you can have the roads, but not all at once.... [I]f you want to sow grain on that hill, first you have to clear it and then you have to take all the stones off and then you have to plow it up and then you have to keep after it and keep after it . . . and it is just the same with the people. You have to keep after them and keep after them until you win them over.”
People, Kennan was suggesting, could indeed shape governments, but this would take time. And circumstances, not sentimentality, would shape people. Therein lay the key to what American strategy should be.
The United States could alter the circumstances in which the Soviet government operated “only by a long term policy of firmness, patience, and understanding, designed to keep the Russians confronted with superior strength at every juncture where they might otherwise be inclined to encroach upon the vital interests of a stable and peaceful world, but to do this in so friendly and unprovocative a manner that its basic purposes will not be subject to misrepresentation.” The objective would be Clausewitzian: to shift the psychology of an adversary. The manner, however, would be Chekhovian.37
Was there reason to think that this might work? Kennan’s Naval War College lecture, delivered on the same day he spoke at Yale, addressed this issue. The Russians, he pointed out, were “the most un-naval of peoples,” but they understood naval strategy. Lacking easily defended borders, unable to count on domestic loyalty, Kremlin leaders would not willingly engage an adversary stronger than themselves. “They cannot afford to get into trouble.” They respected, therefore, one of “the great truths of naval warfare,” which was “that a force sufficiently superior to that of the enemy will probably never have to be used. Its mere existence does the trick.”
That was where the United States, with superior force, had the advantage. It ought to be possible “for us to contain the Russians indefinitely” and perhaps eventually “to maneuver them back into the limits within which we would like them to stay.” This would not “solve” the Soviet problem. “You never really solve problems like that; you only learn to live with them after a fashion and to avoid major catastrophe.” But if the United States followed such a strategy consistently enough over a long enough period of time, then “I believe that the logic of it would enter into the Soviet system as a whole and bring about changes there which would be beneficial to everyone.”
As currently configured, the American government was not equipped to do this. Its policies proceeded along separate tracks; there was no common concept. But it should be possible to secure such coordination. It would involve setting up “some formal organization for decision and action at the Cabinet level.” It would demand closer liaison with Congress. It would require educating the public on the “powers and prerogatives of government in the field of foreign affairs” and on the need for its own “restraint and self-discipline.” And there would have to be “more sheer courage” in defending policies from domestic critics.
The Soviet challenge, therefore, was really to “the quality of our own society, . . . [to] how good democracy is in the world of today.” If it could “force us to pull ourselves together,” then “perhaps we may call our Russian friends a blessing rather than a plague.” Shakespeare’s Henry V had anticipated that possibility long ago:
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;
For our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry;
Besides, they are our outward consciences
And preachers to us all: admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.38
With these two lectures, given on the same day, Kennan found his voice as a teacher. He connected current events with his years of experience in the Soviet Union, his summer crash course on grand strategy and the atomic bomb, the impressions derived from his speaking tour, Admiral Hill’s mandate to rethink the requirements of national security, and his own sense that literature could inspire statecraft.39 He did all of this with an eloquence that existed nowhere else in the government: he understood—as his friend Bohlen did not—that rhetoric persuades, and that style instructs. It’s no wonder that he attracted students, some of them highly placed.
The State Department sent Kennan to Ottawa in December to present the new American policy, on a top- secret basis, to Canadian officials worried about defense of the Arctic. It was “virtually certain,” he assured them, that Stalin planned no surprise attack, there or anywhere else. Miscalculation, however, might lead to unplanned hostilities, so the United States and its allies must leave no doubt, in his mind, of their resolve. They would have to be as firm as they were patient: the goal should be “to ‘contain’ Russian expansionism for so long a time that it would have to modify itself.” And how long might that take? Kennan guessed “10 or 15
