George F. Kennan : an American life

ambitions more sensitive to resistance than those of Napoleon or Hitler. Resistance could not arise, though, from sporadic acts reflecting “the momentary whims of democratic opinion.” What was needed instead were strategies “no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union itself.” The main objective must be “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

Containment could be made to work, Kennan insisted in unusually convoluted prose, “by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and man?uvres of Soviet policy, but which can not be charmed or talked out of existence.” This would produce results, with the passage of time, because the Soviet people were exhausted, the Soviet economy remained in many respects primitive, and the Soviet government had yet to evolve any orderly way of selecting a successor once Stalin had passed from the scene. Any one of these difficulties could disrupt discipline, and if that were ever to happen—here Kennan echoed the prediction he had made from Riga in 1932—“Soviet Russia might be changed over night from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies.”

Its condition, then, resembled that of the Buddenbrooks family in Thomas Mann’s eponymous novel: a formidable facade concealed internal enfeeblement. The light of distant stars, after all, “shines brightest on this world when in reality [they have] long ceased to exist.” No one could know for sure whether this would happen, but “Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its conception, bears within it the seeds of its own decay, and . . . the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced.” The United States could embrace with reasonable confidence, then, “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.”

If Americans could create the impression of a country that knew what it wanted, was coping successfully with its internal problems, and could hold its own amid the geopolitical and ideological currents of international affairs, then the hopes of Moscow’s supporters would wane, and there would be added stress on its foreign policy. The ultimate result could be “either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, messianic movement—and particularly not that of the Kremlin—can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs.” The Soviet challenge, therefore, required only that Americans live up to their own best traditions. “Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this.”²⁴

It’s hardly surprising that Forrestal liked the piece, or that Armstrong was eager to publish it. Like the “long telegram,” Kennan’s “Psychological Background” essay riveted readers in a way no one else in Washington had managed to do—certainly not Willett, whose report now followed that of Bohlen and Robinson into obscurity. Kennan had combined objectivity with eloquence, Armstrong wrote him: “It’s a pleasure for an editor to deal with something that needs practically no revision.... I only wish for your sake as well as for ours that it could carry your name.”²⁵

Kennan claimed later to have written the paper for Forrestal’s “private and personal edification,” and to have sent it to Armstrong only because he had it on hand.²⁶ That’s not how it reads, though: the tone is that of a stem-winding sermon—and preachers normally seek out pulpits. Armstrong provided one, but not right away. Because Foreign Affairs was a quarterly, the piece would not appear until late June, five months after Kennan had finished writing it. With such minimal revisions, the article ignored all that had happened during that time: there was no mention of the Greek-Turkish crisis, the Truman Doctrine, or their consequences for American foreign policy. It was as if Kennan had shot off an arrow of his own on a high trajectory, and then somehow forgotten about it.

The best explanation is that he saw the Foreign Affairs essay as ending an assignment, not beginning a new one.²⁷ It completed the task Durbrow, Gruenther, Hill, Forrestal, and Acheson had devised for him after his return from Moscow, which was to disseminate his insights about the Soviet Union as widely as possible, and to reflect—but only in general terms—on their implications for the United States in the postwar world. Marshall had now asked him to devise a grand strategy, a very different responsibility. Kennan’s perspective henceforth would be Washington’s, not Moscow’s; the demands on him would be organizational, not instructional ; and Marshall would expect invisibility, not publicity. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”—the title Kennan’s article carried—reflected his thinking as of January 1947 but not beyond. The only thing he did to connect it with his new job was to replace his name on the first page with an “X.”

III.

The National War College, Kennan assured a Foreign Service friend in mid-March, was achieving its purpose. Each year it would be sending a hundred graduates into the top ranks of their respective services. His own teaching had given him a closer acquaintance with this new generation of military leaders than anyone else in the State Department. That in itself should avoid many of the political-military confusions of the last war, for then there had been no civilian official with “the prestige and the guts” to challenge the military. Now that Marshall was secretary of state and Kennan would be running his Policy Planning Staff, the relationship should be even closer. Whether the staff would improve the conduct of foreign policy remained to be seen, but Marshall was not likely to put up with it if it did not. By starting quietly but with a small and select group, Kennan wrote another friend, “we may be able to avoid some of the pitfalls which have beset the careers of more ambitious and grandiose undertakings.”²⁸

Mindful of grandiosity, Kennan was still dissecting the Truman Doctrine—but with some significant shifts in his views. He had come to see the need for aiding both Greece and Turkey, he explained to his students on March 28, even though neither was in danger of becoming a Soviet satellite. The reason was psychological: a failure to act might convey the impression that “the Western Powers were on the run and that international communism was on the make.” Such a “bandwagon” mentality could cause Europeans to choose communism, in the belief that they had better climb on board while there was still time. That could shatter American prestige in the Near East, East Asia, and elsewhere.

This was a different and direr Kennan from the one who had lectured at the war college two weeks earlier. He was now approaching Acheson’s view that everything was at risk: the danger, though, was not from rotten apples but from cultural despair. The first barbarians to sack Rome had not held it; nevertheless the blow had begun the end of the Roman Empire. There was no reason to assume that Europe, “as we know it—and as we need it—would ever recover from . . . even a brief period of Russian control.” Floodwaters always receded, but was that a good reason not to build dikes? To abandon Europe would be to sever the roots of culture and tradition, leaving the United States with fewer safeguards against tyranny than one might think:

The fact of the matter is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us. It is only the cheerful light of confidence and security which keeps this evil genius down at the usual helpless and invisible depth. If confidence and security were to disappear, don’t think that he would not be waiting to take their place.

Retaining their freedoms in a hostile world would require Americans, therefore, “to whistle loudly in the dark.” That might not be enough to save them.

None of this meant, however, that they had to oppose totalitarianism everywhere all at once. Because means were limited, there had to be standards for determining when and how to act. The Truman Doctrine, with its promise “to support free peoples” wherever dictators threatened them, had failed to provide these. Kennan’s criteria, in contrast, were explicit: