defeatism” among American intellectuals who thought that firmness toward the Soviet Union could only bring war.
In fact, firmness had restored stability. “Has Iran gone? Or Turkey? Or Greece?” Not one would have remained independent had the Americans not acted. “Has Trieste fallen? Or Austria?” Italy was admittedly a weak spot, but that weakness had arisen from not stiffening the Italians soon enough. To be sure, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Manchuria, and North China had wound up on the wrong side of the “iron curtain.” That was to be expected, given the military realities existing at the end of the war. Communism might indeed prevail in the rest of China: “What of it? I never said we would—or should—be able to hold equally everywhere.” The point had been to hang on “in enough places, and in sufficiently strategic places, to accomplish our general purpose.” That, for the most part, had been done.
Containment would not require the United States to arm itself to the teeth, defending overextended positions indefinitely. The Russians, made also of flesh and blood, had their own vulnerabilities. Afflicted by “internal contradictions,” they would eventually defeat themselves. If capitalism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction, why were they seeking so desperately to bring about its collapse? What was to be done, then, lay chiefly “within ourselves.”
Let us find health and vigor and hope, and the diseased portion of the earth will fall behind of its own doing. For that we need no aggressive strategic plans, no provocation of military hostilities, no show-downs, no world government, no strengthened UN, and no pat slogans with a false pretense to international validity.
The day would come—sooner than one might think—when their own weaknesses would convince Soviet leaders “that they cannot have what they want
And what of European allies? Lippmann had argued that the United States, having provided them moral and material assistance, now also owed them military protection. This was “preposterous.” The Russians much preferred conquest “by concealed methods, with a minimum of responsibility on their own part.” The Marshall Plan was countering that strategy. Should it not satisfy the Europeans, “I can only shrug my shoulders.” For the United States could not, by itself, sustain hope. But Kennan saw little faint-heartedness among recipients of Marshall Plan aid: they “have shown themselves ready enough to take risks as long as there is a reasonable indication that we are behind them and will do our best for them.”
So what was Lippmann worried about? A year ago fear had hung over everything. Since then, however, “no fruits have dropped.” Moscow had been forced to isolate the East from the West, where recovery was progressing rapidly: “Admittedly, the issue hangs on Italy; but it hangs—in reality—on Italy alone. A year ago it hung on all of Europe—and on us.” Lippmann should, then, “leave us some pride in our own legerdemain.” The saddest part of the past year’s experience was not the realization of how hard it was for a democracy to conduct a successful foreign policy. It was rather that if it did, “so few people would recognize it for what it was.”2
Kennan’s letter to Lippmann was roughly the length of a war college lecture. On reading it over, it seemed “plaintive and overdramatic,” so he never sent it. He did corner Lippmann on a train a few months later and subject him to some of its arguments; no portion of the letter itself reached its intended recipient, however, until 1967, when excerpts appeared in Kennan’s memoir. He blamed himself, after Lippmann’s death, for having been “too arrogant” during his first months on the Policy Planning Staff to have accepted criticism as patiently as he might have. But something else was going on then as well: for once in his life—despite his ulcer—Kennan was optimistic about the future.3
Hardly anyone else was, however. Kennan’s long Asian trip and the illness that followed prevented his seeing how pessimistic the mood in Washington and in allied capitals had become. As a result, the job to which he returned in mid-April was not the one he had left in late February. A year into his Policy Planning Staff directorship, Kennan found himself becoming a policy dissenter once again. He had, he discovered, lost his footing. He never quite regained it.
I.
The problems began with a recommendation that went awry. However much Kennan may have doubted himself over the years, he had never lacked confidence in his ability to explain—and even predict—the behavior of the Soviet Union. These skills had made his reputation in the Foreign Service, brought him to the National War College and the Policy Planning Staff, and inadvertently earned him, as “Mr. X,” celebrity status. Whatever else he might have been wrong about, he had a habit of being right about the U.S.S.R.
Kennan’s colleagues took him seriously, therefore, when he suggested in PPS/23, completed on February 24, 1948, that the Marshall Plan’s success might soon compel Soviet leaders to negotiate. Once this had happened— probably after the November presidential election in the United States—the talks should be entrusted to someone who
(a) has absolutely no personal axe to grind in the discussions, even along the lines of getting public credit for their success, and is prepared to observe the strictest silence about the whole proceeding; and
(b) is thoroughly acquainted not only with the background of our policies but with Soviet philosophy and strategy and with the dialectics used by Soviet statesmen in such discussions.
Lest there be any doubt as to whom he had in mind, Kennan also insisted that the negotiator be fluent in Russian. Containment, in his mind, was meant to end the Cold War, not to freeze it into place. He meant to play as large a role in completing that effort as he had in initiating it. In the meantime, it might be worth seeking “some sort of a background understanding” with the Stalin regime.4
The Czech coup, which Kennan had predicted, took place on the next day, so he departed for Japan on the twenty-sixth with his prestige as high as it would ever be. Shortly after arriving in Tokyo, he told an off-the-record press briefing that “within six months [a] spectacular retreat of Soviet and Communist influence in Europe may be expected.” The head of the Canadian mission in Japan reported Kennan’s comments to Ottawa, where they set off expressions of incredulity. From London, the Foreign Office assured the Canadians—who had passed on the account—that there must have been a mistake. “I can hardly believe that Mr. Kennan can have been accurately reported,” R. M. A. Hankey, head of the Northern Department, commented. It all seemed “so very much too optimistic.” Kennan’s former Moscow colleague Frank Roberts ventured another explanation: concerned by Lippmann’s criticisms “that containment is a fruitless policy,” he now “must prove that it can lead to positive results.”5
But Kennan was not freelancing. Worried that Stalin might overreact to Truman’s tough speech on March 17, the Policy Planning Staff had supported Kennan’s call for a quiet approach. “We have no way of knowing what appraisal Stalin is receiving of American intentions,” Davies pointed out. It was important to ensure that if war broke out, it would not have been through a misunderstanding. Bohlen seconded the suggestion, and on April 23 Lovett secured Truman’s permission to go ahead. Marshall asked Ambassador Smith, in Moscow, to convey the message. The British and the Canadians were not informed: indeed the British embassy in Washington reported that the Truman administration
Smith sent Molotov a carefully worded note on May 4, stating that while the United States would defend its
