Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” Sixty Years Ago Today
Probably the most amusing telegram of all time was by Robert Benchley, sent to his editor at The New Yorker after arriving in Venice for the first time: STREETS FULL OF WATER, PLEASE ADVISE.
But arguably the most important – and certainly most celebrated – telegram of all time was by American diplomat George Kennan, sent from Moscow back to Washington on 22 February 1946. In 8,000 words, Kennan provided what would become the defining ideas of America’s Cold War strategy of containment – ideas that in one way or another guided the country’s foreign policy for almost half a century. His argument was that a negotiated peace with Stalin and the Soviet Union was impossible. The United States and its allies would need to contain the projection of Soviet power and patiently wait for domestic change.
But Kennan said much more than this in his long telegram, and his thoughts – or what he later called his "sermon" – is utterly relevant to America’s current foreign policy debate. Indeed it is Kennan’s often forgotten conclusion in the telegram that is most telling today. The sixtieth anniversary of this diplomatic missive is a good time to recall Kennan’s concluding admonitions.
Coming only six months after the United States and the Soviets were allied in war against Germany, Kennan’s thesis was a bit shocking and even alarmist. "The USSR still lives in antagonistic ‘capitalist encirclement’ with which there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence." It was the character of the regime itself that made a negotiated postwar settlement impossible. "We have a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with [the] U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure."
As is well known, Kennan’s telegram had a galvanizing effect on official Washington. As John Lewis Gaddis recalls: "Within days the ‘long telegram’ had been circulated, read, commented upon, and for the most part accepted in policy-making circles as the most plausible explanation of Soviet behavior, past and present." Kennan himself was amazed at the attention it got. He writes in his memoir: "If none of my previous literary efforts had seemed to evoke even the faintest tinkle from the bell at which they were aimed, this one, to my astonishment, struck it squarely and set it vibrating with a resonance that was not to die down for many months."
Why did a telegram from an unknown U.S. charge d’affaires in Moscow have such a transforming impact on American policy?
It was surely timing and circumstance as much as the intrinsic brilliance of the argument in the telegram itself. The old war-time view of the Soviet Union just didn’t seem to be fully convincing – so policy makers were open to something new. That is, Roosevelt’s strategy of inviting Stalin into a unified postwar structure of great power cooperation seemed to be failing. Kennan’s telegram was requested by the State Department because of puzzlement about the steady stream of anti-Western rhetoric that was flowing out of Moscow. Roosevelt and other officials seeking to integrate the Soviet Union into a stable cooperative order just didn’t understand the deep ideological sources of Soviet foreign policy (manifest in the Kremlin’s "neurotic view of world affairs") and rooted and reinforced by Russian history and culture (manifest in an "instinctive Russian sense of insecurity").
So Kennan was skeptical of what might be called the "integration and engagement" school of thought that believed that Soviet-American conflict could be overcome with sufficient mustering of goodwill and determination. In this more optimistic view, the emerging postwar Soviet-American antagonism was really a "security dilemma" problem – that is, a stable, mutually acceptable "outcome" existed in principle but the problem was overcoming the mistrust and insecurity that prevented the movement toward this possible and desirable world order. Kennan didn’t buy this argument.
But Kennan was also skeptical of the more hawkish and "rollback" schools of thought that believed the Soviet Union had to be confronted and the regime overturned. He did not think that the challenge of Soviet communism was fundamentally a military problem – it was political. The key was to be patient and steady and maintain unity and strength of the American polity and Western world order. It is this deeply felt belief of Kennan’s in the virtues of caution and self-restraint that soon made the "father of containment" unhappy with his new creation – or at least how it was redefined and misappropriated by succeeding generations of policy makers and pundits.
I recall reading an interview with Kennan once where he said he was on the same wave length with America’s foreign policy officialdom for about two days: before his long telegram Washington didn’t really understand the profundity of the Soviet challenge, but soon after the long telegram Washington was militarizing and escalating disputes with Moscow in ways that went well beyond his original notion.
This is where the last section of Kennan’s long telegram is most relevant today – the part of the telegram that is least remembered. He ends the telegram with five comments, all of which might be recalled today as the United States confronts new threats:
First, Kennan argues, we need to study the "nature of the movement" that is Soviet communism. He says: "We must study it with same courage, detachment, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it. . ."
Second, Kennan argues, "we must see that our public is educated to the realities of Russian situation." He goes on to say that "I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown. It may be argued that to reveal more information on our difficulties with Russia would reflect unfavorably on Russian-American relations. I feel that if there is any real risk here involved, it is one which we should have courage to face, and sooner the better." He says: "I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis."
Third, Kennan says: "Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meet Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiques. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit – Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies."
Fourth, Kennan argues: "We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past. It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by experiences of past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, Russians certainly will."
Fifth, Kennan concludes his long telegram thusly: "Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping."
It has been fashionable since September 11 to argue, as the Bush administration has done, that "everything has changed" – and that the old rules and old strategies must be rethought for a frightening and transformed world. I just don’t buy this argument. Indeed, if the Bush administration had read the long telegram – particularly the last section and Kennan’s five admonitions – American foreign policy would be in better shape today than it is.
That all seems so basic now. Of course we need to avoid becoming like the "terrorists" in an effort to fight "them". We need to be confident that our way of governing, our way of life is the right way. I suspect that because I grew up during the big anti-communism phase of our history I learned this over and over. I even recall during my first year in college debating another student over whether it was necessary to become more like "them" in order to have any hope of defeating "them". I contended that we shouldn't do that, (and lost the informal debate).
I wish our Democratic politicians had spoken up immediately after 9/11 to insist that everything had not changed with that attack. We were still the strongest nation in the world, with a government and lifestyle that most of the world envied. And, that the 9/11 attack was the work of a few deranged men, most of whom died in the attack, so that our goal should be to determine who else conspired in that attack, arrest and try them for doing so. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
Hoppy in Sacramento
February 21, 2006 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for an illuminating lesson on opportunities missed. I hope that dem strategists see your post and work to implement the suggestion in the 2006 elections.
February 21, 2006 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
The point that everyone seems to miss is that the leaders of America's government and financial institutions were personally terrified by 9/11 in a way that was not true of the country at large. Osama sent those planes to destroy THOSE leaders (the 4th plane was earmarked for Congress). Unlike many Americans who become accustomed to living with the prospect of crime and unemployment, these leaders (few of which ever served in the military) were completely unaccustomed to personal danger.
It was not danger to the U.S. that caused the over-reaction, it was the personal and visceral danger which they felt that caused it: Democrats and Republicans alike. After all, they didn't believe that "everything had changed" when an ex-army guy blew up a building in Oklahoma city.
February 21, 2006 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clay's point is interesting, but I don't believe it. The administration was itching for a war; a scared, angry public was easy to manipulate; Congress in turn was scared of standing in the way of those two together. Besides, members of Congress spend much of their time outside the Capitol (or indeed the capital). And while America's ports, etc., remain at risk owing to their and the president's preferring the politics of war to real security against terrorism, they could feel confident, I'm sure, in at least protecting a few city blocks of Washington.
If Bush was scared of anything, it was returning to being an unpopular president without the ability to put his agenda across without a "global war on terrorism." If Congress was scared of anything, it was losing elections.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
February 21, 2006 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
But arguably the most important – and certainly most celebrated – telegram of all time was by American diplomat George Kennan, sent from Moscow back to Washington on 22 February 1946. In 8,000 words, Kennan provided what would become the defining ideas of America's Cold War strategy of containment - ideas that in one way or another guided the country's foreign policy for almost half a century. His argument was that a negotiated peace with Stalin and the Soviet Union was impossible.
"Important" or otherwise Kennan's telegram may also have been fundamentally erroneous. And on those grounds it is certainly not immediately apparent that it should be "celebrated", since the Cold War was hardly one of mankind's finest hours. If we are going to lay responsibility for its conduct at the feet of Kennan, then should we really be celebrating whatever degree of responsibility the cold war ravages in El Salvador, Chile, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea (on Korean Airline 007), Nicaragua (etc. etc. etc.) may be justly ascribed to him?
Contrast Kennan's core thesis ("The USSR still lives in antagonistic 'capitalist encirclement' with which there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.") with the perspective of Eric Alterman (wearing his historian hat) who has written:
[A]mong many respected historians, East and West, the question [of Stalin's post WW2 intentions] remains up for interpretation. New evidence from the bowels of the Kremlin indicates that Stalin, for all his brutality and paranoia, was primarily, in the words of two Russian historians, Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, ''a hard-nosed realist.'' He was certainly an expansionist and sought to spread the Soviet system as far and wide as prudence would allow. But in 1945, the Russian historian Leonid Gibiansky shows, he was still extremely keen on retaining the benefits of an American-Soviet power condominium and consolidating the Soviet Union's military and diplomatic gains. The post-cold-war opening of Soviet archives reveals memorandums, prepared for Stalin during the war by his key foreign policy advisers, that appear to presuppose continued cooperation with the West on matters related to Germany and Japan and the maintenance of informal spheres of influence.
In November 1944, Stalin too gave voice to the belief that the bases of the Alliance were not ''accidental or transitory motives, but vitally important and long-lasting interests,'' above all ''preventing new aggression or a new war, if not forever, then at least for an extended period of time.'' The Soviets, as Vyacheslav M. Molotov once explained, had ''full confidence'' in Roosevelt's sincerity and commitment to cooperation in working out differences. They jettisoned the notion of cooperation once it became apparent that the Americans were no longer interested. What's more, as the cold war historian Melvin P. Leffler has demonstrated, it was the United States, rather than the Soviet Union, that failed to keep its word regarding wartime and postwar agreements.
While a cold war of some sort was almost certainly unavoidable, the global cold war we experienced -- fought by proxy in the third world and through a potentially devastating nuclear arms race -- was not.
This is not to argue that Kennan's five points were or are without value. But merely to point out how odd it will seem to some to "celebrate" a telegram that might have been centred on a misconception, and with an ultimately terrible human cost.
[P.S. I tried to make this more readable with paragraphs and blockquoting but what showed up - after a lot of effort - in the comment bore no relation to the "preview" I'd been shown. So I have reverted to the earlier messier original.]
February 21, 2006 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy
You are so right about this. Bush has used the attack on use to abuse our rights and the Democrats have shown all no spine in order to protect us.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
February 21, 2006 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the Soviet Union failed to withdraw from Eastern Europe wasn't that a violation of those countries rights and agreements?
I did not realize there were still defenders of Stalin around.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
February 21, 2006 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Gee..I thought Kennan was a realist. Hey you guyz in the Ivory Towers - enough with your schools already! Confuses poor dumb slobs like me
February 21, 2006 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
BrianOC, given the following from the original post, I think you may be being unfair to Kennan: I recall reading an interview with Kennan once where he said he was on the same wave length with America’s foreign policy officialdom for about two days: before his long telegram Washington didn’t really understand the profundity of the Soviet challenge, but soon after the long telegram Washington was militarizing and escalating disputes with Moscow in ways that went well beyond his original notion. Certainly wouldn't be the first time politicians took an essentially sound observation and ran to hell with it...
February 21, 2006 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"defenders of Stalin"? And I thought that debate via McCarthyesque smear was exclusive to right-wing blogs. I suppose that makes people who said Iraq had no WMDs in 2003 defenders of Saddam?
In March 1952, the Soviets made a proposal for the withdrawal of all foreign powers and the formation a unified, neutral, demilitarized Germany. The US insisted that Germany be allowed to rearm and join NATO. Stalin refused to accept a unified Germany becoming part of an anti-Soviet alliance, and the West questioned whether Soviets would truly allow free elections in Germany after reunification.
Diplomatic communications came to a stalemate, the proposed conference on German reunification never happened, and the Iron Curtain slowly hardened along the lines of occupation.
It's possible that the Soviet proposal was just
an attempt to influence public opinion in Europe and the US, and Stalin had no intention of relinquishing political and military control within Germany. It's also possible that the West missed an opportunity to defuse post-war tensions and the Cold War could have taken a much different course. The question is still controversial among Cold War historians.
February 21, 2006 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You said, ""Important" or otherwise Kennan's telegram may also have been fundamentally erroneous." Was it, or was it not erroneous, and, if erroneous, why?
Personally, I believe he made quite a few valid observations, as a diplomatic observer and chief of the Policy Planning Staff. If I were to point a finger at Cold War fallout in South America, I believe it would be most accurate if that finger pointed in the direction of the Brothers Dulles, who had operational responsibility. Kennan did not.
It's extremely difficult for me to point a finger at Kennan over Viet Nam, since it was more OSS and then Truman Administration leadership that rebuffed the overtures of Ho to the mission led by Archimedes Patti. Ho may have been a Communist, but also was a nationalist. Some of the specific proposals reported by Patti included both a phase-out, with economic protection, of French rule. Another proposal of Ho was to become a US protectorate being groomed for independence, much as were the Phillipines. Unfortunately, even at the time, there was no willingness to deal with anyone of Communist taint. We see, however, that Tito kept Yugoslavia together during his lifetime. If Ho's proposals were real, and they should have been monitored by international observers, they called for a far more democratic state than Yugoslavia. Indochina, I'm afraid, may have been the worst mistake the US ever made in supporting French interests.
Do you seriously believe those statements of Stalin and Molotov in 1944? Shall we say that I find one who invoked the Great Terror a bit less than credible on a new era of cooperation? Stalin was purging his inner circle until his death.
Celebrate? Probably not. Respect? Yes.
February 21, 2006 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Soviet proposal. The same Soviets that had blockaded Berlin a few years ago? The same Soviets that were in a geographic position that if they did choose to invade, in a demilitarized area, there would be no one to stop them?
I'd like to see a little more than wishful thinking that Stalin wanted anything but power. Is that a McCarthyite smear? I thought the only McCarthyite around was Ann Coulter. Frankly, I consider it a cheap shot in this discussion and venue.
McCarthy focused on domestic influence that often didn't exist. Stalin's history in Europe was rather well established.
February 21, 2006 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before,"
"In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end."
George F. Kennan, September 25, 2002
Kennan was then 98 years old, he died in 2005. Kennan had warned against pursuing the Korean War into North Korea. He warned against getting involved in Vietnam and later supported Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1968. In addition to the above comments made in 2002, he voiced displeasure at the failure of Democrats to opposed the invasion of Iraq: "This is, to me, as a very old, independent citizen, a shabby and shameful reaction. I deplore this timidity out of concern for the elections on the part of the Democrats."
February 21, 2006 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
One wishes we had a Kennan to guide us through the "struggle" with the Islamic fanatics. Perhaps Fukuyama will have to do, if anyone will listen to him.
February 22, 2006 4:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
You said, ""Important" or otherwise Kennan's telegram may also have been fundamentally erroneous." Was it, or was it not erroneous, and, if erroneous, why?
I appreciate my comment was not very clearly tabulated, but I thought the point was nonetheless made. I will clarify however: Kennan's message was that peaceful coexistance with the Soviet Union was impossible because of the nature of Stalin and the regime. ("We have a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with [the] U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi")
Alterman's position is that a fairly peaceful, cordial if hardly warm-hearted relationship (a "modus vivendi" if you like") could in fact have developed because of Stalin's realpolitik re. the virtue of conflict with the US.
What Eric Alterman argues at length in When Presidents Lie, is that the polarisation that began at Yalta had a lot to do with Roosevelt's subsequent misrepresentation of the Soviet position there, and that the Cold War was not an inevitability but a consequence of a number of complex factors - not all of them to do with the intrinsic nature of Soviet Russia.
It of course comforting to believe that the US is so noble at heart, and the Soviet Union so base that an existential struggle was inevitable. But that disregards the large number of unsavory regimes with which the US has been able to come to working relationships with in the past, and even today.
For example is peacful coexistence Cold War with China now impossible? I don't think there is an obvious and clear answer to the question, and all I meant by saying Kennan may have been erroneous was that there was really no clear answer on a peaceful coexistance with the Soviets, while he appeared to feel able to provide one.
But I have not the arrogance to presume I "know" one way or the other.
Do you seriously believe those statements of Stalin and Molotov in 1944?
I tend to believe secret internal recently unarchived memos can accurately render the state of mind of the parties present. If I did not I might never open a history book, for what would be the point?
I find Hitler for a number of reasons more objectionable than Stalin, and he was certainly no more honest in his public pronunciations. But that doesn't mean I disbelieve everything he ever said. I do believe him when he said in 1939 that he didn't want war with England for example.
Unfortunately some of the narrower minds at TMPCafe would take that to mean I was a supporter of Hitler, but the more nuanced among us will be able to spot the fragility of argument that could give rise to such an puerile accusation.
February 22, 2006 5:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
BrianOC wrote, "It of course comforting to believe that the US is so noble at heart, and the Soviet Union so base that an existential struggle was inevitable. But that disregards the large number of unsavory regimes with which the US has been able to come to working relationships with in the past, and even today."
I can only respond that the Soviet Union with which Kennan dealt was under Stalin, and yes, I see no reason to trust Stalin with any but base motives. Let's be sure we are not looking at late 1940s Soviet behavior through the filter of Gorbachev or even Brezhnev.
Further, BrianOC observes, "It of course comforting to believe that the US is so noble at heart, and the Soviet Union so base that an existential struggle was inevitable. But that disregards the large number of unsavory regimes with which the US has been able to come to working relationships with in the past, and even today." Oh? Regimes that had the level of internal killing as the Great Terror? I must have missed the warm cooperation the US reached with the Khmer Rouge. I am fully aware of the atrocities of Latin American death squads, but I cannot say they approached anything of the level of the purges of the kulaks, or the full Terror. I agree that Hitler didn't always lie, nor did Stalin. Nevertheless, it was rational to trust Stalin only in situtations where there was a clear common enemy.
I literally don't understand your point when you wrote "For example is peacful coexistence Cold War with China now impossible?" At the time Kennan wrote the Long Telegram, later the article "The Sources of Soviet Power" in Foreign Affairs, China was certainly not under Communist control. At the present time, there is at least some market activity in China that Kennan never saw in the Soviet Bloc; I don't see how you can consider these situations comparable.
I do NOT believe "secret internal recently unarchived memos," especially without accompanying independent validation and context. It would take a very, very strong memo indeed for me to discount the ruler of the Terror. Ted Bundy could be charming, as well. Or are you averse to calling it the Great Terror, prefer yezhovschina, and believe it was all Yezhov's fault, and the Great Stalin would have been kinder and gentler if he had only known? Of course, then one has to explain Yagoda...
May I suggest that your tone about "narrower minds" and "more nuanced among us" is rather condescending and not conducive to discussion?
February 22, 2006 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose that makes people who said Iraq had no WMDs in 2003 defenders of Saddam?
A succint analogy. Saddam, like Stalin, was evil. Thus - self-evidently - everything they ever did was evil; every single word they every uttered was a lie; and every move they ever made was calculated purely at the destruction of the United States - that city on the hill of pure benevolence whose very existence offended them as the presence of good on earth offends Lucifer.
This is all pretty basic stuff.
February 22, 2006 6:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
The sarcasm of your "self-evidently" reference suggests to me, increasingly, you are not interested in serious discussion with those who do not agree with your every point. The WMD issue followed other demonstrations of Saddam's activities.
Was the invasion of Kuwait, or the internal large-scale of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, somehow morally better than the war against Finland, the occupation of the Baltic countries, or the subsequent police states in Warsaw Pact states?
"This is all pretty basic stuff". Perhaps, for condescension and sarcasm that is rapidly reaching troll levels.
February 22, 2006 6:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
May I suggest that your tone about "narrower minds" and "more nuanced among us" is rather condescending and not conducive to discussion?
But calling me a "defender of Stalin" is? We can perhaps agree to differ on that?
Regimes that had the level of internal killing as the Great Terror?
Firstly as you know the US did work closely, and indulge in cosy photo-ops with Stalin after the Great Terror. So your point somewhat eludes me. When the US fought Hitler's Germany with the Soviets the depravity of the Nazi Holocaust was not so clear . Then in the Cold War period we are discussing the Great Terror had ended for some years. So again your repetition on that point seems incongrous to me.
Can you cite some history which shows the influence that the Great Terror had on US foreign policy in the late 40s? For one obvious thing, disengagement from friendly relations did not begin the instant Hitler was defeated. (Or Japan)
I must have missed the warm cooperation the US reached with the Khmer Rouge
Your tone has veered far from that of polite and reasoned debate I am afraid.
Or are you averse to calling it the Great Terror, prefer yezhovschina, and believe it was all Yezhov's fault
And this is beneath you. Or at least I should hope it is.
To sum up, simply for citing the belief of a number of renowned historians, like liberal Eric Alterman, that a more peaceable accommodation with the Soviet regime might have been achievable you have now begun to smear me as a Stalin sympathizer.
Regardless, your distinctions re. China are not incorrect. But are only matters of degree. In many ways China is an odious regime, but even after Tiananmen square the US has been able to interact peaceable with it.
It would take a very, very strong memo indeed for me to discount the ruler of the Terror
The one thing has no relation to the other. A persons actions re. internal politics need not always exactly mirror their actions in foreign policy. There is many a warmonger who treated their own people comparatively well. Just as there are plenty of brutal dictators who never started a war.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion of Stalin. But what you aren't entitled to do is smear anyone who does not share it as in some way tactitly approving the massacre of thousands of innocent people. And I would politely request in the future that you refrain from doing so.
February 22, 2006 6:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
How is it that "old men" are derided as shabby, shameful and timid? How is it that younger men are willing to send others into harm's way, never having understood that war is not only a failure of diplomacy but a final solution. Do you suppose that Kennan used the expression "military diplomacy" with not a little irony? Isn't it after all a grand oxymoron?
The Quadrennial Review by DoD has labored mightily and brought forth a new sobriquet: the 'long war' -- to replace the cold war -- through which the military industrial complex will provide economic impetus to the global economy. The long war without a long view is folly. The current effort by the Secretary of Defense to "re-brand" the War on Terrorism as a 'long war", is nothing if not military diplomacy.
President Bush has been quoted as saying in response to questions about his legacy: "In the long run, we're all dead." Is it his goal is to insure that.
February 22, 2006 6:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
"This is all pretty basic stuff". Perhaps, for condescension and sarcasm that is rapidly reaching troll levels.
Just bear in mind as - in your anti-trolling fervour - you downrate my comments and uprate those of others that my "condescension" has flowed directly from a comment which intended to slur me as a "supporter of Stalin".
My addresses to you, in contrast were entirely cordial, until you embarked on your current invidious crusade.
February 22, 2006 6:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
BrianOC, given the following from the original post, I think you may be being unfair to Kennan
I don't really intend to hold Kennan responsible for the worst of the Cold War. But it rather seemed as if he was being praised as one of its architects, and my contention was merely with his central point that it was impossible simply because of the aggressive nature of the Soviet regime to reach a relatively peaceable accommodation with it. And I don't contend he was necessarily wrong, only that its possible that he was.
And it seemed to me the author here had overlooked that possibility.
February 22, 2006 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't call you a defender of Stalin. You didn't say only those who called you a defender of Stalin had narrower minds and were less nuanced. You made that as a general, nonspecific observation that could well be read as directed to everyone else in the discussion.
What I did say is that I do not accept your generic comments about memos that made Stalin a plausible person with whom to do any serious postwar negotiations. Stay specific on my point, and don't wander off into analogies about Latin America. Kennan didn't address Latin America, but focused, on, as was the subject of the pseudonymously published version of the Long Telegram, "The Sources of Soviet Power." Stalin, at the time of the Long Telegram, was the source of Soviet power. Kennan, a perceptive observer, did not have access to recently declassified memos. Kennan considered Stalin, based on actions, untrustworthy, and I agree.
"Cosy photo-ops?" Specifics, please, after the war. During the war, yes. As Churchill put it, quoting from memory, "If the Devil will kill Germans, I would find it within myself to say something complimentary about Old Nick to the House of Commons."
Kennan didn't write the Long Telegram the instant Hitler was defeated. Kennan wrote it privately in 1946, and published in 1947, at a time the Soviets were imposing police states in Eastern Europe. The need to start the Berlin Airlift in June 1948 is hardly further evidence that Kennan was wrong and Stalin was well-intentioned.
You comment, when I cited the Khmer Rouge as a counterexample to some of your generalizations, Your tone has veered far from that of polite and reasoned debate I am afraid. Frankly, I am delighted you have that reaction. It suggests to me that I have gotten your attention. Sometimes, it is necessary to apply some negative feedback to one who, in my opinion, had already veered far from polite and reasoned discussion. Perhaps you might, in that light, reexamine some of your own condescension and defensiveness, such as telling me what is "beneath me." If I did not take full responsibility for the strong challenge I made to your assertions, I would not have referred to Yezhov.
"I have begun to smear you". A bit defensive, are we? Have I suggested you are trying to smear me, or merely that you seem to believe that apparently any disagreement with you is a smear? And no, I decline to refrain from airing my opinion that you are attempting to absolve Stalin from some of his responsibility, in the context of blaming Kennan and the US for a large responsibiity of the Cold War. If you take disagreement as a smear, that's your responsibility.
I am able to separate disagreement with my views from personal attacks. That, in my opinion, is necessary for a context such as TPM. And no, I am not going to refrain from making what I consider to be objective evaluations because you take them as smears, or, to use your words which I never uttered, "tacitly approving the massacre of thousands of innocent people."
If I had been accusing you of tacitly approving Stalin's massacres of innocent people, I would have been historically accurate and referred to millions of innocent people. But, since I made no such tacit suggestion, I didn't refer to thousands of innocent people. Be very aware that if I believe someone is approving of atrocities, my comment won't be tacit but quite explicit.
You may not be approving of Stalin's crimes. I will, however, make an explicit observation that you are rather thin-skinned with respect to disagreement. I tend not to respond to "polite requests" from people I regard as sarcastic and condescending, until I see polite discourse from them.
To borrow from an admired communication of Winston Churchill,
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your esteemed servant,
Howard C. Berkowitz
February 22, 2006 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I literally don't understand your point when you wrote "For example is peacful coexistence Cold War with China now impossible?"
A fair point. The words "Cold War" in that sentence were holdovers from an earlier draft and should have been erased.
February 22, 2006 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
If your addresses to me, and to others, were cordial, I'd hate to hear you if you were choosing to be unpleasant.
If I called you a "Supporter of Stalin", please cite where I did so in those words. I have criticized, on specifics, a number of observations you have made about Stalin.
"Anti-trolling fervor"? Sir, the purpose of the rating system, as I understand it and comply with it, is to rate the quality of discussion. Had you explicitly put Stalin on a plane with Saint Francis of Assisi, and made a cogent case from perhaps unique axioms, I would rate that with the "4" any cogent case deserves.
"Invidious crusade"? Sir, when I confront, it is about as invidious as a camel's breath is rosy.
February 22, 2006 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do not defend Bush or Rumsfeld's expressions. I disagree, however, that "military diplomacy" is a grand oxymoron. I will agree with William T. Sherman that war is hell. Sometimes, that hell is necessary, and indeed it may be necessitated by the failure of conventional diplomacy.
Leaving aside the concept that military and diplomatic actions, along with others, are part of a national grand strategy, I would observe that military writers going back to Sun Tzu have regarded the role of a military as a deterrent to war as highly desirable. I remember one translation of Sun Tzu as "The greatest general is he who wins without fighting."
Explicit deterrence theory, in the long history of military writing, is relatively new; I would regard the first really explicit exposition -- which still didn't use the term -- was by Alfred Thayer Mahan in The Influence of Seapower upon History.
February 22, 2006 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't call you a defender of Stalin.
Howard,
I have sent you a private and contrite message which I hope will help defuse the unnecessary tension which has arisen here. I will attempt to answer the substance of your comments, and ignore the more ad hominem side of the discourse in which I have also regrettably partaken.
Kennan, a perceptive observer, did not have access to recently declassified memos. Kennan considered Stalin, based on actions, untrustworthy, and I agree.
That is tangential to my point. My point is that Kennan may have been incorrect in his summation, not that there are no extenuating circumstances if he was.
you are attempting to absolve Stalin from some of his responsibility, in the context of blaming Kennan and the US for a large responsibiity of the Cold War
To the extent that I think there is merit to the arguments of some historians that the Cold War and how it was carried out was not 100% absolutely the result of Stalin's actions, and 0% related to those of the US, that may be a fair comment.
But the question is not to my mind about the apportioning of "blame". But merely: was the Cold War inevitable? I declare myself an agnostic on that question, and I cited some historical support for that view. I feel that you have declared yourself fervently on one side, but that you haven't substantiated it beyond a kind of gut feeling that Stalin was an unconscionable monster.
Certainly Stalin was an unconscionable monster, but that again is tangential to the question of whether the Cold War was inevitable. Just as Saddam Hussein was a monster, but that fact does not prima facie prove the necessity of Gulf War II.
"Cosy photo-ops?" Specifics, please, after the war.
Why after the war? You ask me to substantiate a claim I never made. To you the great test is the Great Terror. I said there were cosy photo ops after that - apparent milestone - event.
Basically it seems to me you are saying the fact of the Great Terror meant the US could never interact with even frosty cordiality with the Soviets. Yet plainly they did. I expect you will claim that the war was extenuating, but I would claim in response, that Hitler at the time the US fought against him had not revealed himself as a monster yet as Stalin had done. So the war does not seem such a great extenuation. Certainly there were others on the Allied side who would have preferred fighting alongside the Germans against Russia, and it is up for debate whether a different president might have been persuadable on that score*.
I don't claim that that is a certainty but I am able to concede that I don't know. I am far from being able to claim a certainty about historical "inevitabilities".
Again I'd like to see some indication of how the Great Terror - the key event in your view - influenced the course of the Cold War.
I also do not share a faith that the nature of the Soviet regime was so unique in its evil that it above all others could find no accomodation with the US. Certainly the Soviet regime might have been incomparably evil. But then Stalin had an incomparably bushy moustache. Were I to claim that the US could find no accommodation with a wearer of such a facial outgrowth, I would expect to be asked to support that questionable contention with some evidence.
So my question remains, where is the evidence that it was the incomparable evil of the Soviets that made accommodation impossible?
*Indeed to continue the reference, the theme of Churchill's "Their Finest Hour" was "How the British people held the fort ALONE until those who had hitherto been half-blind were half-ready"
February 22, 2006 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for working to defuse tension, which is always welcome. Let me try to summarize some of my perceptions of the Cold War. There is an axiom of intelligence analysis that one makes estimates based on capabilities, rather than intentions. I use "estimate" in a technical sense, and I believe this administration badly misinterpreted intelligence data in support of a preexisting policy decision.
Nevertheless, I find the behavior of the Soviet Union under Stalin, before, during, and after WWII, such that I believe that Kennan and Truman, as well as Churchill, based on the information available at the time including specific actions, had no real alternative but to take an extremely suspicious attitude toward the Soviet Union. My opinion is that given the cast of characters and the history -- the start of the Cold War was inevitable. I believe that the Brothers Dulles certainly exacerbated it and missed opportunities to reduce tension, but that was well after Stalin. Indochina, just after WWII, was incredibly mishandled, not that US policy in that area has ever been especially exemplary.
To me, a cosy photo-op is meaningless, when compared to actual behavior, be it the blockade of Berlin, WWII Soviet espionage against the US, the takeover of the Eastern European states, and, yes, the actions during the Great Terror.
No, I do not consider the Great Terror the single key event. I will say that it established Stalin as a monster, but it was principally activities in roughly 1945-1950 that established him as a monster with which there was no reasonable accomodation, and the containment policy was a reasonable alternative to all-out war. Not all parts of that policy were evil. The Marshall Plan certainly went against Stalin's interest, as well as the enlightened occupation of Japan, but few would criticize them today.
For quite a number of years, there was every reason to believe that if the Soviets judged they had a chance, they would pour land forces into Western Europe. Over time, this became less likely. Mutual Assured Destruction was hardly a thing of beauty, but it prevented active global war.
The Sino-Soviet split was not well-handled. At the time of the Korean War, however, China and the USSR were sufficiently cooperative that they represented, jointly, an expansionist threat.
It is not so much that there is no possibility that an accomodation could have been reached, but that the risk of any accomodation I can imagine would have been unacceptable. On a macro level, national policy mirrors the constant tradeoffs in medicine. I may have a patient whose body defenses might fight off a disease without giving him a potentially dangerous drug, but the risk-benefit calculation is such that giving the drug is prudent -- and risks are understood.
To the decisionmakers in 1946-1949, I see no reasonable alternative to the Cold War based on the information available at the time. If you want to propose specific alternative scenarios, I would be happy to discuss them seriously, but I can't realistically respond to an assumption the US should have acted differently based on information locked, at the time, in Soviet archives.
February 22, 2006 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Democratic Party would be wise to remember Kennan's third and fourth closing points:
"Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory"
"We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past. It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples... are tired and frightened by experiences of past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities ."
We need a unified, disciplined plan (and message) for domestic improvement, and a gentle hand in foreign policy to help other nations develop.
February 22, 2006 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aside from the Cold War policy of containment, Kennan also authored the concept of nuclear deterrence. He was convinced that nuclear weaponry should never be used in war, which was in high contrast to Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute, who actually contemplated the "tactical" use of such weapons.
Kennan was concerned about the extent of military diplomacy. Containment meant the immediate resistance to Soviet aggression. He approved of the Berlin Airlift, but believed a firm message of resolve had been sent and it was time to attempt negotiation. It appears that his philosophy of containment was a highly fluid one, where the adherents would continually seek a "choke point" where a military solution could be curtailed by a showing of resolve, and then defused by negotiation. This appeared to be his thinking in Korea, where he advocated repelling the aggressor, and utilizing the turning point on the battlefield as a basis of negotiation. Containment also concerned a strategic thinking that did not dictate a unilateral response to every pending threat around the globe, but to exercise some judgment of the circumstances and feasibility of intervention.
Kennan stated words to the effect that if you do get yourself into a war, it best be monitored and analyzed on a 24/7 basis. Its an interesting suggestion considering we now have a President who is not inclined to burn the midnight oil over anything at all.
February 22, 2006 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Certainly not. However there were certain facts available to high-ranking US politicians that were much closer at hand than Soviet archives. I'll refer again to Eric Alterman on this. One of his major arguments in When Presidents Lie, was based on the notion that Roosevelt misrepresented the Soviets after Yalta - even in effect to Truman - to place them in a harsher light. Here is a good precis of that section of the book:
Alterman's argument is that in misrepresenting to the American people what the Soviets had agreed at Yalta, Roosevelt ultimately led Truman to believe the Soviets had reneged on an agreement re. Poland when that was not the case. This was one of the milestones on the way to the Cold War. And is not something, however much we dislike Stalin, that can be laid at this door. To be clear we might continue to deplore the substance of the Yalta agreement, while at the same time acknowledging that some regrettable concessions were indeed given.
And if that ultimately leads us to the conclusion that the Soviets were maligned on an invalid basis subsequent to the Cold War, then that does not mean that the Cold War would not have inevitably ensued anyway. But it does mean I think that to believe Stalin bears 100% responsibility and the US 0% represents an inaccuracy.
February 22, 2006 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a little confused, and perhaps you can help me. You wrote, "However there were certain facts available to high-ranking US politicians that were much closer at hand than Soviet archives.I'll refer again to Eric Alterman on this. One of his major arguments in When Presidents Lie, was based on the notion that Roosevelt misrepresented the Soviets after Yalta - even in effect to Truman - to place them in a harsher light."
Let's assume Roosevelt lied about everything. Is Alterman saying that FDR told someone that he lied, or wrote down the lies, in some form that was accessible, in a timely manner, to Truman, Acheson, Kennan, etc.? That is what "facts...much closer at hand than Soviet archives" would imply to me.
If reliable data that Roosevelt lied was not available to the aforementioned officials, than their only rational basis for making the initial Cold War decisions was what they observed. Did anyone in the Soviet government, in 1945-6, contact Kennan or other diplomats in Moscow and suggest they thought a horrible mistake was being made? That might be relevant, if so.
If no one in a decisionmaking position had any real information that Stalin was interested in cooperation, then the fact of the Berlin Blockade probably ended any hope of avoiding the Cold War.
You point out that Stalin objected to the Polish government-in-exile returning, and, if I read correctly, no one besides FDR and his interpreter knew FDR had assented. Since the Western Allies had recognized the London Poles throughout the war, and had great contributions ranging from providing ENIGMA intelligence, to pilots in the Battle of Britain, to Sosnabowski's brigade landing at Arnhem, why would it be unreasonable for US decisionmakers to regard Stalin's action as a grab for power?
This thread started with observations about the Long Telegram. Even if Roosevelt, a man I agree was secretive and liked internal conflict within his intimates, lied extensively, if Kennan had no way to know about it, I believe the premise that Kennan made reasonable observations is supported.
February 22, 2006 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a little confused, and perhaps you can help me
Ah, I see where we parted ways - the question I was answering was not the one you asked.
I was intending to show not that the decision makers of 1946-49 knew of the Yalta confusion as you requested, but only that Roosevelt himself knew. I was thus not intending to say that Kennan et al were blameworthy for not knowing about it. Merely that since they didn't know, Kennan may have been incorrect in his assessment of the Soviets.
Thus my contention was that the Soviets may not have borne 100% responsibility for the Cold War but that FDR may have to bear a small part of the blame for having created the impression that the Soviets had broken an agreement which they had not broken.
I believe the premise that Kennan made reasonable observations is supported.
Perhaps but to say that those observations were reasonable is not the same as saying they were correct. That was my initial point of contention - with the assertion that the intrinsic nature of the Soviet regime made a modus vivendi impossible. I sugest that that the intrinsic nature may have been misjudged, and that Roosevelt may have been partly responsible for that misjudgement.
February 22, 2006 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I may, let me share one of the great all-time comebacks I have been honored to hear. Our exceptionally sane and stable project manager asked a question of our lead operating systems programmer, who spoke fluent gibberish.
Project manager: "When will the new tape library manager be ready?"
Programmer: "Yeah! Well, if I superzap the whatsis thingee in the master scheduler so it spawns a new TCB, I can EXCP straight to the UCB of the label printer. Yep. "
Project manager: "A thousand pardons. I apologize that my question was not responsive to your answer."
:-)
Whether or not Roosevelt, had he lived, could have negotiated a modus vivendi with Stalin is, indeed, an interesting question. I can regard it, at best, as an academic exercise. Even with the benefit of today's information, I see no particular differences that would make me confident in the potential of a modus vivendi.
Had I been a still, small voice whispering to Roosevelt's inner ear, I'm afraid I would have advised "Don't try. There's too much in stake; Stalin has eaten his young a bit too often."
Given the difficulty with the USSR as a wartime ally, with no noticeable common values other than a common enemy, given what he had done to the Eastern European countries, indeed the Terror, the Gulag, those espionage operations discovered at that point, I would not regard Stalin as a valuable ally. Bluntly, if I am going to deal with an evil dictator, when there aren't some more viable reasons for cooperation, I would recommend only those that I can dominate militarily if they go very, very bad.
Fight the Soviets on land? (Cue up "1812 Overture", follow with "Alexander Nevsky" if questions remain)
February 22, 2006 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bluntly, if I am going to deal with an evil dictator, when there aren't some more viable reasons for cooperation, I would recommend only those that I can dominate militarily if they go very, very bad.
A fair observation on which to close I think - my work day is over and it's ultimately been a worthwhile exchange of views. It's been good talking with you.
Brian
February 22, 2006 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad we came up with a useful discussion.
Howard
February 22, 2006 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm...Looks a lot like my post from December:
http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2005/12/george_kennan_s.html
February 23, 2006 8:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
One question Ikenberry's post raises is whether the US has anyone with the insight into the Arab world, and al-Qaeda in particular, that Kennan had with respect to the Soviet Union. I found Michael Scott Doran's article Somebody Else's Civil War quite interesting, but I'm not in a position to assess its accuracy. William Polk, perhaps? The late Hume Horan? [Update: Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, authors of The Age of Sacred Terror, also come to mind.]
For anyone interested in reading more of Kennan's writings, see George F. Kennan on the Web. I'd also recommend his two-volume autobiography and Wilson D. Miscamble's George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950.
With respect to the origins of the Cold War, BrianOC writes: "'Important' or otherwise Kennan's telegram may also have been fundamentally erroneous." Specifically, he cites Eric Alterman's assessment that as late as 1945, Stalin believed that cooperation with the United States was still possible.
I'd be interested in reading Alterman's book and examining the evidence more closely. I'm skeptical, though, that it'd have been possible for the US to avert the Cold War by cooperating more closely with Stalin. As Alterman notes, Stalin was a hard-nosed expansionist with no trace of sentimentality (as Roosevelt found at Yalta, and was clear from the Red Army's halt before Warsaw--this would have been much more of a factor in Western views of Stalin than the Great Terror), and it's hard to imagine why he wouldn't have expected to be able to expand Soviet power into Western Europe. With the end of World War II, the US rapidly demobilized its army, as it had after World War I; the Communist parties in France and Italy were in a strong position; and Europe was shattered.
Until the US re-committed itself to Western Europe, through the Marshall Plan and NATO, there was no obvious source of resistance to continued Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Why would Stalin have accepted a Western Europe which remained outside the Soviet sphere, rather than claiming all of continental Europe as the Soviet sphere of influence?
Here's Kennan's 1952 assessment of Stalin's views in the immediate aftermath in World War II. Kennan certainly faults US policy in a number of areas (notably its over-militarization); he's not a "US good, Soviet Union evil" Manichean.
If we accept that conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was inevitable, then the choice was not between cooperation and the Cold War, but between the Cold War and World War III. And to the extent that Kennan's Long Telegram was responsible for containment rather than World War III, I think it does indeed deserve to be celebrated.
February 23, 2006 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink