[extropy-chat] George Kennan

[Amara Graps]

Kennan just died. A repost of what I posted here last
August.  Amara


"Mr. X Speaks: An Interview with George Kennan" (PDF)
http://www.afsa.org/fsj/feb04/guldin.pdf 


George F. Kennan on the Web
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2496/future/kennan.html

from:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2496/future/kennan.html

Portrait of Kennan by Ned Seidler Russil Wvong / History,
politics, and the future / George F. Kennan

{begin quote}
George F. Kennan (b. 1904), a distinguished US diplomat
and historian, was one of the primary architects of US
strategy during the Truman Administration. He's Professor
Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey.

Kennan is one of the most thoughtful and eloquent writers
I've ever come across, not just on history, international
politics, and US-Russian relations, but on American
society, questions of personal and political philosophy,
and contemporary problems such as nuclear weapons, the
environment, population growth, and urbanization. For
such a distinguished man, he's also remarkably humble.

The role that Kennan played in shaping US postwar
strategy—along with his colleagues, including George
Marshall, Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, Loy Henderson,
and John Paton Davies Jr.—makes his writings particularly
fascinating. Before World War II, the US had the foreign
policy of a "small, neutral nation." After World War II,
with the collapse of the European powers, the US found
itself confronting the Soviet Union, which set up puppet
governments in occupied Eastern Europe and appeared to be
threatening a shattered Western Europe as well. Kennan
articulated the strategy of patient, long-term
"containment" of the Soviet Union, and in particular, the
re-establishing of a stable balance of power by
rebuilding Western Europe and Japan. As first director of
the State Department's Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to
1950, under Marshall and Acheson, Kennan was responsible
for long-term planning. He played a major role in both
the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan, as well as
overall US strategy towards the Soviet Union. Less
laudably, Kennan also played a significant role in
launching the CIA's covert operations, which he later
described as "the greatest mistake I ever made." He
didn't have much to say about policy towards the Third
World, where he thought that in any case, the US could
not do much to help; he advocated restraint, particularly
in the case of China. (Wilson Miscamble's George F.
Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy,
1947-1950 provides a detailed analysis of Kennan's
influence on US policy decisions.)

Over time, Kennan became increasingly pessimistic about
the ability of the US to follow a realistic, sensitive,
and discriminating foreign policy, and to maintain the
basic health of US society. In Kennan's view, US foreign
policy suffers to a deplorable degree from confusion,
ignorance, narcissism, escapism, and irresponsibility. He
left the State Department in the early 1950s and joined
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New
Jersey, hoping to educate the US public and US
policymakers by illuminating the history of US-Soviet
relations. He also spoke frequently on contemporary
problems, particularly the nuclear arms race. Now that
the Cold War has, astonishingly, ended with the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Kennan argues (e.g. in Around the
Cragged Hill) that the US ought to limit its foreign
policy to maintaining its alliances with Western Europe
and Japan, and ought to focus on addressing its pressing
domestic problems.


{end quote}

--------------

Take a look at the section: "2. Reports, articles,
lectures, interviews" in particular,

* the famous: 'X Paper'

The political personality of Soviet power as we know it
today is the product of ideology and circumstances:
ideology inherited by the present Soviet leaders from the
movement in which they had their political origin, and
circumstances of the power which they now have exercised
for nearly three decades in Russia. There can be few
tasks of psychological analysis more difficult than to
try to trace the interaction of these two forces and the
relative role of each in the determination of official
Soviet conduct, yet the attempt must be made if that
conduct is to be understood and effectively countered.

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kennan.html

and

* the 'Long Telegram'

February 22, 1946. Published in Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1946, vol. VI. US policymakers had been
hoping to continue their partnership with the Soviet
Union after World War II, and were puzzled as to why the
Soviet Union was being so uncooperative, even hostile.
Kennan's Long Telegram from the Moscow Embassy explained
the Soviet view of the world. It struck a chord and was
widely distributed within the Truman Administration.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.ht
m