George F. Kennan

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George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian.

He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War.

He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States.

He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men". During the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union.

His "Long Telegram" from Moscow during 1946 and the subsequent 1947 article The Sources of Soviet Conduct argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States.

These texts provided justification for the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet policy.

Kennan played a major role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, notably the Marshall Plan. Soon after his concepts had become U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the foreign policies that he had seemingly helped begin.

Subsequently, prior to the end of 1948, Kennan became confident that positive dialogue could commence with the Soviet government.

His proposals were discounted by the Truman administration and Kennan's influence was marginalized, particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949.

Soon thereafter, U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more assertive and militaristic quality, causing Kennan to lament about what he believed was an abrogation of his previous assessments. In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State—except for a brief ambassadorial stint in Moscow and a longer one in Yugoslavia—and became a realist critic of U.S. foreign policy.

He continued to analyze international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death in 2005 at age 101.

Early life

Kennan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Kossuth Kent Kennan, a lawyer specializing in tax law, a descendant of impoverished Scotch-Irish settlers from 18th-century Connecticut and Massachusetts, who was named after the Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth (1802–94), and Florence James Kennan. Mrs. Kennan died two months later due to peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, though Kennan long believed that she died after giving birth to him. The boy always lamented not having a mother. He was never close to his father or stepmother; however, he was close to his older sisters.

At the age of eight, he went to Germany to stay with his stepmother in order to learn German. He attended St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, and arrived at Princeton University in the second half of 1921. Unaccustomed to the elite atmosphere of the Ivy League, the shy and introverted Kennan found his undergraduate years difficult and lonely.

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Diplomatic career

Kennan considered attending law school but decided against doing so, instead applying for the newly established United States Foreign Service after receiving his bachelor's degree in History in 1925. He passed the qualifying examination and after seven months of study at the Foreign Service School in Washington, he accepted his first job as a vice consul in Geneva, Switzerland. He was promoted to a post in Hamburg, Germany, within a year. Kennan considered quitting the Foreign Service to return to a university for graduate study during 1928. Rather, he was chosen for a linguist training program that would provide him with three years of graduate-level training without having to leave the program.

Kennan's 1929 athena began his research into history, politics, culture, and the Russian language at the University of Berlin's Oriental Institute. He'll follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, George Kennan (1845–1924), a leading Imperial Russia expert and sculptor of Siberia and the Exile System, a well-received 1891 account of the Czarist prison system, in doing so. Kennan would master several other languages, including German, French, Polish, Czech, Portuguese, Portuguese, and Norwegian, during his diplomatic career.

Kennan was stationed at the legation in Riga, Latvia, where he worked on Soviet economic affairs as the third secretary. Kennan "grew to a mature interest in Russian affairs" as a result of his work. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt's assassination of diplomats in the Soviet Union, Kennan accompanied Ambassador William C. Bullitt to Moscow. Kennan was one of Moscow's most technically prepared Russian experts, as well as Charles E. Bohlen and Loy W. Henderson, by the mid-1930s. These officials had been inspired by Robert F. Kelley, longtime State Department's East European Affairs division's division of East European Affairs. They felt that there was no reason for cooperation with the Soviet Union, even against potential adversaries. In the meantime, Kennan researched Stalin's Great Purge, which would influence his interpretation of the Soviet regime's internal dynamics for the remainder of his life.

Kennan found himself in a tense comparison with Joseph E. Davies, Bullitt's successor as ambassador to the Soviet Union who defended the Great Purge and other aspects of Stalin's reign. Kennan had no influence on Davies's decisions, and the latter even recommended that Kennan be relocated from Moscow for "his wellbeing." Kennan considered resigning from the service but instead accepted the Russian desk at the State Department in Washington. Kennan, a man with a high opinion of himself, began writing the first draft of his memoirs at the age of 34, when he was still a young diplomat. Kennan expressed his dissatisfaction with American life in a letter sent to his sister Jeannette in 1935, writing: "I dislike the rough and tumble of our political life." I hate democracy; I hate the press; I have become un-American; Kennan has been chastised for some of his remarks in an essay titled "The Prerequisites." In it, he argued that the United States should become an authoritarian, rather than fascist, state, and that women, refugees, and African-Americans should be barred from voting because only American-born white males had the necessary intelligence to vote.

Kennan had been reassigned to a position at the Legation in Prague by September 1938. Kennan was assigned to Berlin after the Czechoslovak Republic was occupied by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II. He endorsed Lend-Lease in the United States but warned against the suggestion that the Soviets be endorsed by the Soviets, whom he regarded as unfit allies. After Germany, then followed by other Axis states, who declared war on the US in December 1941, he was interned in Germany for six months.

Kennan was sent to the legation in Lisbon, Portugal, where he grudgingly carried out a job coordinating intelligence and base operations in September 1942. Bert Fish, the American Ambassador in Lisbon, died in July 1943, and Kennan was charged with d'affaires and the head of the American Embassy in Portugal. During World War II, Kennan played a key role in Portugal's acceptance of the use of the Azores Islands by American naval and air forces during World War II. Faced with clumsy instructions and a lack of coordination from Washington, Kennan took the initiative by speaking directly with President Roosevelt and getting a letter from the Portuguese premier, Salazar, which triggered the concession of Azores facilities.

In January 1944, he was sent to London, where he served as advisor to the American delegation to the European Advisory Commission, which was responsible for preparing Allied policies in Europe. Kennan became even more dissatisfied with the State Department, which he claimed was dismissing his qualifications as a qualified specialist. However, he was appointed deputy chief of the mission in Moscow within months of starting the work on the orders of W. Averell Harriman, the ambassador to the USSR.

Kennan expressed surprise in Moscow that President Truman and Washington's Washington ignored his views. Kennan continued to pressurise policymakers to abandon plans for cooperation with the Soviet government in favour of a sphere of influence in Europe in order to weaken the Soviets' power there. Kennan believed that a federation must be formed in western Europe to counter Soviet influence in the area and compete against the Soviet stronghold in eastern Europe.

Kennan served as deputy head of the Moscow mission from April to June 1946. The Treasury Department requested that the State Department clarify recent Soviet conduct, including the unwillingness to endorse the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at the end of the term. Kennan responded on February 22, 1946 by sending a long 5,363-word telegram (sometimes cited as more than 8,000 words), from Moscow to Secretary of State James Byrnes, outlining a new direction for diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Kennan's ideas in the Long Telegram were not new, but the argument he made and the vivid language he used in making it came at a timely time. The authentic and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity is at the "bottom of Kremlin's nefarious view of world affairs." Following the Russian Revolution, this sense of insecurity merged with communist ideology, "Oriental secrecy, and conspiracy."

Stalin's regime's internal needs mainly governed Soviet foreign policy, according to Kenny; in order to legitimize his autocratic rule. Stalin used Marxism-Leninism as a "justification for the Soviet Union's innate apprehension of the outside world," for draconian abuses for which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they were not prepared to suffer for.... Today they cannot bear to defuse it. It is the fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability.

When awaiting the Soviet regime's mellowing, the alternative was to expand Western institutions in order to make them invulnerable to the Soviet challenge.

Kennan's latest strategy of containment, in the words of his later 'X' article, was that Soviet pressure had to "be contained by a savvy and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of consistently changing geographic and political boundaries."

Kennan was taken seriously by the long telegram dispatch from the Navy's Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, a leading promoter of a confrontational strategy involving the Soviets, the US' former wartime ally. Fornstal helped Kennan return to Washington, where he was first deputy for foreign affairs at the National War College and then strongly influenced his decision to publish the "X" article.

His initiative was to ban all US forces from Europe. According to the deal, the Kremlin would have enough reassurance against the establishment of regimes in Eastern Europe hostile to the Soviet Union, tempering the degree of control over the territory that the Soviet leaders felt it was imperative to exercise.

Truman, meanwhile, appeared in March 1947 before Congress to request funds for the Truman Doctrine in Greece to combat Communism. "I believe that it must be the United States' policy to assist free people who are attempting to sue assault by armed minorities or outside pressures."

"The sources of Soviet conduct," Kennan's well-timed article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which claimed that Stalin's policy was shaped by a combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology, which called for a revolution to destabilize imperial interests in the outside world, and Stalin's insistence on "capitalist encirclement" in order to legitimize his regimente of Soviet society in order to solidify his political authority, rather than "long eny Kennan said that Stalin would not (and moreover cannot) moderate the apparent Soviet resolve to overthrowrown Western governments.

Thus,

According to his latest strategy of containment, Soviet pressure had to "be contained by adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a sequence of continuously shifting geographic and political boundaries." He was created to ban all US forces from Europe. "The deal will give the Kremlin ample cover against the establishment of regimes in Eastern Europe hostile to the Soviet Union," the Soviet Union's Soviet leaders said, tempering the degree of control over the territory that was necessary to exercise."

Kennan also stated that if the United States will have to perform this containment alone, it will require its own economic growth and political stability, but that if it does, it will face a period of great strain, resulting in "either the break-up or gradual mellowing of Soviet power."

The release of the "X" article shortly sparked one of the Cold War's most lively debates. Walter Lippmann, a leading American commentator on international affairs, has sluggishly criticized the "X" essay. Kennan's containment policy, according to Lippmann, was "a strategic monstrosity" that could only be carried out by recruiting, subsidizing, and assisting a heterogeneous collection of satellites, customers, and puppets. Diplomacy, according to Lippmann, should be the foundation of Soviet relations; he recommended that the United States pull its forces from Europe and reunify and demilitarize Germany. In the meantime, it was soon revealed that "X" was actually Kennan. This information seemed to give the "X" article the status of a government paper announcing the Truman administration's new policy toward Moscow.

Kennan did not intend the "X" article to be a code of action. Kennan continued to state that the book did not imply an explicit pledge to oppose Soviet "expansion" wherever it appeared, with no distinction between primary and secondary interests. Kennan did not seem to be concerned with using political and economic rather than military tactics as the chief agent of containment, as the author did not make it clear. "My thoughts about containment were deceived by the people who understood it and pursued it solely as a military goal," Kennan said in a 1996 interview with CNN, "and I suspect that this contributed to [the] 40 years of unnecessary, prohibitively expensive, and disoriented process of the Cold War."

In addition, the Obama administration made no attempt to explain to the American public how the distinction between Soviet influence and international Communism was made. "In part, this setback reflected many in Washington's conviction that only the possibility of an undifferentiated global threat could bring Americans out of their isolationist tendencies that had remained latent among them."

Kennan reiterated that he did not see the Soviets as mainly a military threat in a PBS television interview with David Gergen in 1996, adding that "they were not like Hitler." Kennan's take was that this was a miscommunication: this is incorrect:

Kennan's name came as a result of a "X" story. "My official loneliness came to an end," he said later. My name was stolen, not to be. "My voice has now been heard."

Kennan was more influential in April 1947-December 1948, when George C. Marshall was Secretary of State, than at any other time in his career. Marshall praised his strategic instincts and ordered him to develop and oversee what is now known as the Policy Planning Staff, the state Department's internal think tank. Kennan was the first Director of Policy Planning. Marshall was heavily dependent on him to make policy recommendations. Kennan was instrumental in the preparation of the Marshall Plan.

Although Kennan regarded the Soviet Union as too fragile to risk war, he nevertheless considered it a threat to Western Europe by subversion, despite Western Europe's widespread resistance to Communist parties, which was largely harmed by the Second World War's devastation. Kennan's proposal to counter this potential source of Soviet influence was to direct economic assistance and clandestine political assistance to Japan and Western Europe in order to revive Western governments and support global capitalism; by doing so, the US could help restore power balance. In June 1948, Kennan suggested clandestine support to left-wing militant groups in Western Europe in order to engineer a divide between Moscow and working-class movements in Western Europe. Kennan supported Truman's decision to give the Greek government a financial assistance war against Communist rebels in 1947, though he opposed military assistance. Kennan's assertion that if the Soviet Union gives military assistance to Greece is untrue, and the main reason for his opposition to military aid is that he does not think Greece is particularly significant.

Kennan and the Truman administration hoped that the Soviet Union's rejection of Marshall assistance would put the Soviet Union's rejection of Marshall aid in Eastern Europe, which might have put the Soviet Union's relations with its Communist allies in Eastern Europe in jeopardy. Kennan started a string of attempts to profit from the schism between the Soviets and Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. To lower Moscow's authority, Kennan suggested taking clandestine action in the Balkans to further reduce Moscow's authority.

The administration's new vigourly anti-Soviet policy became even more apparent when, at Kennan's suggestion, the United States transferred its hostility to Francisco Franco's anti-communist government in Spain in order to ensure U.S. presence in the Mediterranean. Kennan had noticed during 1947 that the Truman Doctrine demanded a fresh appraisal of Franco. His suggestion was able to start a new phase of US-Spanish relations, which were largely concerned with military cooperation after 1950. Kennan was instrumental in establishing the American economic assistance to Greece, insisting on a capitalist approach of growth and economic integration with the rest of Europe. The majority of the Marshall Plan aid went to help a war-ravaged world where the country was still suffering well before World War II. Though Marshall Plan aid to Greece was successful in building or rebuilding ports, railroads, paved roads, a hydro-electricity transmission system, and a national telephone system, the attempt to install "good government" on Greece was less fruitful. The Greek economy had traditionally been dominated by a rentier system in which a few wealthy families, a highly politicized officer corps, and the royal family all ruled the economy for their own benefit. The Greek elite had utterly dismissed Kennan's proposal to open the Greek economy. Kennan argued that regaining control of Vietnam was crucial to Western Europe and Japan's economic recovery, but by 1949, he changed his tunes, becoming confident that the French will never defeat the Communist Viet Minh rebels.

Kennan proposed "Program A" or "Plan A" for Germany reunification in 1949, but the partition of Germany was unsustainable in the long run. According to Kennan, the American people will become bored with occupying their German zone and would eventually request that US troops be withdrawn. Oderally, Kennan predicted that the Soviets would pull their forces out of East Germany, knowing full well that they could quickly return from their bases in Poland, causing the US to do the same, but that would give the Soviets the upper hand over the Soviets, as the Americans lacked bases in other Western European nations. Finally, Kennan argued that the German people were very proud and would not be occupied by foreigners for ever, providing a solution to the "German question" imperative. Kennan's call was for the reunification and neutralization of Germany; with the exception of small enclaves near the border that would be able to be delivered by sea; and a four-power commission from the four occupying powers would have the final say, allowing the Germans to mostly govern themselves.

Kennan argued that "program A" would not solve the "German problem" by resolving the "German question" by sea, remove the main Soviet pretext for occupying Poland, ensure that a unified Germany would become a "third power" in the Cold War, which is neither with Moscow nor Washington. Kennan argued that a German "third power" in the Cold War would pose no threat to the United States, while the Soviet Union will be more destabilizing to Eastern Europe than to Western Europe.

When Dean Acheson took over as Secretary of State, Kennan's influence slowed dramatically, after 1948 and 1950, replacing the ailing George Marshall. Acheson did not regard the Soviet "threat" as primarily political, and he saw the Berlin blockade in June 1948, the first Soviet test of a nuclear weapon in China a month later, and the Korean War in June 1950 as proof. Truman and Acheson decided to delineate the Western sphere of influence and devise a system of alliances. In a paper, Kennan argued that the mainland of Asia should be excluded from the "containment" agendas, saying that the US was "significantly overextended in its whole discussion of what we can do and should strive for" in Asia. Rather, he argued that Japan and the Philippines should act as the "cornerstone of a Pacific security system."

Acheson approved Program A shortly after taking office as Secretary of State, despite Kennan's statement that "the division of Germany was not an end to itself." However, Plan A encountered significant resistance from both the Pentagon, who saw it as abandoning West Germany to the Soviet Union, and within the State Department, with diplomat Robert Murphy's argument that the mere existence of a prosperous and democratic West Germany would destabilize East Germany, and hence the Soviet Union. Plan A was more important because it needed the approval of the British and French governments, but neither was in favour of implementing Plan A, arguing that it was far too early to end Germany's occupation. Both public opinion in the United Kingdom and France were concerned that if the Allies loosened their grip over Germany, it would cause problems only for the Soviets, and so did Kennan's that a reunified Germany would cause difficulties for the Soviets. A misguided Plan A was leaked to the French media in May 1949, with the main difference being that the US was able to pull out of all of Europe in exchange for a reunified and neutral Germany. Acheson disapproved Plan A during the ensuing uproar.

Kennan lost his position with Acheson, who, in any case, relied less on his employees than Marshall did. Kennan resigned as the director of strategic planning in December 1949, but he remained in the department as a counselor until June 1950. In January 1950, Acheson replaced Kennan with Nitze, who was much more familiar with military power calculus. Kennan accepted an appointment as Visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study from fellow moderate Robert Oppenheimer, Institute Director. The Chinese Communist Party led the Chinese Civil War under Mao Zedong's leadership in October 1949 and established the People's Republic of China. The "Loss of China," as it has come to be known in the United States, sparked a strong right-wing reaction led by Republican politicians including Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, who used the "loss of China" as a dependable platform to defeat the Democratic Truman administration. Truman, Acheson, and other top politicians, such as Kennan, were all found criminally negligent in allowing the alleged loss. In November 1949, Kennan's close friend, diplomat John Paton Davies Jr., was discovered as a Soviet spy for his participation in the affair, a revelation that would end his career and horrified Kennan. Kennan's most troubling was that Paton Davies was accused of treason for predicting in a report that Mao would win the Chinese Civil War, but that in the face of hysteria triggered by the "loss of China" was enough to warrant the FBI to investigate him as a Soviet spy. Kennan said, "We have no guarantee against this happening again," prompting him to wonder what diplomat will be investigated next for treason.

Kennan found the atmosphere of hysteria, which was dubbed "McCarthyism" by cartoonist Herbert Block in March 1950, to be extremely uncomfortable. Kennan delivered a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in which he implicitly chastised McCarthy for making inaccurate accusations of treason in connection with the "loss of China." Kennan reassured his listeners that the State Department had the job of providing accurate and timely information to the secretary of state and the president so that they could formulate the best foreign policy, regardless of how revolting and unpalatable the information was to some. Kennan argued that doing their jobs properly if diplomats like himself were facing the prospect of being investigated for treason every time they gave details that others did not like. Kennan spoke about the benefits of diplomats "rendering an accounting" to the American people by providing accurate information to their superiors, and that, rather than "support with our blood and treasure a system that had clearly lost the trust of its own people, a dictatorship that had clearly lost the trust of its own people. Nothing could have pleased our adversaries more."

The mission of Acheson was realized as NSC 68, a classified report published by the United States National Security Council in April 1950 and drafted by Paul Nitze, Kennan's successor as Director of Policy Planning. Another State Department expert on Russia, Kennan and Charles Bohlen, argued about the wording of NSC 68, which became the backbone of Cold War policy. Kennan denied that Stalin had a grand plan for world conquest in Nitze's paper, insisting that he actually feared overextending Russian rule. Kennan also stated that NSC 68 should not have been developed at all, because doing so would make US policies more rigid, simplistic, and militaristic. Acheson overruled Kennan and Bohlen, favoring the assumption of Soviet persecution implied by NSC 68.

Kennan opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and the rearmament of Germany, which were both policies promoted by NSC 68's assumptions. During the Korean War (which began in June 1950) when reports began circulating in the State Department that plans were being undertaken to advance beyond the 38th parallel into North Korea, an act that Kennan regarded as risky, he engaged in tense discussions with Far East Dean Rusk, who apparently endorsed Acheson's call to unify the Koreas.

Kennan wrote a long memo to John Foster Dulles, who at the time was involved in negotiating on the US-Japanese peace treaty and gave him an outline of his Asia views. He characterized US policy in Asia as "poor" and "stricken with risk." Kennan wrote about the Korean War that American policies were based on "emotional, moralistic beliefs" that "if corrected, can lead us right into real conflict with the Russians and prevent us from reaching a constructive compromise." He backed the call to intervene in Korea but wrote that "it is not necessary to us to see an anti-Soviet Korean regime extend to all of Korea." Kennan expressed worry about what General Douglas MacArthur would do, saying he had "wide and relatively uncontrolled latitude in determining our strategy in the north Asian and western Pacific areas," which Kennan viewed as a challenge because MacArthur's decision was ineffective.

Kennan's 1951 book American Diplomacy, 1900-1950, strongly sluggishly condemned the US foreign policy of the last 50 years. He warned against participation in the United States and reliance on multinational, political, and moralistic bodies such as the United Nations.

Despite his popularity, Kennan was never entirely comfortable in government. He always thought of himself as an outsider and had no patience with critics. When Kennan served as the US ambassador in Moscow between 1944 and 1946, he remarked that Kennan was "a man who understood Russia but not the US."

President Truman nominated Kennan to be the next US ambassador to the USSR in December 1951. The Senate endorsed his appointment.

In several respects (to Kennan's surprise), the administration's top priority in many respects were to forgetting agreements against the Soviets rather than settling differences with them. "We were going to be able to achieve our goals as long as I could see," Kennan said in his memoirs. I seriously doubted that this was the real thing.

Kennan found the atmosphere at Moscow much more organized than on his previous trips, with police guards following him around, discourageing contact with Soviet civilians. At the time, Soviet propaganda charged the US with being preparing for war, something Kennan did not explicitly reject. "I began to wonder whether... we had not contributed [economically] by the overmilitarization of our policies and claims" to a belief in Moscow that it was war we were after, that it was only a matter of time before we unleashed it."

Kennan's ambassadorship was depreciated in September 1952. Kennan compared his life at the ambassador's house in Moscow to those he had encountered during the first few months of hostilities between the US and Germany. Though his assertion was not unfounded, the Soviets mistook it for an implied analogy to Nazi Germany. Kennan was now a non grata, and they refused to allow him to rejoin the Soviet Union. Kennan acknowledged that it had been a "foolish thing for me to have said" at the time.

Kennan was particularly critical of the Truman administration's decision to aid France in Vietnam, claiming that the French were fighting a "hopeless" war "that neither they nor we, nor any of us together," in an interview. On the mainland and in Taiwan's Republic of China, Kennan predicted that the US government's commitment to the Kuomintang government in Taiwan would "strengthen Peiping [Beijing]—Moscow solidarity rather than weaken it." Kennan advised that the US should work to divide the Sino-Soviet bloc, which had the potential to control Eurasia, and that the People's Republic of China could hold a seat on the UN Security Council. The Truman administration's political turgy in 1950's "loss of China" in Beijing, and giving China's United Nations seat to the People's Republic was the nearest the US could go in building a relationship with the new administration. Kennan's journal referred to Japan as the "most significant single factor in Asia" in terms of the ostensible subject of his paper. Kennan pushed for an agreement with the Soviet Union in return for ending the Korean War, the US would guarantee that Japan remains a demilitarized and neutral bloc in the Cold War.

Kennan's original theory governing his foreign policy was "five industrialized zones," the majority of which would account for the overwhelming world power. The United States and Great Britain; the Ruhr valley, namely the Rhine river valley, and the Low Countries; the Soviet Union and Japan; the United States and Japan; the United Kingdom; Great Britain; the area around the Rhine river valley, the Rhine river valley; the Rhine river valley, namely the Rhine river valley; Kennan argued that if the "industrialized zones" other than the Soviet Union were linked to the US, then his country would be the world's largest power. "Containment" was restricted only to the governing of the world's "industrialized zones." Kennan expressed considerable disdain for the peoples of the Third World, and he considered European rule over swaths of Asia and Africa as normal and normal. These views were typical of American officials in the late 1940s, but Kennan was unusual in holding these views for the remainder of his life; by the 1950s, many politicians, including the Dulles, had come to believe that the belief that the average white American disliked non-white peoples was damaging America's image in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which in turn boosted the Soviet Union. Kennan said that the United States should not be involved in the Third World in general because he felt there was nothing worthwhile having there. Kennan made some exceptions, including Latin America, when he said that Washington should caution the heads of the Latin American republics that they should "not wander too far from our side." Acheson was so offended by a study by Kennan in March 1950 that suggested that miscegation of Europeans, Indians, and African slaves was the root of Latin America's economic backwardness that he refused to have it sent to the rest of the State Department that was not shared. Both the oil industry and the Suez canal were vital to the West, Kennan, and he recommended that the US help Britain defend the Iranian oil industry and the Suez canal. For political reasons, Kennan argued that Abadan (the Iranian oil industry's center) and the Suez canal were critical for the West, which justified the use of "military force" by the Western powers to keep track of these territories.

Kennan returned to Washington, where he became embroiled in controversy with Dwight D. Eisenhower's hawkish Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. Nonetheless, he was able to collaborate constructively with the new administration. During the summer of 1953, President Eisenhower instructed Kennan to lead the first of a string of top-secret teams, Operation Solarium, in which they'd investigate the advantages and disadvantages of continuing the Truman administration's policy of containment and seeking to "roll back" existing areas of Soviet influence. The president seemed to accept the organization's proposals at the conclusion of the study.

Despite the Republican Party's misgivings, Kennan's position demonstrated tacitly that he intends to develop the direction of his administration within the framework of its predecessor's. Eisenhower's reservations that the Truman and Eisenhower containment policies could not be able to provide substantial military funding indefinitely. The new president strove to cut costs not by intervening whenever and wherever the Soviets acted (a policy designed to minimize risk), but rather whenever and wherever the Soviets went, he wanted to act.

During the government's attempts to withhold his security clearance in 1954, Kennan appeared as a character witness for J. Robert Oppenheimer. Despite his resignation from government service, Kennan was still being sought by Eisenhower administration officials on a daily basis. Kennan was one of the first people to whom the text of the "Secret Speech" was shown to when the CIA obtained a transcript of Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" attacking Stalin in May 1956.

Kennan's Cold War was basically Eurocentric, since he saw Europe and beyond all Germany as the most significant "battlefield" of the Cold War. For this reason, Kennan told C.L Sulzberger that Eisenhower was mistakenly suing "Middle Eastern tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tin-pot tadoutput: When Britain and France were both British, Kennan said, "These guys are not our friends." Kennan, despite his resistance to defending French rule over Vietnam, believed that Egypt was much more important to the West than Vietnam. Kennan said in a speech in October 1956 that the right to self-determination was not absolute, that Nasser did not have the right to nationalize the Suez Canal, a "critical waterway" for shipping oil to Western Europe, and he expressed his support for Anglo-French efforts to restore the Suez canal. Kennan expressed his doubt that the Suez canal should not be under Western control because it was too dangerous for someone like Nasser to shut down the Suez canal because of its importance as the waterway for oil tankers. The rise in the number of oil tankers in the 1950s meant that the new "super tankers" would not be able to use the Suez canal, making the whole issue moot. Kennan supported the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, but he sluggishly condemned Eisenhower's activities during the Suez Crisis. Kennan's journey led him to deep depression as he wrote with displeasure in his journal that his country had now become "Nixon's America," and he expressed his desire to be a "forgotten man" on November 11, 1956.

Kennan testified to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, showing that the massive protests in Poland that Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was "eroding more quickly than I ever imagined." Kennan's refusal to abandon the Stalinist Party led by W.Adysaw Gomuka overthrew the Stalinist leadership in Warsaw due to Khrushchev's unwillingness to relinquish control, and Gomuka's complete dedication to Communism made it clear that he wanted Poland to be more independent of Moscow. Kennan left the United States in 1957 to serve as the George Eastman Professor at Balliol College at Oxford. Kennan had hoped that the Fellows of Balliol College would be involved in discussion "polished by deep tradition, refinement, and moral integrity," but he was disappointed to learn that Fellows were engrossed in "a lot of idle chat about local affairs and academic positions, according to Sir Isaiah Berlin. He was terribly worried about it. Profound dissatisfaction. England was not as he expected. An idealized image has been shattered. In a letter to Oppenheimer, Kennan wrote about the Fellows of Balliol College: "I've never seen such back-biting, such commotion, such fractions in any of my life." Kennan wrote in the same letter that Berlin was the only one with whom he might have a "serious chat" with, and the rest of them were all concerned with spreading fake news about each other. However, Kennan's twice weekly lectures on international relations were as popular as he made it "tremendously successful," even to the point that he had to be arranged a larger lecture hall as hundreds of students gathered to hear him speak.

Kennan gave the Reith lectures on the BBC in October 1957, saying that if Germany's partition continued, "the chances for stability are very slender indeed." Kennan defended Germany's partition as necessary in 1945, but went on to say that:

Kennan proposed a version of his "program A" of 1949 calling for complete withdrawal of major portions of the British, French, American, and Soviet forces from Germany as a precursor to German reunification and German neutralization. Kennan's call to a solution to the "German question" was also stated that Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was "shaky," and that the best thing the Western powers could do was to pursue a firm, but not in the sense of allowing Eastern Europe to be prone to chaos. The Reith lectures ignited much debate, and Kennan was embroiled in a public contest of words with Acheson and Nixon about the correct answer to the "German problem." "Whoever says these things is no friend of the German people," West German foreign minister Heinrich von Brentano said in a tweeting about Kennan's Reith lectures: "Whoever says these things is no friend of the German people."

Kennan sent John F. Kennedy's campaign in 1960 to tell him how his administration could support the country's foreign affairs. "What's required is a sequence of... calculated steps, timed in such a way as not to throw the opponent off balance but to keep him off it," Kennan said, and that a sense of surprise can be maintained." He also advised the Chinese government to "assure a change of direction and policy between the Russians and Chinese," which could be achieved by strengthening contacts with Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, who wanted to distance himself from the Communist Party. "We should... without deceive ourselves about Khrushchev's ideological reputation and without funding any false hopes, be concerned to keep him politically in office and to promote the maintenance of Moscow's tendencies that he evokes." In addition, he suggested that the US work toward creating internal distancing in the Soviet bloc by undermining its clout in Eastern Europe and encouraging satellite governments to have autonomy.

Despite Kennan's decision not to work with Kennedy's advisors, the president gave Kennan the opportunity of ambassadorship in Poland or Yugoslavia. Kennan was more interested in Yugoslavia than ever before, so he accepted Kennedy's invitation and started his work in Yugoslavia in May 1961.

Kennan was given the mandate to strengthen Yugoslavia's anti-Soviet policies and to encourage other states in the Eastern bloc to request independence from the Soviets. Kennan's ambassadorship in Belgrade was much improved from his previous visits to Moscow a decade ago. "I loved being surrounded by a team of highly trained and loyal assistants whose abilities I admired, whose judgment I admired, and whose attitude toward myself were... cooperative... who was I to complain?" In comparison to the way in which the Russians treated him in Moscow, Kennan found that the Yugoslav government treated the American diplomats politely. "The Yugoslavs considered me, correctly or incorrectly, a prominent individual in the United States, and they were delighted that someone whose name had been sent to Belgrade before," he wrote.

Kennan found it difficult to do his Belgrade work. President Josip Broz Tito and his foreign minister, Koa Popovi, began to suspect that Kennedy would endorse an anti-Yugoslav agenda during his tenure. Tito and Popovia's attendance at Captive Nations Week gave the impression that the US will continue to support anticommunist liberation efforts in Yugoslavia. Tito also believed that the CIA and the Pentagon were the true agents of American foreign policy. Kennan tried to regain Tito's confidence in the American foreign policy establishment, but his efforts were shattered by two diplomatic blunders, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the U-2 spy crisis.

Yugoslavia's ties with the US quickly deteriorated. Tito held a conference of non-aligned nations in September 1961, where he made pro-Soviet speeches that the US government understood as pro-Soviet. Kennan argued that Tito's perceived pro-Soviet policy was an attempt to "butcher Khrushchev's position within the Politburo against hardliners who wanted to improve relations with the West and against China, which was calling for a big Soviet–U.S. coup. "This is a showdown," the narrator says. Tito also received "credit in the Kremlin" for future Chinese attacks against his communist credentials, which he also cites. Although politicians and government officials were concerned over Yugoslavia's ties with the Soviet Union, Kennan believed that the country had a "anomalous position in the Cold War that ideally suited US interests." Kennan also predicted that Yugoslavia's example within a few years would inspire Eastern bloc states to demand more social and economic autonomy from the Soviets.

Congress had passed legislation in 1962 to deny financial assistance to Yugoslavia, to stop selling spare parts for Yugoslav warplanes, and to rename the country's most favored nation status. Kennan vehemently opposed the legislation, insisting that it would only result in a strained of relations between Yugoslavia and the United States. Kennan came to Washington in the summer of 1962 to lobby against the bill, but Congress was unable to get a change. Kennan was lauded privately by President Kennedy, but he remained noncommittal in the sense that he did not want to jeopardize his slim majority support in Congress on a contentious topic.

Kennan pushed for Kennedy's actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis in a lecture to the Belgrade staff on October 27, 1962, saying that Cuba was still in the American sphere of influence, and that the Soviets did not have the right to place missiles in Cuba. Kennan called Fidel Castro's reign "one of the world's worst dictatorships" in his address, referring to Kennedy's attempts to overthrowrown the Communist Cuban government. Kennan said Turkey was never in the Soviet sphere of influence, but that the Soviet Union was illegitimate for the Soviet Union to deploy missiles in Cuba, despite Khrushchev's request that American missiles be pulled out of Turkey as the price for pulling Soviet missiles out of Cuba.

When Tito arrived in Moscow in December 1962 to speak with Khrushchev, Kennan said that Tito was a Russophile who lived in Russia from 1915 to 1920 and that he had sentimental memories of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which had converted him to Communism. Kennan, on the other hand, maintained that he was very keen to keep Yugoslavia intact during the Cold War, and that his expressions of admiration for Russian culture during his visit to Moscow did not imply that he wants Yugoslavia to return to the Soviet Union. According to Kenny, the Sino-Soviet split had compelled Khrushchev to request a reversal with Tito to defame the Chinese charge that the Soviet Union was a tyrant imperialist power, and Tito was able to maintain better relations with the Soviet Union to raise his bargaining clout with the West. Kennan also outlined Tito's support for the non-aligned movement as a way to raise Yugoslavia's bargaining power both West and East, because it allowed him to position himself as a world leader who spoke for a diverse bloc of nations rather than focusing on the "intrinsic value" of the non-aligned movement (which was less significant because the majority of the non-aligned countries were poor Third World nations). Kennan revealed to Washington that senior Yugoslav officials had warned him that Tito's remarks lauding the non-aligned movement were nothing more than diplomatic posturing that should not be taken seriously.

However, many in Congress took Tito's speeches seriously, concluding that Yugoslavia was an anti-Western nation, much to Kennan's chagrin. Kennan argued that although Tito wanted Yugoslavia to remain neutral in the Cold War, there was no point in requiring Yugoslavia to align with the West, but that Yugoslavia's robust army had no air or naval bases in Yugoslavia that could be used to attack Italy and Greece, both NATO members. More importantly, Kennan said that Yugoslavia's "market socialism" policy gave it a higher quality of life than in other Eastern European countries, that greater freedom of expression existed than in other Communist countries, and that the very existence of a Communist nation in Eastern Europe that was not under Moscow's influence was destabilizing the Soviet bloc, sparking other communist leaders with the desire for greater autonomy. Kennan resigned as ambassador in late July 1963, with US-Yugoslav relations getting more strained.

Academic career and later life

Kennan was invited by the BBC to deliver the annual Reith Lectures, a series of six radio lectures titled Russia, the Atom, and the West in 1957. These included history, influence, and potential consequences of Russia-West relations.

Kennan spent the remainder of his life in academe after finishing his brief ambassadorship service in Yugoslavia in 1963, becoming a leading critic of US foreign policy. Kennan joined the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) between 1950 and 1952, and stayed on the faculty for the remainder of his life there.

Kennan sluggishly opposed US involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s, arguing that the US has no vital interest in the area.

Kennan testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1966, where he said that the "preoccupation" with Vietnam was undermining US global leadership. Lyndon Johnson's administration is accused of distorting his policies in favor of a strictly military approach, according to him. President Johnson was so ill by his cousin's call that he attempted to outdo them by staging a sudden and unannounced summit in Honolulu on February 5, 1966, where he declared that Vietnam was making steady progress and was committed to social and economic reforms.

Kennan testified that if the United States were not fighting in Vietnam: "I would have no reason why we should want to become so involved," says Kenny. "I could think of several reasons why we should not." He was opposed to a quick pull-out from Vietnam, saying "a precipitate and chaotic withdrawal could mean a disservice to our own interests and even to world peace" in the opinion of this world, but he added that "more respect will be gained in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than in the pursuit of a definite and unpromising target." In his testimony, Kennan said that Ho Chi Minh was "not Hitler" and that everything he had read about him suggested that Ho Chi Minh was not a communist but that his country did not want his country to be subordinated to either the Soviet Union or China. He continued to say that defeating North Vietnam would result in a human life "for which I would not want to see this country be responsible for." Kennan likened the Johnson administration's Vietnam policy to "an elephant frightened by a mouse."

Kennan closed his testimony by quoting a John Quincy Adams remark: "America does not go out in search of monsters to destroy." She is the most adamant to democracy and unionism of all. She is the champion and vindicator of her own. "Now, gentlemen, I don't know what John Quincy Adams was thinking about when he spoke those words," Kennan continued. However, I believe he said very clearly and very pertinent to us here today without knowing it." The hearings were broadcast live on television (at the time a rare occurrence), and Kennan's fame as the "Father of Containment" assured that his testimony attracted a lot of media attention, especially as the Johnson administration professed to be working on Vietnam "containment" policies. Consequently, Johnson pressed Kennan to appear on television networks not to air his testimony, and as a result, the CBS network aired reruns of I Love Lucy while Kennan was in the Senate, causing Fred Friendly, the CBS head of television programming, to resign in protest. By contrast, the NBC network resisted the presidential pressure and broadcast the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearings. Johnson sent Secretary of State Dean Rusk before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he testified that the war in Vietnam was a morally fragile process of communist rule by force and threat."

Despite expectations, Kennan's appearance before the Senate attracted high ratings on television. Kennan himself recalled that he got a flood of letters in the month afterward, prompting him to write about the public reaction: "It was absolutely wonderful." I haven't expected anything remotely like this." Art Buchwald wrote that he was amazed to learn that Kennan testify rather than the conventional soap operas, claiming that he didn't know that American housewives were interested in such topics. Kennan's testimony alongside General James Gavin was "critical students or a wild-eyed radicals," which made it possible for "respectable people" to protest the Vietnam war. After leaving the State Department, Kennan's testimony in February 1966 was the most successful of his numerous attempts to influence public opinion. 63% of the American public approved of Johnson's Vietnam War treatment before he appeared in the Senate; after his testimony, 49% did not.

Kennan's opposition to the Vietnam war showed no sympathy for the student students who had marched against the Vietnam war. Kennan's book Democracy and the Student Left portrayed left-wing university students who were protesting the Vietnam war as ferocious and intolerant. Kennan compared the "New Left" students of the 1960s with the 19th century Russia's Narodnik student radicals, arguing that both were an arrogant group of elitists whose beliefs were fundamentally undemocratic and risky. Kennan said that the majority of the student radicals' demands were "gobbledygook," and that their political style was defined by a severe lack of humor, militant tendencies, and mindless destructive urges. Kennan acknowledged that the student radicals were right to oppose the Vietnam war, but he expressed surprise that they were misinterpreting government policies because an institution operated a flawed one that did not make it harmful or worthy of destruction.

Kennan blamed student radicalism of the late 1960s on "sickly secularism" of American life, which he claimed was too materialistic and shallow to allow for an understanding of the "slow powerful process of organic growth" that had boosted America's triumph. Kennan wrote that the cause of America's spiritual distress had resulted in a generation of young Americans with a "strong disbalance in emotional and intellectual growth." Kennan concluded his book with a regret that the America of his youth had no longer existed, as he stated that most Americans were seduced by advertising into a consumerist lifestyle that left them indifferent to environmental degradation all around them and gross corruption of their politicians. "They haven't seen anything yet," Kennan said of his brother. Not only do my apprehensions outclass theirs, but my predictions of what would need to be done to get things right are much more radical than theirs."

Kennan chastised the authorities for having to deal with student demonstrations and rioting by Afro-Americans in a speech delivered in Williamsburg on June 1, 1968. Kennan called for the suppression of the New Left and Black Power movements in a way that will be "answerable only to the voters at the next election, but not to the press or even the courts." Since Kennan stated that the only way to save the United States from chaos was to have "special political courts" be created to try New Left and Black Power activists. Kennan said on his return to South Africa that based on his visits to South Africa, "I have a soft spot in my mind for apartheid, not as used in South Africa, but as a concept." While Kennan chastised the Afrikaners' "deep religious sincerity" of their country, he received a lot of praise for the Afrikaners' "deep religious sincerity" in their Calvinist faith, which he condemned while dismissing the ability of South African blacks to rule their country. Kennan argued that if the ability of the average black American male to function "in a system he neither understands nor acknowledges," he suggested that the Bantustans of South Africa be used as a model for Afro-Americans. Kennan did not accept the 1960s' socioeconomic transitions. He encountered a youth festival in Denmark in 1970, which he described with disgust as "swarms of hippies"—motorbikes, girl-friends, cocaine, pornography, and noise. I surveyed this crowd and wondered how one group of strong Russian infantry would push it out of town."

Kennan, a lifetime student of Russian affairs, founded the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center for Research and Humanities, in partnership with Wilson Center Director James Billington and scholar S. Frederick Starr. Wilson Center Director James Billington and historian S. Frederick Starr aided in the establishment of the Kennan Institute named for Woodrow Wilson. The Institute has been named in honor of American George Kennan (explorer) of the Russian Empire, a distant cousin of the subject of this essay. Scholars at the Institute are supposed to study Russia, Ukraine, and the Eurasian region.

Containment, when he released the first volume of his memoirs in 1967, was something other than the use of military "counterforces." He was never happy that the program he inspired was linked to the Cold War's arms buildup. Kennan argued that containment did not require a militarized US foreign policy, not in his memoirs. The political and economic defense of Western Europe against the war's disruptive effects on European society is implied by "counterforce." According to him, the Soviet Union, which was still suffering from war, posed no real threat to the US or its allies at the start of the Cold War, but rather an ideological and political rival.

Kennan believed that the USSR, Germany, Japan, and North America remained key US interests. He was a major critic of the revived arms race in the 1970s and 1980s, especially under President Reagan.

President George H. Bush honoured Kennan with the Medal of Freedom in 1989, the country's highest civilian award. In a 1999 interview with the New York Review of Books, he urged the US government to "withdraw from its public promotion of democracy and human rights," saying that "the urge to see ourselves as the center of political awakening and as educators to a vast area of the world strikes me as unthinkable, vainlorious, and ineffective." These principles were particularly relevant in US-China and Russia relations.

Kennan would later describe NATO's expansion as a "strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions," a key source for American containment policies during the Cold War.

Kennan condemned the Clinton administration's war in Kosovo and NATO's expansion (the founding of which he had also opposed half a century earlier), expressing worry that both policies could escalate relations with Russia.

"There was no reason for this whatsoever" in a 1998 interview with The New York Times, after the US Senate had just approved NATO's first round of expansion. He was concerned that it might "inflame the nationalist, anti-Western, and militaristic" views in Russia. "The Russians will gradually react quite negatively and this will have a huge effect on their policies," he said. Kennan was also stung by claims that Russia was "dying to destroy Western Europe," and that, on the contrary, the Russian people had revolted to "remove the Soviet regime" and that their "democracy was as advanced" as those countries that had just signed up for NATO.

Kennan stayed energetic and alert during his last years of illness, although arthritis required him to use a wheelchair. Kennan concluded that "the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that has overtook the Soviet Union." At the age of 98, he warned of the unpredictable consequences of a war against Iraq. He warned that attacking Iraq would result in "no connection to the first war against terrorism" and that the Bush administration's pledge to associate al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein is "pathetically unsupportive and unreliable."

Kennan went on to warn:

Kennan embraced the ideals of the Second Vermont Republic in his final years, a secessionist movement that first emerged in 2003. Kennan noted in 2002 that "unmistable signs of a growing divide between the cultures of large southern and southwestern areas of this region's population, respectively, were present in many southern and southwestern areas of this region, as well as those of "some northern regions." "The vast majority of the population of these regions will have a Latin American in nature rather than something that has been inherited from earlier American traditions," the author says. "Maybe there was so little of merit [in America] that it should be casually dismissed in favour of a polyglot mix-mash?" Kennan was accused of having a "tradition of militant nativism" that resembled or even exceeded the 1850s' Know Nothings. Kennan also felt that American women had too much power.

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