Rutgers Professor David Greenberg has reviewed George Kennan’s diaries and discovered that Kennan had a lot of bigoted views, but that’s really not the most interesting aspect of the resulting article. What’s interesting is that the architect of our Cold War containment policy envisioned that containment policy in terms somewhat different than how it was carried out in practice. So, for two examples, he sided with Britain, France and Israel during the Suez Crisis in 1956, and he opposed LBJ’s intervention in Vietnam, which he called “a sort of petulant escapism, [that] will, I fear, lead to no good results.”
That he despised communism will surprise no one, but that he had such disdain for the American public and democracy is a revelation. I can’t say precisely why it matters what Kennan thought privately, mainly because he can’t be held responsible for how his containment prescriptions were carried out. Many of our missteps were seen as missteps by Kennan at the time, while some of the mistakes we avoided he was an advocate for, so his record is complex and hard to assess.
He was an absolute hawk on Korea, for example, which makes understanding his opposition to the war in Vietnam harder to interpret. Did he change his mind between those two conflicts or did he see them as completely different in kind?
His views on women, gays, blacks, and Jews, as well as his low opinion of Italians, Africans, Georgians, etc., will not enhance his reputation, but the real measure of Kennan will always be bound up with how we conducted the Cold War. His record there is distinct from the nation’s record, but no less mixed.
I too, see them as completely different in kind. Korea was a direct superpower proxy war started by the other side, much like Ukraine today. It was also UN sanctioned. Many (most) people say Russia made a mistake being absent when the Security Council met so that they lost their opportunity to veto. I say they did not want to veto. They wanted the proxy war. Remember, this was Stalin and the heyday of the Comintern.
VietNam, OTOH, was not a direct proxy war. Russian and Chinese troops never fought the US directly, although there were reports of Chinese officers being captured along with North Vietnamese officers. The Chinese claimed to be advisers, much as we did in the early days. A fine line, but different from the wholesale Russian “volunteers” that took over the North Korean Air Force and the complete Chinese divisions that fought in Korea. Also, I think it was a key point that their was no UN sanction for American intervention in Vietnam.
Or maybe he realized, belatedly, that MacArthur was right.
You mean about a land war in Asia? Could be. Our vow to defend Taiwan from an invasion across the Formosa Straits in in my opinion, a hollow claim. If we try it, we will be defeated. The defense of Taiwan is untenable. I only hope that the large minority that favors anschluss with the mainland prevails democratically.
James Carroll may want to reconsider If Kennan Had Prevailed. As well as giving him passes in “House of War.”
that is a truly weird article. Carroll has somehow convinced himself that Kennan was some kind of progressive icon, and even before these diaries were published that seems hard to justify.
He was an absolute hawk on Korea, for example, which makes understanding his opposition to the war in Vietnam harder to interpret. Did he change his mind between those two conflicts or did he see them as completely different in kind?
Is there any mention of MacArthur? Do people remember MacArthur’s comments about Asian land wars after WWII(or was it Korea)?
MacArthur was cashiered for disagreeing with Truman about going into China. His comments on Asian land wars were made in 1961 to JFK regarding Vietnam.
These statements seem like principles but they are more realistic assessments of what would be required to win such a war.
George Kennan was considered one of the early “realists” about the Soviet Union because of his anonymous letter about the dangers of Stalin’s actions. His pseudonymous (“X”) public opinion in 1947 was:
That is much more restrained that what the US actually did. And this letter was part of a propaganda campaign to reverse some of the demobilization after World War II and prepare the argument for the National Security Act.
Walter Lippman argued what was then the domestically liberal position:
In James Carroll’s House of War, Kennan only looks more restrained in contrast with James F. Byrnes, and Byrnes was the primary advisor who got Harry Truman to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kennan was hardly a progressive either on domestic or foreign policy. Ever.
And if his private attitudes shock us now it is only because of how much US attitudes have in fact changed. And how what are acceptable attitudes have changed. Postwar America was bumptious in its sense of victory over the Axis and its ignorance of how much the Soviet Union absorbed the force of the Wehrmacht while we dawdled in Churchill’s strategy for the postwar state of the world.
The only influential “progressive” voice on foreign affairs in that time was Eleanor Roosevelt and the powers that be made sure that she stayed as far away from the manly world as possible. No doubt Kennan was one of those.
Kennan’s strategy of containment is what allowed the US to prevail over the Soviet Union, regardless of all the itching to go to war that we scratched and all the potential Soviet satellites that were the subject of US coups. The Civil Rights movement, the dissent over Vietnam, and other progressive actions did more to undermine the authority of the Politburo than did Reagan’s Star Wars, Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia, or Johnson’s escalation of Vietnam. The prosperity that union-scale wages brought to the postwar US were more significant than the billions squandered on a technological arms race, spinoff benefits like the internet notwithstanding.
Interesting, Kennan’s insight into Russia was often based on what today we would call stereotypical even prejudicial. For instance:
“Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventurist. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw–and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.”
In fact, Soviet power was largely based on whatever the fuck Stalin wanted to do at any particular moment. After his death, it was largely captive to factional disputes within the Kremlin.
He was largely right, but he tended to create assumptions based on stereotypes of Russian behavior.
the western MIC and politicians decided it need to be at any point in time.
Or are you still believing that 1950/60s “missile gap” hoax?
The Pravy Sektor that Parubiy absorbed into his “national guard” for anti-terror actions in eastern Ukraine has begun the civil war. They shot a school bus driver and others last night.
Expect more anti-Russian propaganda. This will get ugly.
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Iraq because WMDs and Saddam is a madman.
Afghanistan because Osama is a madman.
Libya because Khadafy is a madman.
Syria because Assad is a madman.
Vietnam because they attacked us.
Grenada because the leader is a madman, and medical students.
Nicaragua because they’re only a day’s drive from the Rio Grande.
(I can’t remember, were the contras or the Salvadorean death squads like our founding fathers?)
Ukraine because Putin’s a madman.
The contras. And I heard today on TV that it is the pro-Russian militia that has been shooting people and taking over government buildings.
Expect more pro-Russian propaganda on this blog.
I don’t think you are capable of recognizing pro-American propaganda. Read Robert Parry’s latest here to find out what WaPo doesn’t tell you:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/20/ukraines-neo-nazi-imperative/
It is the pro-Russian militias who have been registering Jews. And the “neo-Nazi” government that is condemning it.
Obama foreign policy based on Western supremacy, Kennan strategy as presented by Yvo Daalder