George F. Kennan - American Diplomacy : Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition

GEORGE F. KENNAN (19042005) was former ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

1951, 1979 by The University of Chicago

1984 by George F. Kennan

Introduction 2012 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2012.

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43148-2 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43149-9 (e-book)

ISBN-10: 0-226-43148-7 (paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-43149-5 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennan, George F. (George Frost), 19042005, author.

American diplomacy / George F. Kennan ; new introduction by John J. Mearsheimer. Sixtieth-anniversary expanded edition.

pages ; cm

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43148-2 (paperback : alkaline paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-43149-9 (e-book)

ISBN-10: 0-226-43148-7 (paperback : alkaline paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-43149-5 (e-book)

1. United StatesForeign relations20th century. 2. United StatesForeign relationsSoviet Union. 3. Soviet UnionForeign relationsUnited States. I. Mearsheimer, John J., writer of added commentary.

II. Title.

E744.K3 2012

327.73009'04DC23

2011044026

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

George F. Kennan

New Introduction by

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER

60th-Anniversary Expanded Edition

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Contents

Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures

Grinnell Lectures

Introduction

John J. Mearsheimer

GEORGE KENNAN WILL be remembered forever as the father of containment, the strategy the United States employed throughout the Cold War to deal with the Soviet threat. He was a key policy maker in the early days of the Cold War. In April 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall asked him to set up the Policy Planning Staff, which was to be the State Departments long-range think tank. Marshall relied heavily on Kennans advice in formulating American foreign policy. Indeed, Kennan played a central role in the making of the Marshall Plan, as well as the creation of Radio Free Europe and the CIAs covert operations directorate.

Kennan began his career as a Foreign Service officer in 1926, a year after graduating from Princeton. He was posted to various European countries over the next two decades, including three tours in Germany as well as the Soviet Union. He saw Hitlers rise and Stalins rule up close. As a result, he knew a great deal about the two most powerful and influential European countries during the twentieth century. Those countries, of course, mattered more than any others for shaping American diplomacy in those years.

But Kennan was more than a diplomat and a policy maker. He was also a first-class strategic thinker, with a talent for asking big and important questions about US foreign policy. For example, when he started up the Policy Planning Staff, where he was tasked with looking at problems from the standpoint of the totality of American national interest, he wanted to determine the basic concepts that underpin American foreign policy ( He was especially interested in discerning how the United States, as a democracy, interacted with the world around it. Most famously, he thought long and hard about what would be the best strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union after it emerged from World War II as the most powerful country in Europe.

Furthermore, Kennan was a creative and systematic thinker who provided clear and bold answers to the questions that concerned him. This was due in part to his fearlessness in challenging conventional wisdoms and making arguments that might be considered politically incorrect. He almost always told the truth as he saw it. But he also was naturally inclined to make generalizations about international politics and above all about Americas relationship to the outside world. He was, to use his own words, looking for a theoretical foundation to explain past US foreign policy and hopefully figure out how American leaders might do a better job in the future (). In short, Kennan had a first-class analytical mind and a predilection for seeing the big picture.

Kennan left the government in 1950 and went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He remained there for the rest of his life, save for brief tours as ambassador to the Soviet Union (1952) and Yugoslavia (196163). There he established himself as a first-rate scholar and distinguished public intellectual. He wrote numerous articles and books, two of which won both Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. He remained involved in public affairs until the end of his life, arguing for example in the 1980s that the United States should adopt a no first use policy toward its nuclear weapons, and then opposing the 2003 Iraq war when he was almost one hundred years old.

American Diplomacy is the most important of Kennans books, which is why it continues to receive, in his words, enduring attention (). The first five selections are the Walgreen Foundation lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in 1951. The sixth selection is his famous July 1947 Foreign Affairs article where he laid out the case for containing the Soviet Union, while the seventh selection is another Foreign Affairs article (1951), this one dealing with how the United States should think about change inside the Soviet Union. The final two selections are talks that Kennan gave at Grinnell College in 1984, where he looked back on the Walgreen lectures and drew new lessons for his listeners.

The central puzzle that informs American Diplomacy was laid out at the start of his first Chicago lecture. Kennan believed that the United States was remarkably secure in 1900, but was remarkably insecure fifty years later. A half-century ago, he wrote, people in this country had a sense of security vis--vis their world environment such as I suppose no people had ever had since the days of the Roman Empire. Today that pattern is almost reversed.... We have before us a situation which, I am frank to admit, seems to me dangerous and problematical in the extreme ().

In wrestling with this question, Kennan has said many smart things about how Americas security is directly influenced by the balance of power in Asia and Europe. In particular, he has shown how US foreign policy during the first half of the twentieth century was affected by changes in the European balance of power. Naturally, his story included the adoption of containment after World War II. Moreover, American Diplomacy has offered smart insights about the limits of both military force and international law, as well as the dangers of trying to do social engineering in other countries. Kennan has made a powerful case for pursuing a foreign policy that privileges humility over hubris. These subjects are all relevant in contemporary America.

Finally, American Diplomacy has had much to say about the clash between liberalism and realism, which has long been the key intellectual divide among students and practitioners of American foreign policy. Kennan was a realist, and like the other famous realists of his daythe journalist Walter Lippmann, the scholar Hans Morgenthau, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhrhe believed that American foreign policy was motivated largely by liberal ideals, which frequently landed the United States in trouble. In fact, he claimed that liberalism, which he identified with legalism and moralism, was largely responsible for the foreign policy problems facing America in 1950.