George Keenan, RIP
George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of Cold War
Outsider Forged Cold War Strategy
The architect of the Cold War passes away at the ripe, young age of 101. Keenan serves as a great reminder at the richness and nuance of policy originators. One clip from the NYT article rings particularly true of this:
As the State Department's first policy planning chief in the late 1940's, serving Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Mr. Kennan was an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan, which sent billions of dollars of American aid to nations devastated by World War II. At the same time, he conceived a secret "political warfare" unit that aimed to roll back Communism, not merely contain it. His brainchild became the covert-operations directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency.
That point seems greatly masked by time and attempts to succeed Keenan on the left.
Meanwhile, the right had their own problems with Keenan as well ...
But Mr. Kennan was deeply dismayed when the policy was associated with the immense build-up in conventional arms and nuclear weapons that characterized the cold war from the 1950's onward. His views were always more complex than the interpretation others gave them, as he argued repeatedly in his writings. He came to deplore the growing belligerence toward Moscow that gripped Washington by the early 1950's, setting the stage for anti-Communist witch hunts that severely dented the American foreign service.
This certainly seems to smack of some "Perils of the Imitation Age" meme that I tend to keep in mind.
Alas, George ... you shall be greatly missed.
Yes, the death of George Kennan represents the disappearance of the last great diplomat and statesman from the age of Cold War Liberalism.
I would urge anyone who has not done so to read the book, "The Wise Men," by Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson. It was a truly wonderful book about six larger-than-life figures who helped shape U.S. political, diplomatic and military history after World War II.
These six men were George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Charles "Chip" Bohlen, Averell W. Harriman, Robert Lovett, and John J. McCloy. These men emerged as important players on the scene in WWII itself and were the product of a grand tradition of U.S. statecraft stretching back through Henry L. Stimson to John Hay and Elihu Root. With the exception of Kennan, all came from privileged backgrounds, were the product of a "prep school" and Ivy League education, and made their mark as investment bankers and/or lawyers before dedicating themselves to public service. They helped shape the Truman and containment doctrines and America's post-WWII foreign policy establishment.
There were differences among these men. Acheson, Lovett and McCloy were the hard-liners in the group, believing in a strong and hawkish military posture. They were in vanguard of support for the Truman Doctrine and believed in aggressive internationalism in support of democracy and U.S. ideals, but employing realpolitik when necessary. Kennan, Harriman, and Bohlen embraced what they regarded as a more subtle, multi-faceted approach, emphasizing diplomacy, as well as political and economic dimensions of American power. George Kennan, as the obituaries say, was a proponent of containment, but was skeptical of many features of the Truman Doctrine. He also was critical of a number of the facets of the U.S. conduct of the Korean War. Kennan, Averell Harriman and Chip Bohlen were less confrontationalist in their foreign policy philosophy and modus operandi. However, these six men, as I stated, collaborated extensively in shaping for the U.S. the successful Cold War Liberal strategy stretching from Harry S. Truman into the Kennedy-Johnson era.
One man who perhaps should have been included in The Wise Men was Paul Nitze. This man Nitze loomed large in post-WWII foreign policy and it is a shame that he never became Secretary of State or Defense. As head of the State Department's policy planning staff, Paul Nitze crafted National Security Council Document #68, or NSC-68, which institutionalized the containment strategy and its diplomatic, political, economic and military underpinnings. It went far beyond George Kennan's famous "long telegram" from Moscow and his "Mr. X" article, which initially laid out the concept of a containment doctrine.
Clearly, while Isaacson and Thomas also did not include the great Gen George Catlett Marshall as one of the Wise Men, he should be mentioned now as we mark the passing of Kennan. Marsall was a giant of that age. He collaborated with FDR and Truman in guiding the U.S. through WWII. Marshall also collaborated with Truman and Acheson is taking the U.S. through the early crises of the Cold War, of which there were many. Gen Marshall was Army Chief of Staff from 1939 to 1945, Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949, and served as Secretary of Defense for one year during the Korean War. Obviously, he was the man who unveiled the Marshall Plan in his still famous commencement address at Harvard University.
These Cold War Liberals, for my money, reflected the best traditions of Democratic Party foreign policy. Yes, the men who sought to carry on their legacy stumbled in Vietnam, men like Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow. This is when the ghost of Henry Wallace got his revenge on Harry Truman, because his views on the Russians, the Cold War, the role of statecraft and use of force essentially triumphed over those of Truman following the elections of 1968 and 1972. George McGovern was the veritable embodiment of this revived Wallacism. Indeed, the Liberals from 1972 to today generally eschewed strong, aggressive defense and foreign policy philosophies. This is one reason why the electorate turned on McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984, Dukakis in 1988, and Kerry in 2004.
Clinton and Gore did not really fit into either category. They were not really weak on defense in the same sense as these other men. However, they also really never got around to updating Cold War Liberalism and making it relevant to the post-Cold War world and the age of terrorism.
It did not have to be this way. The Democratic Party came to several forks in the road where it could have taken another way. In 1976, Senator Henry M. Jackson ran as an undiluted Cold War Liberal. Scoop Jackson embraced a tough defense and foreign policy, and he was a fierce anti-Communist and advocate of human rights, as well as being a latter-day New Dealer. Jackson was pro-Civil Rights and pro-Labor, a true Liberal. He believed that the American Labor Movement could be a force for democracy in a troubled world. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, Scoop Jackson lost the 1976 nomination to Jimmy Carter, who briefly considered making Paul Nitze his Secretary of State. However, instead of going that route, Mr. Carter made Cyrus Vance his Secretary of State, Paul Warnke his Arms Control Negotiator and Harold Brown his Secretary of Defense. The rest was history, as they say. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter, was quoting FDR, Harry Truman and John Kennedy. How devastating to us who still believed the dream ...
Joe Lieberman made a feeble effort at reviving the Truman foreign policy traditions, but failed miserably. Yes, I admire Lieberman despite disagreeing with him on the advisability of invading Iraq. We will now see what Evan Bayh can do. Bayh had best start assembling the best talent he can and amassing a war chest. It is too bad he does not have the magnetism to be the McCain of the Democratic Party.
Greg -- You might also wish to mention the passing of Sol Linowitz. He was 91. Linowitz was an Alliance for Progress official in the 1960s, helped negotiate the Panama Canal Treaties with Omar Torrijos, and also had a hand in hammering out the Camp David Peace Accords. I will certainly acknowledge that the Panama and Camp David treaties were among the high-points of the Carter Administration.
In latin America as eslwhere the protection of our resources must be a major concern to us (the USA) Since the main threat to our interests is indigenous we should realize that "harsh government measures of repression, police repression by local government should cause us no quams as long as the results are on balance favorable to our purposes"
This quote shows how Kennan wa a despicable man who favoured dictatorships all over south America as long as the USA's interests were protected. He di9d not care about the welfare of the people only about the investors in the USA.