The Cold Warrior Who Shivered

A useful corrective to those prone to hagiography when it comes to reluctant Cold Warrior George Kennan, inventor of the containment doctrine:

Kennan authored the Cold War doctrine of containment in his famous "X-Telegram" published in Foreign Affairs in 1946, but he was also the first major American public figure to disavow it. A severe critic of Stalin and the Soviet system, he became a resolute anti-anti-Communist. The original architect of the Marshall Plan, he opposed American entry into NATO. He condemned the Vietnam War, even though it flowed from the very foreign policy he had helped to set in motion. As the original Cold Warrior, he lived long enough to blast Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, and to push for a nuclear-weapons ban. At the end, he was a bitter opponent of the Bush doctrine and the war in Iraq, even though members of that administration cited him as one of their inspirations.

Yet, looking closely at Kennan the man, there were no inconsistencies at all. Everything he did or said as a diplomat, historian, Sovietologist, and foreign-policy sage over eight decades arose from his belief that democracies are inherently weak and unstable; that the American people can't be trusted; that only an authoritarian elite can save the people from themselves, and that power is the only reality in a world devoid of principles or morality or hope. Although Kennan despised the Soviet system and its makers, and rightly warned Americans of their menace, he shared their bleak outlook more than anyone dares to admit.

Like the evacuation at Dunkirk famously derided by Churchill when he noted acidly, "Wars are not won by evacuations", the Cold War was not won by containment. It was won by Ronald Reagan's abandonment of the feckless policy Kennan and his "realist" buddies created and implemented.

One wonders what would have happened had Kennedy had the guts Reagan had, or LBJ, or Nixon, or Ford, or Carter. At any time the rotten foundation of the Soviet Union could have crumbled, once exposed to the light of day. Instead the State Department sought merely to slow the growth of the USSR, watching haplessly as it gobbled up nation after nation, then ruthlessly suppressed any people whose love of liberty could not be quashed without a Guards tank division or two in the public square.

Whittaker Chambers is considered a hero for joining what he considered to be the losing side in the Cold War, knowing full well his fate should his prognostications prove correct. What of George Kennan, who very nearly made Chambers cynicism our reality?

Like Neville Chamberlain, I won't mourn him, but I will pray for his soul.