http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45242-2005Mar17.html
George F. Kennan, 1904-2005
Outsider Forged Cold War Strategy
By J.Y. Smith
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page A01
George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who
formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the
Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101.
A Foreign Service officer from 1926 to 1953, Mr. Kennan also was a student
of Russian history, a keen and intuitive observer of people and events and a
gifted writer. In his years in the State Department, he was recognized as
the government's leading authority on the Soviet Union, and his views
resonated in the corridors of authority with rare power and clarity.
His great moment as a policymaker came in 1946. While serving in the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow, he wrote a cable outlining positions that guided
Washington's dealings with the Kremlin until the collapse of the Soviet
Union nearly a half-century later.
Known as the Long Telegram, it said that Soviet expansion must be halted and
spelled out how that could be done. Moscow is "impervious to the logic of
reason," Mr. Kennan said, but "it is highly sensitive to the logic of
force." He did not state, however, that war was inevitable. The policy
should have a military element, Mr. Kennan maintained, but it should consist
primarily of economic and political pressure.
"My reputation was made," he rejoiced in his memoirs. "My voice now
carried."
In 1947, he restated the principles in an article in Foreign Affairs that
was signed "X" -- the identity of the author soon was disclosed -- and gave
the policy the name by which it has been known ever since: containment.
By confronting "the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point
where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and
stable world," he wrote, the United States would "promote tendencies which
must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual
mellowing of Soviet power."
The Long Telegram and "X" article provided the rationale for Cold War
initiatives ranging from the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in 1949 to the decision to commit U.S. forces to the war in
Southeast Asia in 1965. Containment had numerous permutations over time but
never lost its vitality. It guided U.S. policy in Iran, the Philippines and
the Far East. In the 1980s, it was transformed by the Reagan administration
into an effort to roll back Soviet power through an arms buildup.
Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger said Mr. Kennan came "as close
to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our
history."
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the
nation's highest civilian honor.
In 1950, Mr. Kennan took a leave of absence from the State Department to
move to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Except for a brief
period in 1952, when he was ambassador to Moscow, and from 1961 to 1963,
when he was ambassador to Yugoslavia, he spent the rest of his life in
Princeton.
Despite his influence, Mr. Kennan was never really comfortable in government
or with the give-and-take by which policy is made. He always regarded
himself as an outsider. It grated on him when his advice was not heeded,
more so because it often turned out that he had been more right than wrong.
He had little patience with critics.
His confidence in his own intellect was such that he sometimes declined to
explain himself to politicians. For example, he refused to lobby for the
Marshall Plan, the aid program that revived the economy of Western Europe
after World War II. He was a diplomat, he said, not a salesman.
W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow when Mr. Kennan was
minister-counselor of the U.S. Embassy, remarked that Mr. Kennan was "a man
who understood Russia but not the United States."
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