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03/24/2005

George Kennan

[Next column April 7]

The great American diplomat George F. Kennan died last week
at the age of 101. Serving under various presidents, Kennan is
best known for his work as chief of mission in the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow. Back in 1946 he was asked to assess the Soviet
Union and wrote an 8,000 word cable that became known as the
“Long Telegram,” a piece which offered a detailed historical and
political interpretation of the budding empire. Kennan followed
this up with the equally famous “Mr. X” article in 1947 for
Foreign Affairs. He didn’t sign the piece but it was quickly
known who the author was.

In the Long Telegram, Kennan wrote of Moscow as being
“impervious to the logic of reason (but) highly sensitive to the
logic of force.” In the Mr. X piece, Kennan spelled out his
policy of “containment,” opining that if it succeeded Soviet
attitudes might mellow and the Communist government collapse.
44 years later he was finally correct.

But Kennan’s work on the Soviet Union was often misinterpreted
to mean it was inevitable the U.S. and Soviet Union would one
day be at war. Despite the harsh tones he employed, Kennan
argued he never said this was the case and he hoped that the
United States and the West would primarily apply pressure of an
economic and political kind. Any aggressive steps were to be
taken by locals, who Kennan felt should be trained and
encouraged to rise up and take back their freedom. U.S. support
for such movements was to be in total official secrecy and from
this theory evolved the phrase “plausible deniability.”

Regardless of how Mr. Kennan felt his work should be viewed,
both the Long Telegram and the Mr. X article formed the
rationale for NATO as well as the United States’ commitment to
Southeast Asia in the 1960s. [Kennan would end up vehemently
opposing the Vietnam War, arguing the U.S. had no vital interest
at stake.]

One of Kennan’s less attractive attributes was that he was a total
elitist, calling for a council of elders comprised solely of elites
who would formulate American foreign policy.

Most of the obituaries on Kennan, though, contain no more than
two lines from either the Long Telegram or Mr. X, which does his
memory a great injustice. So I’m going to remedy this. As a
longtime subscriber to Foreign Affairs magazine, I received a
copy of Kennan’s “The Sources of Soviet Conduct by X” on
the 40th anniversary of the article. I’ve kept it all this time.

Following are some selected excerpts. I marked the most famous
passage with an * if you just want to skip down to that. My goal
with this particular ‘hott spotts’ column was not to engage in
Kennan bashing as many have. There is a lot I didn’t like about
the man myself. But some of his musings from almost 60 years
ago, including his descriptions of the Russian character, are bang
on to this day and deserve to be remembered by diplomats and
strategists for another 60.

---

[July 1947]

The political personality of Soviet power as we know it today is
the product of ideology and circumstances: ideology inherited by
the present Soviet leaders from the movement in which they had
their political origin, and circumstances of the power which they
now have exercised for nearly three decades in Russia. There
can be few tasks of psychological analysis more difficult than to
try to trace the interaction of these two forces and the relative
role of each in the determination of official Soviet conduct. Yet
the attempt must be made if that conduct is to be understood and
effectively countered.

It is difficult to summarize the set ideological concepts with
which the Soviet leaders came into power. Marxian ideology, in
its Russian-Communist projection, has always been in process of
subtle evolution. The materials on which it bases itself are
extensive and complex. But the outstanding features of
Communist thought as it existed in 1916 may perhaps be
summarized as follows: (a) that the central factor in the life of
man, the factor which determines the character of public life and
the ‘physiognomy of society,’ is the system by which material
goods are produced and exchanged; (b) that the capitalist system
of production is a nefarious one which inevitably leads to the
exploitation of the working class by the capital-owning class and
is incapable of developing adequately the economic resources of
society or of distributing fairly the material goods produced by
human labor; (c) that capitalism contains the seeds of its own
destruction and must, in view of the inability of the capital-
owning class to adjust itself to economic change, result
eventually and inescapably in a revolutionary transfer of power
to the working class; and (d) that imperialism, the final phase of
capitalism, leads directly to war and revolution .

By the same token, tremendous emphasis has been placed on the
original Communist thesis of a basic antagonism between the
capitalist and Socialist worlds. It is clear, from many indications,
that this emphasis is not founded in reality. The real facts
concerning it have been confused by the existence abroad of
genuine resentment provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics
and occasionally by the existence of great centers of military
power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany and the Japanese
Government of the late 1930s, which did indeed have aggressive
designs against the Soviet Union. But there is ample evidence
that the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet
society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the
realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining
away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.

Now the maintenance of this pattern of Soviet power, namely,
the pursuit of unlimited authority domestically, accompanied by
the cultivation of the semi-myth of implacable foreign hostility,
has gone far to shape the actual machinery of Soviet power as we
know it today. Internal organs of administration which did not
serve this purpose withered on the vine. Organs which did serve
this purpose became vastly swollen. The security of Soviet
power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party, on the
severity and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the
uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The
“organs of suppression,” in which the Soviet leaders had sought
security from rival forces, became in large measure the masters
of those whom they were designed to serve. Today the major
part of the structure of Soviet power is committed to the
perfection of the dictatorship and to the maintenance of the
concept of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy lowering
beyond the walls. And the millions of human beings who form
that part of the structure of power must defend at all costs this
concept of Russia’s position, for without it they are themselves
superfluous.

As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting
with these organs of suppression. The quest for absolute power,
pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness
unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times, has again
produced internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The
excesses of the police apparatus have fanned the potential
opposition to the regime into something far greater and more
dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began.

But least of all can the rulers dispense with the fiction by which
the maintenance of dictatorial power has been defended. For this
fiction has been canonized in Soviet philosophy by the excesses
already committed in its name; and it is now anchored in the
Soviet structure of thought by bonds far greater than those of
mere ideology .

It must invariably be assumed in Moscow that the aims of the
capitalist world are antagonistic to the Soviet regime, and
therefore to the interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet
Government occasionally sets its signature to documents which
would indicate the contrary, this is to be regarded as a tactical
maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without
honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor.
Basically, the antagonism remains. It is postulated. And from it
flow many of the phenomena which we find disturbing in the
Kremlin’s conduct of foreign policy: the secretiveness, the lack
of frankness, the duplicity, the wary suspiciousness, and the
basic unfriendliness of purpose. These phenomena are there to
stay, for the foreseeable future. There can be variations of
degree and of emphasis. When there is something the Russians
want from us, one or the other of these features of their policy
may be thrust temporarily into the background; and when that
happens there will always be Americans who will leap forward
with gleeful announcements that “the Russians have changed,”
and some who will even try to take credit for having brought
about such “changes.” But we should not be misled by tactical
maneuvers. These characteristics of Soviet policy, like the
postulate from which they flow, are basic to the internal nature of
Soviet power, and will be with us, whether in the foreground or
the background, until the internal nature of Soviet power is
changed.

This means that we are going to continue for a long time to find
the Russians difficult to deal with. It does not mean that they
should be considered as embarked upon a do-or-die program to
overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of the
inevitability of the eventual fall of capitalism has the fortunate
connotation that there is no hurry about it. The forces of
progress can take their time in preparing the final coup de grace.
Meanwhile, what is vital is that the “Socialist fatherland” – that
oasis of power which has been already won for Socialism in the
person of the Soviet Union – should be cherished and defended
by all good Communists at home and abroad, its fortunes
promoted, its enemies badgered and confounded. The promotion
of premature, “adventuristic” revolutionary projects abroad
which might embarrass Soviet power in any way would be an
inexcusable, even a counter-revolutionary act. The cause of
Socialism is the support and promotion of Soviet power, as
defined in Moscow.

This brings us to the second of the concepts important to
contemporary Soviet outlook. That is the infallibility of the
Kremlin. The Soviet concept of power, which permits no focal
points of organization outside the Party itself, requires that the
Party leadership remain in theory the sole repository of truth.
For if truth were to be found elsewhere, there would be
justification for its expression in organized activity. But it is
precisely that which the Kremlin cannot and will not permit.

The leadership of the Communist Party is therefore always right,
and has been always right ever since in 1929 Stalin formalized
his personal power by announcing that decisions of the Politburo
were being taken unanimously .

* In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any
United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a
long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian
expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such
a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats
or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward “toughness.”
While the Kremlin is basically flexible in its reaction to political
realities, it is by no means unamenable to considerations of
prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by
tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot
afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of
realism. The Russian leaders are keen judges of human
psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of
temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in
political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of
weakness. For these reasons, it is a sine qua non of successful
dealing with Russia that the foreign government in question
should remain at all times cool and collected and that its
demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such a
manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too
detrimental to Russian prestige .

It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior
unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death
over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of
Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power
to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy
must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of
moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in
recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must
eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual
mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, Messianic
movement – and particularly not that of the Kremlin – can face
frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one
way or another to the logic of that state of affairs.

Thus the decision will really fall in large measure in this country
itself. The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test
of the over-all worth of the United States as a nation among
nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only
measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of
preservation as a great nation.

---

Hott Spotts returns April 7.

Brian Trumbore


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-03/24/2005-      
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03/24/2005

George Kennan

[Next column April 7]

The great American diplomat George F. Kennan died last week
at the age of 101. Serving under various presidents, Kennan is
best known for his work as chief of mission in the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow. Back in 1946 he was asked to assess the Soviet
Union and wrote an 8,000 word cable that became known as the
“Long Telegram,” a piece which offered a detailed historical and
political interpretation of the budding empire. Kennan followed
this up with the equally famous “Mr. X” article in 1947 for
Foreign Affairs. He didn’t sign the piece but it was quickly
known who the author was.

In the Long Telegram, Kennan wrote of Moscow as being
“impervious to the logic of reason (but) highly sensitive to the
logic of force.” In the Mr. X piece, Kennan spelled out his
policy of “containment,” opining that if it succeeded Soviet
attitudes might mellow and the Communist government collapse.
44 years later he was finally correct.

But Kennan’s work on the Soviet Union was often misinterpreted
to mean it was inevitable the U.S. and Soviet Union would one
day be at war. Despite the harsh tones he employed, Kennan
argued he never said this was the case and he hoped that the
United States and the West would primarily apply pressure of an
economic and political kind. Any aggressive steps were to be
taken by locals, who Kennan felt should be trained and
encouraged to rise up and take back their freedom. U.S. support
for such movements was to be in total official secrecy and from
this theory evolved the phrase “plausible deniability.”

Regardless of how Mr. Kennan felt his work should be viewed,
both the Long Telegram and the Mr. X article formed the
rationale for NATO as well as the United States’ commitment to
Southeast Asia in the 1960s. [Kennan would end up vehemently
opposing the Vietnam War, arguing the U.S. had no vital interest
at stake.]

One of Kennan’s less attractive attributes was that he was a total
elitist, calling for a council of elders comprised solely of elites
who would formulate American foreign policy.

Most of the obituaries on Kennan, though, contain no more than
two lines from either the Long Telegram or Mr. X, which does his
memory a great injustice. So I’m going to remedy this. As a
longtime subscriber to Foreign Affairs magazine, I received a
copy of Kennan’s “The Sources of Soviet Conduct by X” on
the 40th anniversary of the article. I’ve kept it all this time.

Following are some selected excerpts. I marked the most famous
passage with an * if you just want to skip down to that. My goal
with this particular ‘hott spotts’ column was not to engage in
Kennan bashing as many have. There is a lot I didn’t like about
the man myself. But some of his musings from almost 60 years
ago, including his descriptions of the Russian character, are bang
on to this day and deserve to be remembered by diplomats and
strategists for another 60.

---

[July 1947]

The political personality of Soviet power as we know it today is
the product of ideology and circumstances: ideology inherited by
the present Soviet leaders from the movement in which they had
their political origin, and circumstances of the power which they
now have exercised for nearly three decades in Russia. There
can be few tasks of psychological analysis more difficult than to
try to trace the interaction of these two forces and the relative
role of each in the determination of official Soviet conduct. Yet
the attempt must be made if that conduct is to be understood and
effectively countered.

It is difficult to summarize the set ideological concepts with
which the Soviet leaders came into power. Marxian ideology, in
its Russian-Communist projection, has always been in process of
subtle evolution. The materials on which it bases itself are
extensive and complex. But the outstanding features of
Communist thought as it existed in 1916 may perhaps be
summarized as follows: (a) that the central factor in the life of
man, the factor which determines the character of public life and
the ‘physiognomy of society,’ is the system by which material
goods are produced and exchanged; (b) that the capitalist system
of production is a nefarious one which inevitably leads to the
exploitation of the working class by the capital-owning class and
is incapable of developing adequately the economic resources of
society or of distributing fairly the material goods produced by
human labor; (c) that capitalism contains the seeds of its own
destruction and must, in view of the inability of the capital-
owning class to adjust itself to economic change, result
eventually and inescapably in a revolutionary transfer of power
to the working class; and (d) that imperialism, the final phase of
capitalism, leads directly to war and revolution .

By the same token, tremendous emphasis has been placed on the
original Communist thesis of a basic antagonism between the
capitalist and Socialist worlds. It is clear, from many indications,
that this emphasis is not founded in reality. The real facts
concerning it have been confused by the existence abroad of
genuine resentment provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics
and occasionally by the existence of great centers of military
power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany and the Japanese
Government of the late 1930s, which did indeed have aggressive
designs against the Soviet Union. But there is ample evidence
that the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet
society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the
realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining
away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.

Now the maintenance of this pattern of Soviet power, namely,
the pursuit of unlimited authority domestically, accompanied by
the cultivation of the semi-myth of implacable foreign hostility,
has gone far to shape the actual machinery of Soviet power as we
know it today. Internal organs of administration which did not
serve this purpose withered on the vine. Organs which did serve
this purpose became vastly swollen. The security of Soviet
power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party, on the
severity and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the
uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The
“organs of suppression,” in which the Soviet leaders had sought
security from rival forces, became in large measure the masters
of those whom they were designed to serve. Today the major
part of the structure of Soviet power is committed to the
perfection of the dictatorship and to the maintenance of the
concept of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy lowering
beyond the walls. And the millions of human beings who form
that part of the structure of power must defend at all costs this
concept of Russia’s position, for without it they are themselves
superfluous.

As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting
with these organs of suppression. The quest for absolute power,
pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness
unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times, has again
produced internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The
excesses of the police apparatus have fanned the potential
opposition to the regime into something far greater and more
dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began.

But least of all can the rulers dispense with the fiction by which
the maintenance of dictatorial power has been defended. For this
fiction has been canonized in Soviet philosophy by the excesses
already committed in its name; and it is now anchored in the
Soviet structure of thought by bonds far greater than those of
mere ideology .

It must invariably be assumed in Moscow that the aims of the
capitalist world are antagonistic to the Soviet regime, and
therefore to the interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet
Government occasionally sets its signature to documents which
would indicate the contrary, this is to be regarded as a tactical
maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without
honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor.
Basically, the antagonism remains. It is postulated. And from it
flow many of the phenomena which we find disturbing in the
Kremlin’s conduct of foreign policy: the secretiveness, the lack
of frankness, the duplicity, the wary suspiciousness, and the
basic unfriendliness of purpose. These phenomena are there to
stay, for the foreseeable future. There can be variations of
degree and of emphasis. When there is something the Russians
want from us, one or the other of these features of their policy
may be thrust temporarily into the background; and when that
happens there will always be Americans who will leap forward
with gleeful announcements that “the Russians have changed,”
and some who will even try to take credit for having brought
about such “changes.” But we should not be misled by tactical
maneuvers. These characteristics of Soviet policy, like the
postulate from which they flow, are basic to the internal nature of
Soviet power, and will be with us, whether in the foreground or
the background, until the internal nature of Soviet power is
changed.

This means that we are going to continue for a long time to find
the Russians difficult to deal with. It does not mean that they
should be considered as embarked upon a do-or-die program to
overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of the
inevitability of the eventual fall of capitalism has the fortunate
connotation that there is no hurry about it. The forces of
progress can take their time in preparing the final coup de grace.
Meanwhile, what is vital is that the “Socialist fatherland” – that
oasis of power which has been already won for Socialism in the
person of the Soviet Union – should be cherished and defended
by all good Communists at home and abroad, its fortunes
promoted, its enemies badgered and confounded. The promotion
of premature, “adventuristic” revolutionary projects abroad
which might embarrass Soviet power in any way would be an
inexcusable, even a counter-revolutionary act. The cause of
Socialism is the support and promotion of Soviet power, as
defined in Moscow.

This brings us to the second of the concepts important to
contemporary Soviet outlook. That is the infallibility of the
Kremlin. The Soviet concept of power, which permits no focal
points of organization outside the Party itself, requires that the
Party leadership remain in theory the sole repository of truth.
For if truth were to be found elsewhere, there would be
justification for its expression in organized activity. But it is
precisely that which the Kremlin cannot and will not permit.

The leadership of the Communist Party is therefore always right,
and has been always right ever since in 1929 Stalin formalized
his personal power by announcing that decisions of the Politburo
were being taken unanimously .

* In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any
United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a
long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian
expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such
a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats
or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward “toughness.”
While the Kremlin is basically flexible in its reaction to political
realities, it is by no means unamenable to considerations of
prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by
tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot
afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of
realism. The Russian leaders are keen judges of human
psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of
temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in
political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of
weakness. For these reasons, it is a sine qua non of successful
dealing with Russia that the foreign government in question
should remain at all times cool and collected and that its
demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such a
manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too
detrimental to Russian prestige .

It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior
unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death
over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of
Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power
to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy
must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of
moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in
recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must
eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual
mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, Messianic
movement – and particularly not that of the Kremlin – can face
frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one
way or another to the logic of that state of affairs.

Thus the decision will really fall in large measure in this country
itself. The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test
of the over-all worth of the United States as a nation among
nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only
measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of
preservation as a great nation.

---

Hott Spotts returns April 7.

Brian Trumbore