Guns and Butter Blog

First of all, my apologies to the readers (all five of you) for being AWOL for almost a week. I am back.

The big news last week was that George F. Kennan, the great architect of the containment policy against the Soviet Union, died.

The New York Times obit had good details on the early part of Kennan's career as a cold warrior, but was selective on the later years of Kennan's life. It was largely hagiographic -- not surprising since, in many ways, Kennan became something of a classic American liberal in his old age (in other ways, he was hardly liberal -- almost a racist reactionary; but surprisingly both aspects synthesized in Kennan).

On the whole, I thought the Washington Post obit was more evenhanded and less hagiographic, revealing Kennan as "a man who understood Russia but not the United States," to quote W. Averell Harriman. An illuminating paragraph from the obit:

Believing as he did in a limitless human capacity for error, Mr. Kennan was an unabashed elitist who distrusted democratic processes. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas reported in their book "The Wise Men" that he suggested in an unpublished work that women, blacks and immigrants be disenfranchised. He deplored the automobile, computers, commercialism, environmental degradation and other manifestations of modern life. He loathed popular American culture. In his memoirs, he described himself as a "guest of one's time and not a member of its household."

Richard Holbrooke (considered John Kerry's secretary of state-in-waiting last year), who knew Kennan firsthand, provides additional points of observation and thought in "The Paradox of George F. Kennan."

I never had an opportunity to meet the man, but had an occasion to study him in detail second-hand in any case. As a student of international relations at Brown University, study of Kennan and his famous "Long Telegram" and the X article took much time. There was even a special upperclassman seminar devoted solely to the work and life of Kennan (taught by Professor Charles Neu, an expert on the Vietnam War, who was widely rumored to be a CIA recruiter on the campus).

My take on Kennan, if anyone cares to know, is that he was an articulate, realistic cold warrior in his younger days, who was nonetheless an elitist misfit (he despised the "real" power elites as being obtuse and intellectually shallow, I think) and who eventually went into the wacky environmentalist/anti-nuclear kookdom in his old age, thus proving the classic adage that an elitist ultra-liberal is really a unreformed reactionary.

I think Kennan's personal exposure to the horrors of both Soviet communism and Nazism inoculated his mind against such collectivist temptations. I do also think that he understood the nature of Soviet communism well. He comprehended the necessity of containing it on multiple fronts (foremost politico-economically, but militarily where necessary) as well as pushing it back where possible and expedient. In other words, he knew and understood what he lived and observed. He was a realist about such things.

However, despite a somewhat modest origin, I believe he fancied himself a diplomat in the mold of classical European aristocrats. He despised democratically-elected politicians and statesmen and held himself high above them as a Platonic Wiseman. The man clearly had a sense of self-grandeur and arrogance.

Where Kennan went really "kooky" was his anti-modernism, particularly in his later years. He had reactionary views on technology and culture. He had especially awful views on self-determination, women, minorities among other issues. This perhaps was tied to his view of himself as an elitist WASP diplomat-intellectual superman. From the 1980s and on, he -- by then a committed anti-nuclear spokesman -- was even something of a "useful idiot" for the Soviets who wanted to force a withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from Europe. Much of his musings in this regard took the form of a utopian environmentalism (quite similar to the wacky Left environmentalism of today that views Man as an intruder upon Virgin Nature, as if transplanted into the latter by a malevolent force).

My final analysis is that his realistic, highly intelligent analysis of the nature of Soviet communism regrettably drew too much attention to his anti-modern views of the elder years. Frankly, I think that he lived on the reputation he made during his younger days. He was, nonetheless, a fascinating figure in American diplomatic history, something of a classic "don" of the latter, the likes of which will not likely be seen again.