George Kennan: The Long Telegram of 1946

Washington D.C. in the summertime is constantly perspiring, a rather miserable place to be. And, although the summer of 1949 was equally as dredged, Paul Nitze, an expert economist who lacked status in the United States government, was about to receive the opportunity of a lifetime. George Kennan, longtime diplomat and Russian studies expert, was looking to retire to his quiet farm in Pennsylvania, but he needed to leave a successor for the Policy Planning Staff. He decided on Paul Nitze. However, just months later after Russia succeeded in building and testing an atomic bomb and Nitze’s appeal for an assessment of U.S. Foreign Policy, Kennan on September 30 wrote, “I face the work of these remaining months with neither enthusiasm nor hope for achievement.” Obviously, the Cold War would be a large undertaking for any Russian expert in the State Department, however, it is more than likely that he was referring to working closely with colleague whose foreign policy tactics evidently began to differ greatly from his own as time would show.

In 1946, George Kennan sent a “long telegram to the Us State department depicting the Soviets as driven to expand Communism. The following month, Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, further instilling fears of the spread of Communism (632). Throughout 1946 and 1947 the Soviets backed multiple Communist takeovers in Europe, justifying American concerns of Soviet militance (632). President Truman issued the Truman Doctrine to assure free nations economic support to resist Communist attacks. Shortly after, the Marshall plan was signed to further instill US economic aid in Europe, expanding US influence. In order to oppose the strong American moves, the Soviets cut off all traffic into Berlin. The allies responded by airlifting supplies to help those in need within the blockade (633). As tensions rose with the Berlin Blockade, the US enacted the National Security Act which created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. Along with other legislation, the NSA contributed to a large push for defense of democracy (633). The US, along with Canada and ten other European Nations, signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to create a strong alliance of democratic nations. The

On April 14 1950 NSC-68 a 58 page top secret policy paper was presented to President Harry S Truman by the United States National Security Council. It was a very important statements of American policy in the Cold War. NSC-68 provide the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War. It called for an expansion of the military power and defense budget of the united states development of a hydrogen bomb,and increased military aid to be allies.The US could not expect other countries to stop communism and the United States must estimates itself in a non communist

Kennan Kennan's strategy was to contain Soviet power by a system of alliances and foreign aid. Kennan’s ideas became the basis of both the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. However, Kennan later lamented that his ideas also became the basis for the arms race and insisted that

George Kennan's containment plan is a radical shift in the U.S foreign policy when the Policy of the United States towards the Soviet Union prior, and during the World War II is considered. The containment policy marks the shift of American foreign policy towards the Soviets from alliance to deterrence. Kennan's states in the Long Telegram, "USSR still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence." (Citation needed) only two years after the end of World War II, a war both the U.S and the Soviet Union fought side by side for a common ambition. If the aspect of radical shift in the U.S foreign policy is seen from a post-Cold War perspective, another radical change can

When one can truly understand and uncover the meaning behind these articles and how they fit into one or more of the ‘boxes’ we call paradigms and perspectives. In order to dissect and analyze the case of the Cold War, especially its origins, one must not only skim through the text and uncover main ideas, but also must also relate the readings to these paradigms and establish one’s own ideals and opinions regarding the study of international relations. Personally, I believe the articles associated with the origins of the Cold War along with Professor Katzenstein’s lecture on the topic provide strong arguments for the use of a ‘middle fish’ perspective and a ‘big fish’ paradigm: domestic politics and realism, respectively. Through George Kennan’s personal accounts, experience and analysis at both the time of the Cold War’s inception and forty-plus years later after the fall of the Soviet Union, a point is made regarding the nature of Soviet expansion as an offensive maneuver, which he believed must be contained by a defensive strategy. This point of conflicting strategies by the U.S. and (especially) the Soviet Union provides the reader with a realist argument and perspective. Also, in his second piece, which details remarks made to the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994, Kennan explains that instead of whole-heartedly adopting

However, it has been argued that containment should not be seen as the underlying factor behind the Marshall Plan, due to the fact that Britain was a recipient of this aid. This is because Britain did not fall within the sphere of communist influence, yet received the most amount of aid. For example, in the 1945 General Election, the British Communist Party only won two out of six-hundred and fifty seats, receiving less than one hundred thousand votes overall; thus, highlighting the lack of communist support in postwar Britain. Furthermore, the Marshall Plan was even offered to the Soviet Union by the American administration. Despite being an empty gesture, if there was a genuine fear of communism and an overwhelming agenda to contain it, why would they offer aid, in the first place, to the principal communist state? Joyce and Gabriel Kolko go further and ascertain that the US “cynically manipulated a Russian threat in an effort to fasten economic control over the entire world.” The Kolkos argue that “Truman and his advisers deliberately exaggerated and misrepresented external reality, provoked and invented crises, and spurned genuine Russian offers to negotiate a détente,” in order to achieve greater world hegemony.

During the Cold War, America's basic policy was that of "containment" of the Soviet Union. The policy of containment was based upon several principles. First, the Soviet Union wanted to spread socialism to all areas of the world. However, it was felt that the leadership of the Soviet Union felt no particular rush to accomplish their goal. "The Kremlin is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry. Like the Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of a long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. (Hook and Spanier, 42)." In other words, the Soviet leadership believed that, since their ideas were the correct ones, they would eventually prevail, and thus, no direct confrontation would be

In The Sources of Soviet Conduct, George F. Kennan explained “Containment was the central post-war concept of the United States and its allies in dealing with the Soviet Union”. To contain communism, the United Stated strategy was to have a strong

Soviet leaders probably did not enjoy reading George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram,” abbreviated LT for short. A 1946 State Department cable sent from the American embassy in Moscow to Washington, D.C., the LT provided the intellectual foundations for the U.S. policy of containment. Although containment did not necessarily advise officials to eradicate communism’s existing footholds, the policy did make the Cold War “hot” in many countries in an attempt to stop communism’s spread – Vietnam (1965 – 1973), Korea (1950 – 1953), and Greece (1946 – 1949), to name a few. Somewhat less importantly from a policy standpoint (but arguably more so for the individual kingpins within Russia), the LT attacked the USSR’s leaders on a personal level, calling

This caused the US to believe that Soviets had mainly expansionist aims. The US was “not prepared to see the opportunity for future investment [in Eastern Europe] foreclosed” (Crockatt 67) and this belief sparked the development of the containment policy directed by George Kennan, outlined in the Long Telegram (Lightbody 5). In addition, “the west had to oppose the Soviet Union for its own survival” (Lightbody 5) as the nuclear race between the US and USSR ensued and the USSR strived to equal the already well-established program of the US. This tension did not recede as Soviets sent spies into the US Manhattan Project, the nuclear development program (Lightbody 5). When the Soviets refused to join the Baruch Plan – which controlled nuclear weapon development – the USSR became even more openly viewed as a threat to US security. The growth of communism in Asia within the countries of Korea, Vietnam, and China along with tensions between the “Iron Curtain,” or divide, between Eastern and Western Europe also contributed to increasing threat towards capitalism and the Cold War’s inevitability.

George Kennan, the architect of the Long-Telegram, was one of the leading voices, publishing the traditionalist viewpoint both privately in the Long Telegram of 22 February 1946, as well as publicly in the anonymous article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs (McCauley 9). Soon after, most of the Western world joined Kennan in the view that: "at the bottom of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity"(McCauley 131). Kennan warned that, "they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it" (McCauley 131).

The traditional, orthodox interpretation places the responsibility of the Cold War on Stalin’s personality and on communist ideology. It claims that as long as Stalin and the authoritarian government were in power, a cold war was unavoidable. It argues that Stalin violated agreements that he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet policy on Eastern European countries aiming at political domination and conspired to advocate communism throughout the world. As a result, United States officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with foreign policies such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Yet revisionists argue that there was “no proof of Stalin promoting communism outside Russia” and that Stalin’s decisions were first and foremost, pro-Soviet and not of communist intentions. Up until 1947, it is evident through Marshall Plan as well as statements and interviews made by Stalin that he was still thinking of cooperation with the United States, Britain and France. Despite post-war conflicts and instability of Soviet-American relations, the USSR’s initial embrace of the Marshall Plan at its announcement expressed

“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1947 by George F. Kennan, the article impacted and created a different perspective on the spread of Communism and the Soviet Union. Kennan’s philosophy behind stopping Communism from spreading was through containment, even though the telegraph did not have the word containment in it. The Truman Doctrine was established and the number of Presidents that viewed war in foreign soil. Kennan continued to fight Communism and had inputs and theories on other conflicts to include Vietnam and Korea.

On January 9th, 1917 a message was sent from Germany to the German minister in Mexico. This message, later to be known as the Zimmermann Telegram was the final piece to a German plot to embroil the United States into a war with Mexico, Japan or both in order to cripple Allied supply lines fueling Allied operations in Europe.